During the first stages of the North Vietnamese offensive, gunfire from the U.S. destroyers that patrol the Tonkin Gulf succeeded in turning back 300 Communist troops from an attempted crossing of the Dong Ha River. Shortly before the Navy became engaged in the battle for Quang Tri province, TIME's Saigon Bureau Chief, Stanley Cloud, was a guest aboard one of those destroyers. There he was able to observe a vital but underreported U.S. contribution to the war:
THE U.S.S. Buchanan, a guided missile destroyer, rolls gently in the waters of the Tonkin Gulf, 5,000...
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