Associated Press, by Peter Arnett

Editor's Note: U.S. forces carried out a big, five-day hunt over the weekend for a Viet Cong battalion in a jungle area southeast of Saigon. Associated Press correspondents and photographers covered all phases of the operation. In this dispatch, A.P. newsman Peter Arnett tells of the meager results and some of the reasons.

SAIGON, South Viet Nam (AP) -- In a war where the only real index of success if the number of enemy killed or captured, the results were dismally miserable.

Nearly 2,000 highly trained U.S. paratroopers beat the scrubby jungles around a hill outcropping southeast of Saigon for five days. 

The largest concentration of artillery yet gathered in the Viet Nam war covered them. Armored vehicles roared near.

Thirty B52 jet bombers flew from Okinawa to attack a suspected Viet Cong headquarters.

Dozens of jet fighters flew support for the five days. A South Vietnamese ground force was available.

The object of all this activity was a Viet Cong battalion supposed to be in the area. It was never found. 

At last count, fewer than 10 Viet Cong had been seen. Three of these were killed and three captured along with two rifles.

Not even a series of similar operations launched in the past by South Vietnamese military planners, and roundly criticized by U.S. advisors, had so little result.

This is the fourth such operation staged in the past two months by U.S. military planners in Viet Nam. 

Many U.S. observers feel that the U.S. high command may be embarked on a strategy that brought failure to Vietnamese forces before and could bring failure to U.S. forces now.

If the basic strategy can be debated, the implementation as applied to the operation that ended Monday cannot.

There appeared to be a chain reaction of mistakes that made success virtually impossible even before the operation got underway fully.

Because of the elaborate command structure in South Viet Nam, operational plans had to be disclosed to a wide circle of people nearly a week before it began.

Viet Nam is notorious for the leakage of operational plans. Many details of this big paratrooper operation were reportedly known to the district chief of the operational area days earlier. This nullified the element of surprise.

Associated Press photographer Horst Faas drove down 40 miles of highway with the artillery pieces last Wednesday, 24 hours before the troops came in. 

The spouts of the artillery were pointed right into the operational area. The message was probably not lost on Viet Cong agents.

If it was, they would have been enlightened by police who stopped traffic on the road hours before the convoy passed. Everyone knew the Americans were coming. Kids waved joyfully.

Local district troops, usually infiltrated by the Viet Cong, were securing the firing zone.

Later that day, as the artillery fired practice rounds to zero in on expected targets, thereby driving underground any Viet Cong who were there, eight C130 transports flew supplies into nearby Vung Tau.

Even a blind man would have known something big was to happen.

Eventually, on Thursday, it did.

One hundred helicopters began streaming into the battle area. They circled while awaiting the B52 bombers. These arrived, dropped their bombs, and departed.

Air Force jets arrived to soften up the troop landing zones.

Then the troops were at last on the ground. But they moved only 800 yards that day through the tangled jungle. There were two battalions on the ground from the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Meanwhile, the artillery and Air Force were at work, hammering a "free bombing zone" that included a Buddhist monastery. Twenty monks were injured. 

Photographer Henri Huet spent four days with one U.S. paratrooper company. His unit did not move at night.

Liaison with other companies in his battalion was difficult because of poor maps. 

His company didn't fire a shot in anger in the five days.

But they took five casualties, all from an artillery shell fired at the Viet Cong from seven miles away. It fell short into the paratrooper lines. 

One paratrooper, frustrated by the days of walking without any contact with the enemy, said: "I didn't like that Viet Cong 50-caliber machine gun firing at me in Zone D a couple of weeks ago. But I'm yearning for action now. It's been a waste of time here so far."

This correspondent flrw in with the 1st Division battalion that secured the artillery pieces on Friday.

He was asked for advice on possible enemy locations in the area. Just five miles down the road was a U.S. advisory outfit staffed with Americans who had been in the region for months. For some reason or other they were not available to brief the arriving troops on the area they knew so well.

When two days of the operation had passed without contact, it became obvious that the Viet Cong was not interested in fighting.

Editor's Note: Air strikes in Viet Nam draw attention but the war on the ground slogs on. Sometimes this slogging is painfully slow, as an Associated Press writer found in a one-week tour of Binh Dinh province.

Qui Nhon, South Viet Nam (AP) -- A military inertia has settled across Binh Dinh, one of the largest and highly populated provinces in South Viet Nam.

Communist attacks and harassment have isolated every district town rom its neighbor in this province some 270 miles north of Saigon. The Communists may have permanently blocked highways 1 and 19 and the north-south railway, the only land links with the outside world.

The government has abandoned one district, An Lao, the scene of a series of disastrous military setbacks for the government in December. The 41st Regiment was sent into An Lao under orders not to take any casualties. The commander carried out his orders well, but lost the valley.

The 41st Regiment clearing Highway 1 up to the town of Bong Son moved less than a mile three weeks. Its progress became sort of a standing joke in Binh Dinh but not to its U.S. advisers.

"The regimental commander has been playing cards with his officers for a week and we have dozens of reports that the Viet Cong are moving in," a U.S. advisor radioed his superior in Qui Nhon. "What can I do?"

When the regiment finally moved it was clobbered by Viet Cong guerillas, who had plenty of time to assemble. The regiment pulled back.

A 1,300-man unit, part of South Viet Nam's strategic reserve, was dispatched hurriedly to Binh Dinh early in February to seek out Viet Cong who had carried out a series of devastating raids.

They left Bong Son with U.S. Marine advisers. As one Marine exclaimed, a maze of conflicting orders "had us burning in circles at first, then following a straight line and finally coming to a dead halt." The heavily equipped unit finally was ordered back to Bong Son.

U.S. advisers say several more districts could be lost soon. Most critical are Vinh Thanh, where only a small airstrip is held by government troops; and Hoai Nhop, where only a few of popular forces -- the people's militia -- hold the district office.

Bong Son itself is being eaten away. An infantry battalion and the Marines are holding only the town and the airfield. U.S. advisers say 1,000 popular forces men at Bong Son have defected to the Viet Cong in recent months. 300 others were killed or captured and only 250 remain.

The mountain town of An Khe, a key to Route 19, is seriously threatened. Several battalions of airborne infantry and rangers were flown in to clear the highway but at last reports were still waiting for orders to move.

U.S. advisors say much of the trouble in Binh Dinh is the reluctance of the 22nd division, which administers the province militarily, to take a firm stand.

Some of the Communist victories are not even reported in Saigon. The Viet Cong overran two outposts at Gia Huu on Feb. 7, killing or capturing every man except seven and dragging off an artillery piece. No government relief forces were sent.

As the situation grows worse in Binh Dinh, air strikes are flown over populated areas. 

A U.S. pilot back from a raid said: "I killed 40 Viet Cong today. That's the number they told me were in the village, anyway, and I leveled it."

Measures are used against civilian demonstrators organized by the Viet Cong. One demonstration near Bong Son was dispersed with artillery fire.

The casualty toll among civilians must be enormous. This reporter saw 20 wounded women and children carried to Bong Son airstrip.

A deluge of refugees has started. Pressed on by the encroaching Viet Cong, air strikes and the artillery, 60,000 refugees have poured into Qui Nhon and safe district towns. This is nearly a tenth of the population.

Many refugees try to board U.S. planes at airstrips. Some are taken. Most are left behind.

The long-range plan of the Viet Cong in Bing Dinh seems to be to knock off the districts one by one, giving them a long coastline for supply and a pivotal position to swing either north or south. Their offensive began late last November.

The Vietnamese government appears to have found no answer yet to the problem. The population lives in fear, the army is listless, military leaders vacillate and U.S. advisors are disheartened.

Only the Viet Cong appear to be lively in Binh Dinh.

With his chin pressed deep into the jungle floor, Army Capt. Walter Daniel watched a grotesque performance 20 feet away as bullets whined and danced around him.

A hidden Communist Viet Cong gunner was rolling the body of a dead U.S. paratrooper over and over across a small clearing with bursts of machine-gun fire.

The dead man was from the company Daniel commands.

Three others had been killed minutes earlier in this clearing this afternoon by this same machine gun, and two other guns like it, hidden in a hillside. The scene was 30 miles northeast of Saigon, in the Communist jungle stronghold known as the D Zone.

The bodies of the three were out in the clearing, too. Daniel, from Manassass, Va., gritted his teeth. He had little choice at this point but to accept the Viet Cong gunner's gruesome game.

His company, Alpha Company, from the 1st Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade, had been pinned down for hours Tuesday by withering machine-gun fire from heavily dug in Viet Cong positions.

Two of Daniel's platoons had taken moderate to heavy casualties.

Daniel crawled back down the jungle hillside, waded a stream and reached his radio.

"We've taken every other hill we came up against in Viet Nam, my company has," Daniel said. "But I don't think we can take this one. We'll have to bring the rest of the battalion in."

As he called for reinforcements, three medics worked over a wounded paratrooper.

"Keep pounding his heart, keep it beating," one medic called as another applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. They kept breathing into the wounded man's mouth and hammering his chest for an hour. But he died.

This was the second wounded man the medics had lost by early Tuesday afternoon. But it was no fault of theirs.

"We need helicopters to get these people out. Can't we get helicopters?" one medic asked.

The answer was obvious.

Alpha Company was pinned down in virgin jungle towering 200 feet into the air. Since midday, paratroopers had been trying to clear an opening for the rescue helicopters to land.

The going was terribly slow.

Nearby, Sgt. Gerald F. Mahoney, from New York, mused: "I'll be 19 years old on Oct. 17 and I'll have my birthday in a hospital. I don't like that."

Mahoney had been hit in the knee and the thumb, but he could hobble along.

Mahoney is young, but he is experienced as far as D Zone is concerned. He had been there many times before. As he was tracking a sniper through the tangled jungle where visibility at best was only 15 feet, he was complaining to his buddies about the quality of the "new recruits" that had arrived just a few days earlier.

"We're oldtimers around here," Mahoney said later after his platoon had been lured into a Viet Cong trap set on the hillside and had suffered fairly heavy casualties. Some of the new recruits also were hit.

Spec. 4 Charles M. Murphy, from Milton, Mass., recalled the action this way:

"We got hit and then cut off but no one back there in the company would believe we were cut off and pinned down.

"They kept saying, 'You're the Third Platoon and you're never pinned down.'"

"But we were," Murphy said.

Lt. Lorenzo E. Fessler, of Farrell, Pa., was the only officer hit. Initially he was jubilant about the bullet that had creased his skull.

"I won the officers' pool for the first Purple Heart," he yelled as they carried him back to the aid post. "I just won me 40 bucks."

But Fessler, the 3rd Platoon commander, soon quieted down as his wound began to throb.

"Our lieutenant just kept going when he was hit. He just kept going," one of his wounded men said proudly.

With the 3rd Platoon cut up, Capt. Daniel moved in the second. Pvt. Samuel Tolliver, from Richmond, Va., was with them when they moved through streams of heavy fire up the side of the hill, past deeply bunkered houses and over the crest.

"I could see the Viet Cong trying to grab our wounded up on the hill. I shot one of the Viet Cong.

Tolliver was put out of action when a grenade hit his leg. It did not explode but it gave him a painful ankle injury.

Chaplain Frank O. Vavrin, a Lutheran from Racine, Wisc., was there with the troops as they died, got wounded and talked.

"They are terribly brave boys. I'm glad I'm here today," Vavrin said.

Editor's Note: Important decisions on the future course in South Viet Nam are expected when Defense Secretary McNamara reports to President Johnson this week on his latest trip to the country. Just what is the military picture that must form the basis of these decisions? An Associated Press correspondent presents a full account of the situation as seen in Saigon and in the field.

Saigon, South Viet Nam (AP) -- Despite the huge American buildup, allied forces in Viet Nam remain insufficient to carry the fight to the Communist Viet Cong effectively. An important reason: Most U.S. and Vietnamese troops are pinned down by security jobs -- including keeping what they hold -- so that surprisingly few battalions are available for searching out the Viet Cong.

An influx of troops from Red North Viet Nam has in effect returned the situation to where it was earlier this year, before a surge of new U.S. forces tipped the balance temporarily in the allies' favor.

The Communists in recent weeks have shown themselves willing to sacrifice hundreds of troops. Man for man, they are as well equipped as the U.S. infantrymen and have as much, if not more, firepower. Seldom mentioned any more in Saigon is the theory that a U.S. platoon, because of its firepower, could easily wipe out a Viet Cong company. 

The war now probably will produce bigger and bloodier battles. It seems likely that only if U.S. troops can wipe out large Communist units will the enemy return to harassing hit-and-run guerilla-type war.

Allied forces in Viet Nam total a little over 689,000. Of these 170,000 are American, 500,000 South Vietnamese, 18,000 South Korean, 1,300 Australian and 300 New Zealand. In addition, the U.S. Navy has major forces deployed off the coast. At least four aircraft carriers and numerous destroyers are in action in the South China Sea all the time. One carrier provides aircraft only for South Viet Nam. Destroyers are used with greater frequency to bombard Viet Cong facilities and provide fire support for villages and outposts under attack.

U.S. strategy is to punch deep into enemy territory and hold as much of it as required to operate base installations. One U.S. aim is to keep its major base installations outside the range of Communist weaponry.

But putting bases deep in Communist territory, the U.S. command has found, requires plenty of men to defend them, and this defense job has eaten up battalions. 

Jungled areas like Chu Lai, An Khe and Ben Cat, where up to six months ago the Communists moved freely, have become American base locations. Now that the bases are set up, the question is, "Where do we go from here?"

The allied buildup thus far seems at the most to have had the effect of containing the Communists. Open invasion across the border by North Vietnamese troops has dramatically changed the picture.

New U.S. forces had been brought in early this year to forestall a dangerous Viet Cong buildup. Communist ranks were swollen by southerners who had gone north in 1954 when the country was partitioned, and who returned as indoctrinated "liberators." 

Now, countering the U.S. buildup, North Viet Nam has sent in the 325th Division, mainly troops born and bred in North Viet Nam, and set the situation back, from the allied viewpoint.

In view of this, there seems to be little doubt that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara will recommend a large increase in American troops in his report to President Johnson following his visit to Viet Nam early this week. Officials speak privately of having as many as 300,000 U.S. troops.

Both sides in the war are proving ready and willing to fight. The conflict has become something like a boxing match. Each side leaves its corner for a tussle in the center of the ring, then retires to safe territory until the bell rings for another round.

The U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry, Airmobile Division rang it at Ia Drang by heli-lifting men deep into Red territory. The Communists hammered them, and themselves took heavy losses. 

PLEIKU, South Viet Nam (AP) - U.S. air calvarymen on the Ia Drang Valley front pushed out today in search of their Communist attackers after beating off four North Vietnamese assaults during the night.

Moving out from a position just outside the valley in the remote highlands near the Cambodian border, the bloodied but still battling Americans reported 21 of the enemy had been killed and one captured during the night and today.

The troops of the 1st Cavalry, Airmobile, Division suffered light casualties, a U.S. spokesman reported. He said the latest enemy toll brought to 1,207 the number of North Vietnamese dead since the battle began in the Ia Drang Valley Sunday.

B-52 bombers from Guam made two more raids on suspected North Vietnamese positions west of the 1st Cavalry forces.

During the night the North Vietnamese fired mortars and small arms into the three main American positions and stormed them in platoon to company strength. The Americans, entrenched in deep foxholes, fought them off.

Mortar fragments damaged a large, troop-carrying Chinook helicopter and a light spotter helicopter.

U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were engaged in a major buildup to reinforce the hard-pressed calvarymen. A South Vietnamese force of regimental size was moved into the battle area about 35 miles south of Pleiku and 6 miles east of the Cambodian border.

At Pleiku airport, 1st Cavalry details were trying to identify dozens of American bodies brought in Thursday. The Communists had removed all identification from the soldiers slain in an ambush Wednesday.

In marked contrast to their hit-and-run tactics earlier in the war, the Communists showed no sign of breaking off their attacks despite their heavy losses.

U.S. officers believe that the Communists badly need a major victory over U.S. forces to bolster their morale, feed their propaganda mills and move toward a position of strength to bargain in any peace negotiations which might develop.

The Americans also showed no signs of retreating. Their losses were not known because American losses in specific actions are not announced. But the cavalrymen this week have suffered the heaviest American losses of the war.

The Pentagon said Thursday that 108 Americans were killed and 350 wounded in South Viet Nam during the week that ended Monday night. It was the largest U.S. casualty total for any one week in Viet Nam, and it included only part of the fighting in the Ia Drang Valley.