Back to the Valley of Death

While the political agitators in the cities railed against South Viet Nam's government and the U.S. presence, the allies went on with the grim and grinding task of preserving the nation on the battlefields. For six days the reconnaissance helicopters of the 1st Cavalry Division (airmobile) hummed over mountaintops, darted down the alleys of valleys, recklessly trying to draw fire--which would pinpoint an enemy in the elephant grass below. It was familiar terrain: the Chu Pong massif and Ia Drang valley in the western highlands near Cambodia, the "Valley of Death," where the division last fall had fought the bloodiest battle of the war. Chu Pong was a perfect place to hit the enemy off-balance as he prepared his campaigns for the coming monsoon, and Air Cav Commander Major General Harry W. O. Kinnard had given his Flying Horsemen orders to do just that in Operation Lincoln. But the enemy was nowhere to be found. Then a bullet pinged into a chopper from below. Nosing down like angry hornets, a swarm of Hueys carrying a 32-man reconnaissance platoon spotted three Viet Cong on the run, landed near by in the hope of capturing them. They had indeed discovered the enemy --a full battalion of entrenched Red troops. As the forest erupted in gunfire, the platoon radioed for help.

In for Breakfast. The Hueys swept back in to haul the troopers out, but were kept off by the intense Red fire. So instead, a full company of Flying Horsemen was helilifted in. Skyraiders and Hueys covered the Horsemen from the air, a battery of the Air Cav's 105-mm. howitzers was lifted into range to provide an all-night barrage, and another Air Cav company dropped in for breakfast with the defenders. That was enough for the enemy, who hastily retreated across the Cambodian border, leaving 158 dead.

It was all in a day's work for the Air Cav, the world's most mobile division. Ranging at lethal will all over Central Viet Nam from their 12,000-sq.-ft. home helipad, cut out of the scrub at An Khe, the 478 helicopters and transports of the Flying Horsemen are seldom more than two hours away from an enemy highland unit that tries to mass for an attack. Flying more than 300,000 sorties in seven major campaigns and countless smaller ones, the Air Cav has killed 3,626 Communists since it arrived in force in Viet Nam last August--more than any other American unit. It has held its own losses to less than a fifth of that figure, killed perhaps another 4,000 by air estimates, captured 1,138 Reds, 1,718 weapons, $40,000 worth of medical supplies and 1,000,000 Ibs. of enemy rice.

More Than One-Fifth. The growing pressure of U.S. units all over Viet Nam is taking a heavy toll. President Johnson pointed out last week that by actual body count, 10,000 of the enemy have been killed since the first of the year, and perhaps another 40,000 put out of action through wounds, capture or defection. Thus some 50,000 men, more than a fifth of the Communists' estimated forces in South Viet Nam, have been removed from the line within three months--a rate of loss that could well break the back of organized military resistance.

Terrorism still remains the Communists' deadly alternative weapon. Last week a dozen Viet Cong attacked the guard post of a U.S. officers' billet, the Hotel Victoria, in suburban Saigon. Machine-gunning down the guards, they set off a Claymore-type mine, then backed a Citroen delivery truck loaded with 500 Ibs. of plastique explosive up to the gate and blew the Victoria's ground-floor front wide open. Three Americans and three Vietnamese were killed, 113 Americans and twelve Vietnamese wounded. Only the week before, a barrier of drums filled with concrete had been removed from in front of the Victoria because, explained a U.S. spokesman at the time, "we don't want the V.C. to think we're afraid of them."

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