IT is never easy to determine when a turning point has come in the tide of war (or of history or politics). During the decade since the French were defeated at Dienbienphu, TIME has carried 14 cover stories on the Vietnamese conflict, at times reporting hope and at others near despair. This time, though a dramatic reversal has taken place in Viet Nam: the drift of defeat has been halted by the overwhelming new U.S. buildup. This issue of TIME tells--as it has not been told anywhere else--the story of how this happened, and of events that have already destroyed many cliches about Viet Nam, including the one that Americans would not know how to fight "that kind of war."

To report the story, a TIME team of six correspondents--headed by Frank McCulloch and including Jess Cook, Karsten Prager, John Shaw James Wilde and Arthur Zich--covered all key action areas in two often sleepless weeks. Their dispatches filed around the clock for nine days over our new direct teletype channel from Saigon to New York, came to more than 50,000 words, from which Writer Jason McManus and Senior Editor Ed Hughes fashioned their account. A graphic part of the story is Cartographer Robert Chapin's map showing (within the limits of security) scale diagrams of the bristling new U.S. bases. Eight pages of color photographs--most of them taken only a few days ago--round put the picture of the new war in Viet Nam.

While reporters and photographers were at work, so was Cover Artist Henry Koerner, whose difficult assignment was to express the determined U.S. presence in a painting. For five days, he hopped from Bien Hoa to Nha Trang, Cam Ranh Bay, Qui Nhon and An Khe. "Fantastic! Marvelous!" he would exclaim, using his two favorite words as he moved from base installation to command post to hill lookout sketching all the while. At one point a helicopter almost landed on half a dozen of his drawings spread out on the grass. "Please, please!" Koerner shouted at the whirling chopper Save my drawings!"

On the way out of the fighting zone, Koerner's plane also carried the bodies of a pilot and a photographer who had been killed the day before Back in Saigon, Koerner showed his sketches to Managing Editor Otto Fuerbringer, then touring Viet Nam. There was little question: the cover would be a scene near An Khe. At dawn next morning, just two weeks before press time for this issue, Koerner and Correspondent Zich were at Saigon airport trying to hitch a ride back to An Khe, where the artist would do the final oil painting from life. Ceiling zero, visibility less than 100 yards, torrential rains. Nevertheless, the travelers negotiated a ride aboard an Army Caribou. Back on location, Koerner set up his easel on the exposed hill occupied by the 1st Battalion of the 7th Division, an outfit that would soon be in action. Mused Koerner later: "You think that war brutalizes people, but the soldiers were so kind to each other."

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