Whatever may happen in Paris, peace seemed a distant prospect last week on the battlefields of Viet Nam, where the war rose to a fighting pitch of intensity unequaled since the Tet offensive. The Viet Cong shelled Saigon and a dozen other cities and attempted ground attacks in some cases, but their assault, far from being a second round on the scale of Tet, amounted to little more than coordinated harassment. Elsewhere, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces scored sizeable victories in heavy fighting around Saigon, in the Delta and, particularly, in northernmost I Corps, where the bloodiest battles of the week erupted.
The shelling of Saigon began at 4 a.m. One mortar round hit near the U.S. Embassy, another close to U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker’s residence. Numerous shells landed in the Chinese section, Cholon. But the main enemy target was Newport, the U.S. dock facilities in the Saigon River, where Communist forces unsuccessfully attempted to follow up a mortar and rocket attack with an assault. Within two hours the city had largely become quiet again. The Communists also shelled, among other cities, Hué, Pleiku, Can Tho, Kontum, My Tho and Quang Tri. Four U.S. Marines were killed and six wounded when five mortar rounds hit the Danang headquarters of Marine Commander Lieut. General Robert E. Cushman Jr.
The shelling of the cities came after a week in which the Communists had undergone little but setbacks. In I Corps’ eastern part, allied forces turned back a North Vietnamese attack aimed at overrunning the U.S. Marine supply base of Dong Ha and fought a series of major battles around the city of Hue. In western I Corps, an allied force slashed through the North Vietnamese army’s longtime sanctuary and storehouse in the A Shau Valley.
Only eight miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, Dong Ha is the eastern anchor of the entire allied defense line facing North Viet Nam. Across the DMZ, in a swift three-day thrust, Hanoi sent its crack 320th Division to audaciously launch its first division-sized attack of the war. The Communist troops took up positions on the Cua Viet River two miles from Dong Ha, ambushed a U.S. Navy supply ship, and waited for the Marines to respond. They did at once, pouring in five companies to engage the North Vietnamese in the village of Dai Do.
Bamboo Breathing. After two days of fighting, the Marines took the village, only to be driven back by a vicious Communist counterattack. Next day the Marines drove through Dai Do again—and again the North Vietnamese drove them back, supported by 130-mm. guns firing from North Viet Nam. But it was the 320th’s last lunge. Under artillery and air strikes, it was forced to retreat northward, leaving 856 of its dead behind, as U.S. jets pursued and pounded its remnants. The Marines lost 68 dead, had 323 wounded seriously enough to require evacuation.
Meanwhile, to the south near Hue, four U.S. 101st Airborne companies and the Black Panther company of South Viet Nam’s 1st Division trapped a North Vietnamese battalion in the village of Phuoc Yen. Throwing a tight cordon around the village, they mercilessly pounded it with artillery for more than a day. As the besieged Communists tried to break out, they were shot down. Then the artillery was stopped, and for an hour loudspeakers in planes and on the ground called on the survivors to surrender.
They did, crawling from the rubble of the village or popping out of the Songbo River, where some had lain submerged while breathing through bamboo shoots. In all, 95 surrendered, one of the biggest such catches of the war. A body count turned up another 135 dead, bringing the total to 352 in the 76-hour battle. Allied losses were eight killed and 37 wounded. Among the Communist dead were the commander of the North Vietnamese unit—the 8th Battalion—his executive officer and three company commanders. All told for the week in eastern I Corps, the allies killed 1,370 Communist troops while suffering 110 dead of their own.
Heart of Hué. Some 25 miles to the southwest of Hue lies the A Shau Valley, a lush, weird world of fogs and swirling mists during ten months of the year. Some 25 miles long, the valley floor is 2,000 ft. above sea level. The jagged, spiny peaks on either side rise 5,000 ft. to 6,000 ft. and are covered with a triple-canopy jungle 100 ft. tall. Ever since a U.S. Special Forces camp was overrun in the valley in March of 1966, only furtive U.S. reconnaissance patrols have set foot in it. The North Vietnamese turned A Shau into a sanctuary and their greatest storehouse in I Corps. It became a key infiltration route from Laos and the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hue and Danang.
The North Vietnamese had fortified the hills of A Shau with hidden antiaircraft guns, some of them radar-controlled and able to hit a plane at 20,000 ft. Using Russian-made bulldozers, they had widened the old French road running down the valley center, Route 548, to six lanes, and built a brand-new road called 547A that branched off from another road, Route 547, and emerged from the valley aimed straight at the heart of Hue. Such passable weather as A Shau ever knows comes in April and May, and three weeks ago, under the tightest secrecy of any allied operation of the war, Operation Delaware was launched to punch into the Communists’ craggy lair.
A Treasure Hunt. Delaware’s strategy, planned and executed by Lieut. General William B. Rosson, called for a multipronged drive. The 101st Airborne moved down from the east on the Communists’ own new road, accompanied by a regiment of South Vietnamese paratroopers. Another South Vietnamese force also closed in from the east. The job of taking the valley itself fell to the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile), two of whose heliborne brigades began leapfrogging in from the north. The first day was a near disaster, as Communist gunners destroyed or damaged 20 of the Air Cav’s helicopters, including the first giant Flying Crane to be lost in the war. Off-and-on weather threw artillery reinforcement and supply drops off schedule.
But, except for the continuing murderous antiaircraft fire, which continued to claim U.S. helicopters, A Shau proved to be lightly defended on the ground. The men of North Viet Nam’s 559th Supply and Transportation Regiment did not put up much of a fight, retreating into the hills. Steady allied advance over the valley floor became a treasure hunt for the enormous caches of hardware that the Communists had to leave behind when they fled. It included Soviet tanks, trucks and bulldozers, vast quantities of rockets, mortars, artillery, small arms, flamethrowers, gas masks—and enough electronic equipment and tapes to furnish a powerful radio station.
Whether the allied force of some 12,000 men would attempt to root out the North Vietnamese gunners dug into the hills above them remained to be seen. But, in any case, the allies are not likely to elect to stay in A Shau, given the weather and the number of men who would be tied down in de fending it. Instead, Operation Delaware aimed to even an old score for the men of the Special Forces who fell there in 1966—and to destroy all the equipment and tools of war the Communists have so painstakingly assembled in the valley. In both, it succeeded.
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