World: A Savage Week

Allied forces in South Viet Nam like nothing better, so far as military tactics go, than to close with substantial numbers of Viet Cong. In hit-and-run guerrilla attacks, the Viet Cong are too often hard to get at; in larger units, they are usually no match for Allied forces. Last week, replenished and emboldened by the Tet truce, Communist ground forces came out to fight aggressively in unusual numbers. The results were predictable: when the smoke cleared, their thrusts had been blunted and they had lost more than 1,000 men, one of the highest tolls for a single week.

Korean Handiwork. First to close with the Viet Cong was a company of South Korean marines dug in on the coastal flatlands of Quang Ngai province, long a Communist stronghold. The Koreans, members of the elite Blue Dragon brigade, had purposely positioned themselves in the open, hoping to draw the Communists down from the forested mountains for a set-piece battle. The Korean perimeter was in the shape of a valentine, laced with concertina wire and reinforced with concrete revetments. On the night of St. Valentine’s Day, a North Vietnamese regiment of 1,500 men struck at the 254-man Korean company with everything up to 120-mm. mortars, which had been lugged down the mountains by pack elephants.

Screaming and blowing whistles, the North Vietnamese blasted their way through the wire with bangalore torpedoes, then rushed in with flamethrowers. Korean Captain Chung Kyong Gin, 32, swiftly sent two squads to plug the holes in the wire, then set his men loose to kill the Reds trapped inside the perimeter. It was knife to knife and hand to hand—and in that sort of fighting the Koreans, with their deadly tae kwon do (a form of karate), are unbeatable. When the action stopped shortly after dawn, 104 enemy bodies lay within the wire, many of them eviscerated or brained. All told, 253 Reds were killed in the clash, while the Koreans lost only 15 dead and 30 wounded. Captain Chung, recommended for the Tae Geuk (Korea’s Medal of Honor), said: “Every day I want the enemy to attack my company. Always I am ready to fight.”

Classical Charge. Down in the Mekong Delta, an equally savage battle was in progress. Moving into the “Twin-River Complex” of Chuong Thien province, a battalion of South Vietnamese infantrymen walked into a trap. One company was hit as its American-piloted helicopters put down in the paddy-and-palmetto plains between the Nuoc Trong and Cai Lon rivers. Four “slicks” (troop-carrying choppers) were shot out of the sky by Chinese-built 7.9-mm. antiaircraft cannons; another four “gunships” (helicopters carrying rockets and machine guns for close support) dropped like stones. Moments later, a Medevac chopper was downed—the ninth helicopter to fall in as many minutes. Pinned down behind low paddyfield dikes, the South Vietnamese called for air strikes. U.S. and Vietnamese fighter-bombers thundered in from as far away as Cam Ranh Bay to lay bombs, napalm and cannon fire within 150 ft. of the pinned-down infantrymen.

That was not enough to knock the Reds out of their camouflaged bunkers, so in came Captain Doan Kim Long, 27, and his battalion to mount a classical infantry charge. Long, who wears French wrap-around sunglasses, a lavender scarf and a khaki beret, deployed his men in a shallow V with himself at the point. With the battalion bugle blaring, the Vietnamese raced across 75 yds. of open ground, straight through their pinned-down comrades, hurling grenades into the Viet Cong bunkers and gunning down the Reds when they tried to escape. Long’s men lost only three killed and 27 wounded in the charge, but before the day was out the South Vietnamese had killed 356 of the enemy. Highland Fling. The Americans were getting in their licks too. Up in the Central Highlands near the Cambodian border, elements of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division killed 225 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in a series of fulminating fire fights after the Reds had ambushed two of its companies. B-52 bombers from Guam plastered the Red positions with pinpoint accuracy, while the men of the 4th fought their way out of the hole. All told, it was one of the war’s bloodiest weeks to date, and the blood was predominantly from the other side.