The Courier News from Blytheville, Arkansas • Page 3

TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 1954- BLYTHEVILLE (ARK.) COURIER NEWS Bottle for Indochina Vietminh Forces Are Everywhere; Reds Have Strong Backing Among Tonkinese PAGI mtn EDITOR'S NOTE Depending upon the turn of events at Geneva next week, Indochina may be barely outside the grasp of international communism. That was reported by William L. Eyan yesterday in the first of a series of articles. Today Ryan discusses the strength of the Vietminh military forces which spearhead the Communist campaign. Ryan toured Indochina this month, then returned to Singapore to write his findings free of censorship.

(Second in a Series) By WILLIAM L. RYAN AP Foreign News Analyst SINGAPORE (AP) A cluster of Tonkinese peasants watched stolidly as our jeep drove by. Their faces were inscrutable under their big, round, pointed straw hats. "These people," said a French officer, gesturing, "maybe they are Vietminh. Maybe they are not.

One never knows. "Who are the Vietminh? Where are they? Who knows? They are everywhere." That is why, in the Tonkin delta area of north Indochina, anything' that might possibly be damaged by sabotage is heavily juarded by barbed wire and watched by armed guards. It is the barber wire that reminds you in Hanoi that there is a war going on. The city seems peaceful enough. But the peaceful look is deceptive.

The French admit that inside Hanoi, capital of Tonkin, there are at least two armed battalions and perhaps more of Vietminh in hiding, ready to rise when and if the signal is given. A French sergeant warned me not to venture abroad at night in the bicycle rickshaws there's no such thing as a taxi in Hanoi. The rickshaw boy might be a Viet. The French call the rebels "the Viets." The French nominally control all the delta area, an expanse of swampy ricefields and dense forests surrounding 5,400 villages and harboring seven million persons. But Gen.

Rene Cogny, French commander in north Indochina, an outstanding colorful officer, says the Vietminh in this area has 30 battalions of regular troops, 15 "regional" battalions, 100 "district" companies and about 50,000 guerrillas. In Hanoi and the villages, these troops would rise from the straw- thatched huts, out of the fields, even out of the city's sewers if the signal were given to attack. For the time being they are lying low. delta. If the Vietminh should suffe such severe losses at Dien Bien Phu as to make it no longer worth the effect a military de forces in the delta als might rise, not only for the mili tary objective involved but for pur poses of revenge.

Thus, in any case it is not a comfortable situation for the French and Vietnamese. The Vietminh has forces scat tered all through Viet Nam, though almost none in the neighboring as sociated states of Laos and Cam bodia. Saigon, a comfortable mod ern city which you'd hardly guess from a glance is the nerve center of a nation at war, often experi ences stag "attente" attacks on its outskirts, particularly in the heav ily Chinese area of Cholon. An "attente" attack is simply a foray to show the Vietminh are still around. The Vietminh pulled one such attack only recently.

I was at a Saigon area training camp for Vietnamese officers a camp guarded by barbed wire and strong' points. The Vietminh struck suddenly in the dark, accomplished a lot of shooting and little else, then vanished as suddenly as they appeared. Ho Chi Minn's barefoot hordes infiltrate French-held territory a1 will. float in and out in the guise of peasants, arms concealed under brown tunics. They have allies who will hide them and feed them allies who are not Communists but just people who hate the French, hate the foreigner and want him to go.

The Vietminh. uses terror, too, to accomplish- infiltration whenever it is necessary. Tales filter back of people convicted as "collaborationists" and summarily executed in villages. He has a long arm and peasants who might be against him know it. He's draftees from regular down to guerrilla are disciplined by stern terror.

Recalcitrants face at best service in the labor corps of- coolies The troops constantly harass the French Vietnamese in the delta. Striking under cover of darkness, the Vietminh regularly each night cut the road between Hanoi and Haiphong, the port from which comes the U. S. supplies so vital to the defenders of Viet Nam. Just as regularly in the daylight, French engineers restore the road.

The Vietminn persistently carry out sabotage, stab attacks and terror forays to strike fear into the hearts: of any Tonkinese sympathizing with the French. They raid, kill and plunder, they impress men into their army and labor forces. They take over the rural they hold more than 2,000 villages in the delta and terrorize at least another 2,000. Frequently the rumble of artillery and the chatter of machine! guns can be heard by night in' Hanoi. That means another of the endless stab attacks is under way.

If the gallant defenders in the fortress complex at Dien. Bien Phu, 180.miles northwest of Hanoi, shou 180 miles northwest of Hanoi, should be defeated it might mean a signal for a rising throughout the Former Solon, Jailed in 1949, Seeks Election NEWARK. N. J. 3 Rep.

J. Parnell Thomas, jailed during his last House term, today tries to win Republican nomination to his old seat in Congress on a pro-McCarthy platform. Thomas' bid for a political comeback in the w.ake of a prison term for pocketing congressional payroll kickbacks in 1949 features an otherwise tame New Jersey primary election. The 59-year-old politician-publisher is running against incumbent Rep. William B.

Widnall R-NJ in the rural 7th District. Widnall has the support of party organizations. Thomas, who said he "never once" met Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy R-Wis would only know him from his pictures, has campaigned on a pledge of per cent" support of the Wisconsin Republican and his Communist-hunting methods'.

"The time has come," Thomas said today, "when you neecl more drive, more McCarthys, more Mar- on the jungle supply line. At worst, A never-ending process of con- they face execution. Ho's military leaders have made soldiers out of a horde of skinny, unshod, underfed peasants. The Tonkinese are clever people and learn quickly. "The Viet is a damn good soldier," a tough French parachute troop noncom said as we flew over Dien Bien Phu.

"He can march harder and longer than any soldier in the world and on less food." "And he can shoot too," added a mustached sergeant. "He is getting better all the time." The Vietminh indeed seems to have learned quickly. In testimony is the steadily increasing accuracy of his" antiaircraft fire aimed at the planes reinforcing Dien Bien Phu. Here is how Ho's forces are organized: Total mobilization has been enforced in the areas controlled bj the Vietminh. The army is organized in a sort of ladder.

At top are the striking arm. regulars, the main These are the best tin Dies, ases." and more Parnell Thom- $200 Dip in Double Dip DENVER A burglar dipped a hand into the cash drawer of the Double Dip Creamery yesterday and came up with $200, owner Florence Butler complained to police. looking up numbers in the new telephone directory Instead of calling "Information" SOUTHWESTERN BEU TELEPHONE COMPANY Watch for Our GRAND OPENING TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON! CONNIE'S CONOCO SERVICE G. 0. POETZ OIL CO.

Sell Tkot Stuff" Phone 2-2089 trained and best equipped. There are seven divisions of regulars in all, or about 110,000 men. Local defense is regulated to the next rung of the ladder, the provincial or regional troops used both in Communist-held and non-Communist areas. These also are regulars, but are not so well trained and equipped. They are stationed in then: respective areas as a corps of defense.

They provide help in offensive actions when the regulars reach their areas and are invaluable because they know then- country well. The regional troops also form a pool from which the Vietminh makes up losses among the regulars. Next down the ladder, district companies consist largely of irregulars. They have charge of the corps of boys, women and old men impressed into labor battalions. This group is kept at full strength by constant recruitment from the villages.

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(Say: CARDUI MONTHLY CRAMPS CHANCE OF LIFE scription. training and shifting keeps the Vietminh ranks from being depleted by heavy losses inflicted in battle. Some French authorities say the Vietminh has reached the maximum number it can recruit in thisj way. Indeed, Dien Bien Phu tosses have hurt Ho's forces, requiring him to throw in green troops in a desperate gamble. But competent American military- some franker Frenchmen inclined tP believe the Vietminh will continue making up losses in the usual pattern, the process might be somewhat slowed.

But the Vietminh is having other troubles. They have a problem of supply. In the northern delta area. Vietminh troops live off the land and the people as much as possible but they are hard pressed to bring up material and ammunition. Heavy weapons and supplies for the Dien Bien Phu assault have been coming 1 by trucks Molotov trucks Shipped down from Russia through China.

Several hundred trucks have been in the supply No reason why a woman coulJn't bo president. There are a '01 oi good golfers among the lint' tUung the dusty mountain, muis. Othor supplies streamed is! on the backs of heavily laden coolies inn miles of mountain and trails. But soon the rains will bo steady pelting monsoon rains of Southeast Asia. Alivady it been rainiu'g some in the nortInvest.

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