‘Quang Tri settles into the earth’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33002, 23 August 1972, Page 13

‘Quang Tri settles into the earth’

(By

PETER ARNETT.

of the Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.)

QUANG TRI, Aug. 22. As efficiently as a heel grinds out a smouldering cigarette, so have the South Vietnamese, their American allies and the North Vietnamese crushed the life from Quang Tri city.

Both sides are systematically destroying the oncepleasant riverside community of palm-shaded streets and historical sites where 80,000 Vietnamese lived. It is an orgy Of destruction that has no parallel in the Vietnam war.

The vistas of tumbled, broken homes, of steel rods sticking grotesquely from twisted concrete walls, of hollow-eyed crouching men are from earlier wars. Quang Tri today is Seoul in 1950, Cassino in 1944, the towns and villages of Europe wiped out in World War I. But while Quang Tri is the first Vietnamese city to be methodically levelled, it will probably not be the last if the war continues. The subtleties that once made the Vietnam war dif-

ferent—the “limited” approach by the United States to the Viet Cong “insurgency,” the “counter-insur-gency” programmes aimed at winning back “the hearts and minds” of the people—have been swept aside. When the South Vietnamese counter-offensive moved into gear late in June, the North Vietnamese rolled out their 130 mm guns. The South Vietnamese wheeled in their heavy weaponry. The United States held off its war planes for a few weeks but now uses them when the South Vietnamese ask for them. One levelled the province chief’s headquarters and his garden full of ancient Cham statues with a 30001 b “smart” bomb 10 days ago. Others smashed a wide gap in the north-west comer of the old citadel with seven “smart” bombs last week. Today Quang Tri settles in to the earth, flattened like a matchbox under the wheels of a locomotive. The awesome power of the belligerents is apparent on the roads north to Quang Tri. A curtain of white sand, raised by strong winds from across the salt flats, shrouds the carcasses of trucks and

ambulances alongside Highway 1. The North Vietnamese systematically destroyed these scores of convoy vehicles making a frantic dash when the city fell on May 1. The shifting sands uncover, then cover again, the bones of those who died. The infrequent drivers, all military, rush by nervously, an eye on the naked hills that loom high to the west, home for the big enemy guns that helped savage the convoy. Farther along, the retaliatory power of the United States is visible. Craters from repeated 852 strikes march through the town of Hai Lang, criss-crossing the villages and roads. The holes 30ft across are half filled with brackish water. Not a church or a pagoda stands in a region noted for its piety — farmers working the salty Quang Tri soil had to believe in something to live in so desolate a place. A few who fled the bombing are allowed back into the war zone. They fill empty sand bags with broken crockery and pieces of family mementos, then hitch a ride back south to the refugee camps.

American advisers call the last stretch to Quang Tri

city “the Great Gobi Desert.” Vehicles get stuck in the deep sand. The wreckage of tanks of both sides sits alongside waterholes or beside sandbanks.

A pall of black smoke hangs over the city, like that over an American industrial town in the days before anyone bothered about pollution. But here the only industry is war.

The South Vietnamese marines inside Quang Tri have taken well over 1000 casualties in 25 days at a conservative estimate, their American advisers say. The Vietnamese paratroopers before them were relieved because of crippling casualties. No-one wants to go forward or back, only to crouch under a wall and listen for the boom of a distant gun firing, and the cru-ump as the shell screams into the city. At least 1000 shells boom into Quang Tri everv day, they say. And that is not counting the shelling and air strikes launched against the North Vietnamese. At any one time that enemy might number 600 men at most, the marines say. Some sit inside the walled citadel in the northern part of the city, reported to have enough food and other supplies for two years, left

behind in May by the fleeing South Vietnamese infantry. The North Vietnamese also hold five strongpoints in the south of the city, formerly moated forts for headquarters elements of the South Vietnamese Army. The defences include stout demonstration bunkers built by the United States marines three years ago. If progress can be measured by 10 yards advance today, then back five tomorrow, or a whole block gained by a battalion in three weeks after taking 200 casualties, then the South Vietnamese are making progress in Quang Tri. If the Communists measure progress by delaying the Government advance for a few days at the cost of noone knows how many dead then Hanoi no doubt is satisfied.

Young officers graduating from the Thu Due officer’s school near Saigon fear going north to Quang Tri. The war is so fierce there, they say, that a man could not survive to live out his true destiny.

But the officers still go north from Saigon to Quang Tri just as the other officers come south from Hanoi. Their destiny seems to be to die in a dead city.