World: A Matter of Mobility

Key to Viet Nam’s will-o’-the-wisp war is mobility. As guerrillas, the Viet Cong have naturally used it to the best advantage so far, slipping stealthily through swamps and jungles to attack, then disappear. But thanks to the growing armada of troop-carrying transports and helicopters in Viet Nam, the U.S. has developed its own brand of mobility. Last week, despite shifting veils of monsoon rain and cloud, that mobility was being used to good effect. Siege & Spider Holes. First demonstration came in the battle for Route 19, an affair that at first glance seemed doomed to repeat the bloody disasters of Song Be and Dong Xoai. For 70 days the Viet Cong had besieged the tiny crossroads fortress of Due Co (see map). Perched precariously on high ground just seven miles from the Cambodian border, Due Co guards the critical highway against infiltration from the west and prevents the Reds from cutting South Viet Nam in half. The V.C. had carved an intricate web of trenches, tunnels and “spider holes” to within 300 yards of the outpost, which was manned by only twelve American Special Forces troops and some 400 Bahnar mountain tribesmen. Reports indicated that a Viet Cong regiment was in the area. Saigon’s generals decided that Due Co could not be allowed to fall. Out of Pleiku, 40 miles to the northeast, rolled a three-mile-long column of South Vietnamese Rangers, marines, elite infantry and engineers, led by tanks and armored personnel carriers. They represented half of the country’s strategic reserve. To old hands, the convoy seemed ominously reminiscent of the days before Dienbienphu, when just such relief columns led and manned by French troops had been gobbled up by the Viet Minh. Four miles from Due Co, the Communists struck hard, and the South Vietnamese column backed off at nightfall into a mile-square defense. Then from Pleiku came the alarming word that a brace of Red battalions was sneaking in from behind to surround the relief column. “Blocking Position.” In Saigon, U.S. General William C. Westmoreland, commander of American forces in South Viet Nam, huddled with his Vietnamese counterparts, quickly decided that only massive American intervention could prevent disaster. Out went orders to all available military planes: start hauling men and gear to Pleiku from Bien Hoa airbase, 18 miles northeast of Saigon. In a matter of hours, troops of the U.S.’s 1st Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade were climbing aboard their planes. Throughout the night and into the day, the big C-123s and C-130s lumbered into Pleiku, disgorging men and machines, Jeeps, trucks, cannon, ammo and supplies. Then off the planes winged to Bien Hoa for another load. By next evening, a full brigade of American troops was in the trouble zone. The U.S. forces swiftly headed up Route 19 to set up a “blocking position” between the encircling Communists and the South Vietnamese relief column. With this muscle behind them, the stalled South Vietnamese task force, now moving again, found that Communist resistance was melting away, pushed into Due Co with no trouble. “Hammer & Anvil.” In the wet, checkered flats of the Mekong Delta, American airmen and South Vietnamese ground troops combined mobility with killing power in a smooth “hammer and anvil” operation near Can Tho. Four companies of South Vietnamese, acting as the “hammer,” drove a battalion of Viet Cong ahead of them through the swamps. The Reds refused to join battle, fell back slowly under a protective hail of small-arms fire. Then in whirled a covey of U.S. choppers carrying the “anvil”—troops of the South Vietnamese 44th Ranger Battalion, who landed behind the Reds and quickly blocked their avenue of withdrawal. Pinned down, the V.C. had no choice but to fight. The hammer fell with devastating effect: 158 Reds were killed by the ground troops, an estimated 100 more by close-support air strikes. Far to the north, near Danang, U.S. Marines pioneered a new approach to airborne mobility with a large-scale helicopter-borne assault in darkness. It was organized by Lieut. Colonel David Clement, whose battalion operates in the Elephant Valley, just eight miles northwest of the critical airbase, after his leathernecks captured a Viet Cong operation order. Their commanders advised Red guerrillas to lie low during the day, since “the marines always attack after first light.” Last week Clement’s operations officer, Major Marc Moore of Dallas, rounded up a fleet of helicopters and swooped in with a company of marines to hit a pair of Red-infested villages on the Ca De River a few minutes after midnight. Muzzle blasts flared in the jungle darkness, and the marines killed one Viet Cong and captured 30 others. Sour Rice. Was such a small haul worth the effort? No one could measure precisely the toll of Viet Cong nerves and energy taken by the steady harassment from the air, especially from the fighter-bombers, which constantly swept over the countryside in search of targets. The toll was no doubt considerable, however. The pressure from the air has prevented the Viet Cong from massing as effectively as they otherwise might, and has made regular sleep difficult for many a V.C. trooper. “It is terrible and miserable,” wrote one Red soldier killed at Due Co before he could mail his latest letter. “Airplanes bomb and strafe, and we can do nothing about it. The fighting situation is tough, too serious and difficult. Sometimes we can muster only one platoon for military operations. I am sick almost every day with stomach pains. Drugs are low. Our rice turns sour. We would like the battalion commander to handle this problem. Give my regards to the battalion commander.”