SOUTH VIET NAM: Death at Intermission Time

It was a quiet evening in the sleepy little town of Bien Hoa 20 miles north of Saigon, base camp for the South Vietnamese crack 7th Infantry Division and its eight-man U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group. The presence of the Americans symbolized one of the main reasons why South Viet Nam, five years ago a new nation with little life expectancy, is still independent and free and getting stronger all the time—to the growing chagrin of Communists in neighboring North Viet Nam. Since the beginning of 1959,Communist infiltrators have stepped up their campaign of terrorism, assassinating an average of one South Vietnamese a day, frequently hammering lonely victims to death and then hanging their battered bodies in trees under a red flag. But not since 1957 had the Communists dared attack any Americans.

In the residential compound where the eight Americans lived in Bien Hoa, Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand finished a letter to his wife in Copperas Cove, Texas and dropped it in the mess-hall mailbox. Major Dale Buis of Imperial Beach, Calif, had arrived in Bien Hoa only two days before and was showing his new friends pictures of his three young sons. Two of the officers drifted off to play tennis; the other six men decided to watch a Jeanne Crain movie, The Tattered Dress, on their home projector in the grey stucco mess hall. While they were absorbed in the first reel, six Communist terrorists (who obviously had cased the place well) crept out of the darkness and surrounded the mess hall. Two positioned a French MAT submachine gun in the rear window, two pushed gun muzzles through the pantry screen, the other two went to the front of the building to cover the Vietnamese guard. When Sergeant Ovnand snapped on the lights to change the first reel, the terrorists opened fire.

In the first murderous hail of bullets, Ovnand and Major Buis fell and died within minutes. Captain Howard Boston of Blairsburg, Iowa was seriously wounded, and two Vietnamese guards were killed. Trapped in a crossfire, all six might have died had not Major Jack Hellet of Baton Rouge leaped across the room to turn out the lights—and had not one of the terrorists who tried to throw a homemade bomb into the room miscalculated and blown himself up instead. Within minutes Vietnamese troops arrived, but the rest of the assassins had already fled.