Between Two Truces

In Viet Nam, the week began and ended in the holiday artifice of truce.

But the middle was business as usual:

grim, bloody and unremitting war. For the men in the field, the 48 hours of Christmas lull was hardly worth writing home about. Infantrymen and Marines kept up patrols on the ground; Navy and Coast Guard boats maintained the watch on coastal and river traffic; pilots of jets, observation planes and helicopters flew reconnaissance missions north and south of the DMZ separating the two Viet Nams. The Allies counted 122 shooting contacts with the enemy. Most of them were minor, but on Christmas Eve, one bout between Marines in Quang Nam and the Viet Cong lasted for several hours.

Beehives. Eighteen hours after the Christmas truce ended, the Communists struck in earnest. Their target was a 100-ft.-high hill near Bong Son on the edge of the Central Highlands where a U.S. battery of 155-mm. howitzers and another of 105 mm. had been dug in for a month. Three platoons of the 1st Cavalry were on duty defending the twelve big guns and their crews. Under cover of evening rain, elements of North Viet Nam's 22nd Regiment slithered up the hill, snipping the detonating wires of Claymore mines strung round the camp, and neutralizing trip flares. They ran their field-telephone wires to within 15 ft. of the U.S. perimeter.

When the rain stopped, the enemy mortars opened fire. As the first shells fell, the U.S. gun crews tumbled out of their bunkers, and the North Vietnamese charged, laughing and screaming "G.I., you die!" Many of the 200 Americans on the hill did. So sudden was the attack that the Air Cav defenses were quickly overrun. While some of the enemy worked at destroying the howitzers, others ran from bunker to bunker, tossing in grenades and shooting survivors. Gradually, the remaining defenders pulled back around the two 105s still in U.S. hands. The guns were cranked down to point-blank range; high-explosive shells, white phosphorus and "beehives," the deadly modern version of grapeshot, were fired at the enemy. Helicoptered reinforcements soon arrived to reclaim the hill with its burden of heavy casualties, including 117 enemy dead.

Forest of Darkness. Later that day the Allies made their own offensive thrust. Some 1,200 parachutes popped open in the Delta skies 125 miles south of Saigon as South Vietnamese parachute troops assaulted Viet Cong positions on the edge of the U Minh forest, an enemy sanctuary considered so secure that it even contains rest and recreation facilities for Victor Charlies.

Three main force Viet Cong units operate out of U Minh, "The Forest of Darkness," and Air Force fighter-bombers pounded the drop area with bombs and napalm before the big jump--largest in more than a year. Another 4,800 South Vietnamese infantrymen were helilifted into the search-and-destroy mission, which in its first two days netted 89 enemy dead and a rich cache of weapons. More important, it may well be a prelude to the imminent entry of U.S. troops into the Delta war.

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