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The Reds took their lumps too—particularly when U.S. air and sea power could be brought to bear. When the Viet Cong probed the new U.S. airbase and port facility at Chulai, they were beaten back by U.S. marines and the 8-in. guns of the U.S.S. Canberra, a Seventh Fleet cruiser. Near Danang, the critical base below the 17th parallel where most of the U.S. air strikes at North Viet Nam originate, a sharp assault by the Reds was blunted by Marine Corps fire.
At the same time, U.S. Navy and Air Force jets kept up their pounding of targets to the north. Barracks and PT boats, radar stations and ammo dumps caught the brunt of the aerial assault, and the bomb-line boomed ever closer to Hanoi. U.S. planes struck within 45 miles of the North Vietnamese capital, as if to challenge the half-dozen Soviet Ilyushin-28 jet bombers discovered by high-flying U.S reconnaissance planes late last month and at present sitting idly at Phucyen, just northwest of Hanoi. U.S. officials assume that the planes are Russian-piloted and represent Moscow's fulfillment—along with three antiaircraft missile sites under construction near the capital—of Premier Aleksei Kosygin's February pledge to give material aid to Ho Chi Minh. The Ilyushins are slow (580 m.p.h.) and they pack a light bomb load; still they could reach South Viet Nam.
Sampans & Green Slime. But the possibility of air attack remained a secondary consideration to the embattled Americans in Viet Nam. To begin with, there were political troubles aplenty in Saigon, where Catholic rioters took to the streets in protest against Premier
Phan Huy Quat, whom they accuse of pro-Buddhist leanings. Cops fired into the air—and a bit lower—while the demonstrators burned an official car.
But for all the sound and fury, the military problem stood foremost. The air support that saved the day at Quangngai and Binhchanh cannot be counted on in the rainy weeks ahead, when monsoonal cloud ceilings will touch the roof of the highland jungles. For much of each day during the next few months it will be a ground war, with the weather favoring the hit-and-run tactics of the lightly equipped Communists. With the rains beginning in South Viet Nam, small streams are already swelling into muddy torrents that will soon wash out bridges and roads.
Throughout the Mekong Delta, trunk canals and irrigation ditches are filling, and Viet Cong units will soon be back to a favorite mode of transportation: elusive sampans. The riot of rain-fed foliage in the jungles and swamps provides better concealment for the Red guerrillas, while battle-weary government troops are compelled to slog through waist-deep mud. To both sides the monsoon brings misery: boots and web belts rot, weapons rust even under oilcloth, leeches drop from wet branches, and a thin green slime covers everything.
To win in these nightmarish conditions will take tough, well-trained troops, and last week the U.S. and its allies were quietly preparing such a force. A token group of Australian infantrymen last week took station at Bienhoa airbase—part of a joint 1,000-man Australian-New Zealand contribu tion to the war effort. Two thousand South Koreans are already in Viet Nam, and Seoul still echoes with rumors of another 15,000-man South Korean combat force being readied for Viet Nam service.