South Viet Nam: The Bloody Hills

The long-awaited Viet Cong summer offensive at last seemed under way.

From the suburbs of Saigon to the rain forests around Danang, the Commu nists mounted a savage series of am bushes that snatched away the initiative from the government forces and killed more than 1,000 South Vietnamese troops. The deadliest assaults came in the Red-rife Central Highlands, with the Viet Cong attacking in battalion and even regiment strength as they swept down from the craggy Annamite chain.

“The V.C. are coming out of the bloody hills,” said one stunned American offi cer. They were indeed.

Thunder in the Compound. The bold est bit of Red butchery took place at Bagia, a tiny hamlet near Quangngai (see map, opposite page), where three South Vietnamese battalions were mousetrapped and mowed down in the worst single battle of the war to date.

The Viet Cong — numbering nearly 1,000 — started slowly, by ambushing a single battalion engaged in a routine roadclearing operation. Then, as relief convoys dashed out of Quangngai, the Reds snapped ever-fiercer traps on the would-be rescuers. It was the same trick—in the same place—that had destroyed several French regiments in 1953, just a year before Dienbienphu. Some of the ambushed government soldiers panicked, ripping off their uniforms and throwing away their weapons to hide out in hamlets and paddyfields. Those who surrendered received no mercy: many were found shot through the head and disemboweled.

The Communist intent was clearly to capture Quangngai, the provisional capital. And well they might have—except for a hot dose of U.S. airpower. The handful of government reserves held tight in Quangngai as a Red barrage from mortars, recoilless rifles and howitzers thundered against the Bagia redoubt. Reports from a detachment of montagnard mercenaries, who bravely scouted the area on bicycles, showed that the Viet Cong were less than a mile from the town. In the dark before dawn, monsoon clouds hung wet and heavy over Quangngai, but there was just enough room for a flight of C-123 “flareships” to sweep in under the ceiling and illuminate the area. They were followed by F-100 Super Sabres, Skyraiders and helicopters, which lashed the perimeter with rockets, napalm, and cannon fire. Nonetheless, 500 government troops were killed at Bagia.

llyushins for Hanoi. Barely had the shock of the disaster worn off than the Viet Cong struck again—this time at Lethanh, a district capital in mountainous Pleiku province. In the initial assault, the Reds overran the town, held it for three hours while other Viet Cong units ambushed three relief convoys in succession at almost the same spot on the highway. The toll: 106 government soldiers dead, 20 wounded or missing. Other Viet Cong traps clanged shut near Kontum and Quin-hon, and a full battalion of Reds struck the town of Binhchanh, just ten miles west of Saigon. The defending Ranger company was saved by armed U.S. helicopters, but the very fact that the Communists could mount a battalion-sized assault that close to the capital left many military men shaken.

The Reds took their lumps too—particularly when U.S. air and sea power could be brought to bear. When the Viet Cong probed the new U.S. airbase and port facility at Chulai, they were beaten back by U.S. marines and the 8-in. guns of the U.S.S. Canberra, a Seventh Fleet cruiser. Near Danang, the critical base below the 17th parallel where most of the U.S. air strikes at North Viet Nam originate, a sharp assault by the Reds was blunted by Marine Corps fire.

At the same time, U.S. Navy and Air Force jets kept up their pounding of targets to the north. Barracks and PT boats, radar stations and ammo dumps caught the brunt of the aerial assault, and the bomb-line boomed ever closer to Hanoi. U.S. planes struck within 45 miles of the North Vietnamese capital, as if to challenge the half-dozen Soviet Ilyushin-28 jet bombers discovered by high-flying U.S reconnaissance planes late last month and at present sitting idly at Phucyen, just northwest of Hanoi. U.S. officials assume that the planes are Russian-piloted and represent Moscow’s fulfillment—along with three antiaircraft missile sites under construction near the capital—of Premier Aleksei Kosygin’s February pledge to give material aid to Ho Chi Minh. The Ilyushins are slow (580 m.p.h.) and they pack a light bomb load; still they could reach South Viet Nam.

Sampans & Green Slime. But the possibility of air attack remained a secondary consideration to the embattled Americans in Viet Nam. To begin with, there were political troubles aplenty in Saigon, where Catholic rioters took to the streets in protest against Premier

Phan Huy Quat, whom they accuse of pro-Buddhist leanings. Cops fired into the air—and a bit lower—while the demonstrators burned an official car.

But for all the sound and fury, the military problem stood foremost. The air support that saved the day at Quangngai and Binhchanh cannot be counted on in the rainy weeks ahead, when monsoonal cloud ceilings will touch the roof of the highland jungles. For much of each day during the next few months it will be a ground war, with the weather favoring the hit-and-run tactics of the lightly equipped Communists. With the rains beginning in South Viet Nam, small streams are already swelling into muddy torrents that will soon wash out bridges and roads.

Throughout the Mekong Delta, trunk canals and irrigation ditches are filling, and Viet Cong units will soon be back to a favorite mode of transportation: elusive sampans. The riot of rain-fed foliage in the jungles and swamps provides better concealment for the Red guerrillas, while battle-weary government troops are compelled to slog through waist-deep mud. To both sides the monsoon brings misery: boots and web belts rot, weapons rust even under oilcloth, leeches drop from wet branches, and a thin green slime covers everything.

To win in these nightmarish conditions will take tough, well-trained troops, and last week the U.S. and its allies were quietly preparing such a force. A token group of Australian infantrymen last week took station at Bienhoa airbase—part of a joint 1,000-man Australian-New Zealand contribu tion to the war effort. Two thousand South Koreans are already in Viet Nam, and Seoul still echoes with rumors of another 15,000-man South Korean combat force being readied for Viet Nam service.

Practice on the Killing Ground. More important, evidence was mounting that the U.S. will soon commit its own foot soldiers to battle. In an “exercise” on the fringes of Red-held “Zone D,” 40 miles northeast of Saigon, 2,000 U.S. paratroopers engaged the Viet Cong tentatively in order to test tactics and weapons for possible battles ahead. The 9,000 U.S. marines around Danang are probing ever deeper into Red-held territory, last week killed 22 Reds in scattered fights. “The time will come when they will play their role,” said a senior officer in Saigon.

When they do, they will be backed up by a regimental combat team of 7,800 U.S. marines already en route to Okinawa as a “forward reserve,” while additional U.S. Army troops are ready to move in and protect the ports of Nhatrang and Quinhon. Should the Viet Cong monsoon offensive grow truly monstrous, the additional muscle of an entire Army division (15,000 men) might be thrown into the battle. It all depends on the Viet Cong—and the weather.