The Versatile Enemy

Communist forces in Viet Nam are not only better equipped than ever, but are using their men and arms with increasing versatility. Last week, in the course of a few days, they proved just how effective their range of tactics can be. In two cunningly prepared ambushes, they killed 69 Americans in the Central Highlands. In a rocket onslaught on the huge air base at Danang, they killed eight men and did about $80 million worth of damage to U.S. planes. And, in a guerrilla-style raid that they have honed to near perfection, they swarmed over the provincial prison camp in Quang Nam province and released 1,220 prisoners, most of them Viet Cong suspects.

60,000 Garbage Cans. Just after midnight, the rockets began falling on Danang from the hills northwest and southwest of the base, the citadel of the U.S. Marines in Viet Nam and a major launching pad for the air war on the Communist North. In scarcely more than five minutes, the Communists fired at least 50 122-mm. rockets, dropping them among the parked planes with pinpoint accuracy. Several Air Force 4-FC Phantoms and Marine F-8 fighter-bombers, caught fully fueled and with their bomb racks loaded, were blown high into the air by the explosions. One rocket crashed into an ammo dump, exploding the 500-and 750-lb. bombs in a giant fireball that was visible many miles away. Five base firemen were killed when a bomb went off on a burning Phantom.

Several rockets crashed into the barracks area, destroying three buildings. "You could hear the shrapnel hitting the roof," said an airman. "Then one landed on the barracks next to us like 60,000 garbage cans hitting the floor." When the sun rose, aircraft and barracks were still smoldering. Two big craters pocked the west runway, and the east runway was scattered with debris from wrecked aircraft. In all, eleven planes--Phantoms, Crusaders and C-130 transports--were destroyed and 31 damaged. Besides the dead, 173 people were wounded.

Just a few minutes earlier and 20 miles to the south, Viet Cong platoons had blasted their way into the Quang Nam jail with satchel charges. They killed the superintendent and wounded five of his men before fading back into the jungle with the freed prisoners, of whom 190 were later recaptured. While launching their attacks at main targets, the Communists did not neglect their campaign of terror and harassment against South Vietnamese villages and hamlets. A Viet Cong force overran the coastal hamlet of Guan Co, also near Danang, just before dawn, inflicted heavy casualties on the little Vietnamese milita post guarding the town and burned down 44 dwellings.

Bare Hands. The resurgence of fighting in the mist-shrouded Highlands came after a company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade made contact with North Vietnamese regulars who had been waiting in sanctuaries across the border in Cambodia. When the Americans brushed into a small knot of the Communist forces, they pursued their quarry up a muddy hillside in the jungle near Dak To, seven miles from where the frontiers of Cambodia, Laos and South Viet Nam meet. The U.S. troops were led right into a torrent of machine-gun fire from 30 sandbagged bunkers atop the slope. By the time the shooting ended, 25 Americans had been killed and 35 wounded. Other Americans took the hill unopposed the next day, found nine Communist dead.

About 1,000 Communists swarmed just as suddenly over a company of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division near the Ia Drang Valley 40 miles to the south. The fight began after a cluster of NVA troopers decoyed the Americans into a trap two miles from the Cambodian border. The North Vietnamese concentrated on one platoon at a time and succeeded in cutting off each in succession. The American company commander fell in the first minutes of the battle. The fighting was at such close quarters that one U.S. squad leader strangled a Communist soldier with his bare hands and plunged his bowie knife into the chest of another. In all, 44 Americans were killed and 27 wounded; the North Vietnamese lost an estimated 156 men.

The North Vietnamese are also using ambushes, in conjunction with skillful conventional artillery fire, on the plain just below the DMZ. After digging in with their guns, they lie in wait for the Marines they know must eventually come to try to root them out; that is how the leathernecks ran into the bloody ambush just north of their base at Con Thien three weeks ago. By burying some of their guns in deep holes and caves and moving others from place to place, the North Vietnamese have kept the Marines under continual pressure. Last week they took some heavy pounding themselves. After two months in which they stayed away from the DMZ, largely because of SAM missiles entrenched there, the Air Force's big eight-engined B-52s returned to pound Communist installations in the northern half of the zone.

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