Forecast: Showers & a Showdown

Like the distant thunder that precedes a monsoonal line squall, the rumble of Communist guns last week signaled an end to the long lull in Viet Nam's ground war. Moving out in strength from their jungle strongholds for the first time in nine weeks, the Viet Cong struck in half a dozen spots--and only the hard, hot application of U.S. air power saved Saigon's forces from severe defeat.

The first Red lightning bolt struck at

Songbe, a scruffy cluster of hamlets atop a bluff just 75 miles northeast of Saigon. As the capital of Phuoc Long province, Songbe (pop. 2,000) was a perfect target for the Communists, who would like to capture a governmental seat and proclaim their own "provisional government"--thus permitting Communist and nonaligned sympathizers to recognize their regime.

Tight Clutch. Songbe (literally "Little River") was defended by a force of 1,000 Vietnamese Rangers, militiamen and U.S. Special Force advisers. Two days before the assault, the Rangers captured a pair of deserters who reported that a strong Communist force numbering nearly 2,500 men had moved into the area and was preparing an attack. Though the Songbe garrison intensified its guard, it wasn't enough. In the dark beyond midnight, while the sky intermittently flared with lightning, the Reds attacked.

Mortar and howitzer shells crunched into military compounds, while Viet Cong riflemen, clad only in khaki shorts, swept into the heart of the village. Setting up machine guns and 57-mm. recoilless rifles on an open helicopter pad, they slashed at the barracks, mess halls and headquarters of the Songbe garrison. Said one American survivor: "It looked like the Fourth of July." Five Communists slipped through the perimeter beyond the U.S. compound, but four were gunned down. One managed to reach the mess hall and flip in a hand grenade. Special Forces Sergeant Horace Young, 34, who was already wounded in the leg, tried to bat the grenade away with his rifle butt. It exploded, tearing his arm to ribbons. Streaming blood, he staggered into the storeroom with the only weapon left to him: his Special Forces knife. There he found the Viet Cong grenadier, stabbed him and died. When Young's body was found hunched in the corner of the storeroom the following morning, the knife was clutched so tightly in his hand that it could not be removed.

Siesta's End. First light brought waves of U.S. B57 Canberra jets and prop-driven Skyraiders, which swept in under 800-ft. cloud cover to napalm, rocket and strafe the Viet Cong out of town. Final toll: 161 government troops (including five U.S.), to 184 Viet Cong killed. In spite of its obvious propaganda value, the Communists had been unable to hold the provincial capital.

But if air power merely saved the day at Songbe, it turned the tide completely in the Mekong Delta province of Bac Lieu, 100 miles to the southwest. In a sharply executed "search-and-destroy" operation, U.S. and South Vietnamese planes spotted a concentration of some 600 Viet Cong in a dried-out paddyfield, then pinned them down while government troops were heli-lifted in. Surrounded on three sides, lashed by rockets and napalm, the Communists finally broke and ran. "It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. adviser.

The Viet Cong left 176 dead and nine prisoners behind, along with 61 weapons. Government losses: 18 killed, 77 wounded (including four Americans).

Looming Deadline. With their new activity, the Communists had served warning of what is to come when the monsoon begins blowing full force in the next few weeks. With U.S. aircraft grounded by bad flying weather, the Viet Cong can strike in battalion or regimental strength almost at will, then fade back up into the hills in tried-and-true guerrilla fashion whenever the storm clouds clear.

Racing against that meteorological deadline, some 700 U.S. Navy Seabees, supported by 4,400 U.S. Marines, are busily hacking out a new airbase-cum-seaport at Chulai, just 60 miles down the coast from Danang. It was hard enough to build a new airfield from scratch, harder still to keep it intact under the chaotic conditions of Viet Nam. At the big Bien Hoa airbase just 15 miles north of Saigon, explosions abruptly broke the Sabbath morning. "My God, it's raging!" an eyewitness cried. "Smoke must be rising hundreds of feet in the air." Newly arrived U.S. paratroopers rushed in to seal off the base and help with the firefighting. Some officers muttered suspiciously of Viet Cong sabotage, recalling the sneak Communist attack that knocked out 20 B-57s at Bien Hoa last November.

This time responsibility was less clear. Some thought a friendly Skyraider, warming up to take off, exploded, strewing flaming wreckage for hundreds of yards. Whatever the source, ten of the 18 B-57s at Bien Hoa were destroyed and dozens of dead and dying Americans were carried off in stretchers.

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