South Viet Nam: Province in Trouble

(2 of 2)

In a 130-round mortar attack, the Viet Cong destroyed a railroad bridge and a combination railroad-highway bridge on Highway One leading into Quang Tri. On the same day, Communist demolition frogmen floated explosives under the important Nam O bridge, eight miles northwest of Danang on the road to Quang Tri. The charge dropped a 75-ft. span of the bridge into Cu De river. And to complete the day's work, a fourth bridge, 14 miles southwest of Danang, was dynamited.

Viet Nam Wall. In Quang Tri city at week's end, the Marines and the Vietnamese were digging in as for a siege, piling sandbags higher, gouging out foxholes, setting up mines and barbed wire—all on the prudent assumption that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese would soon assault the city again. Similar unease prevailed in Hue, where the Viet Cong radio promised an attack soon. Premier Ky, who flew to Quang Tri to inspect the damage of the first raid, came up with his own solution to the province's troubles. It included the possible evacuation of the entire civilian population and the creation of a bulldozed, mined and wired barrier along the DMZ. Though such a Viet Nam-wall idea has long been discussed in Washington and rejected as too costly, the wall would serve to make a direct North Vietnamese invasion that much more difficult. It was a measure of the serious ness of the situation that the Marines, for all their misgivings about the wall's feasibility, last week began bulldozing their coastal area in preparation for just such a lethal barrier.