A Sudden Meeting

For nearly a month, the U.S. Army's famed 1st Infantry Division has been stalking an elusive quarry: the 271st Viet Cong Regiment, a hard-core Communist outfit that makes a specialty of terrorizing villages near "the Iron Triangle" northwest of Saigon. Last week, in the gloom of densely overgrown jungle trail 40 miles northwest of the capital, it was the 271st that found the Big Red One.

Commanded by a six-man battalion staff, some 175 troopers of the Big Red's 28th Infantry Regiment were filing two abreast through the dimly lit rain forest when the jungle suddenly exploded. From perches in trees and camouflaged positions on the ground, 400 or 500 V.C. sent rifle and machine-gun fire into the right side of the U.S. ranks with a fury that was unusual even for hard-fighting Charlie. Some V.C. stormed into U.S. lines carrying 60-lb. Claymore mines in their hands, blowing themselves up along with surprised G.I.s. Such kamikaze tactics, plus the fact that the V.C. dead had curiously frozen grins on their faces, led some U.S. officers to speculate that the 271st got hopped up on drugs before it turned and fought its pursuers.

All-America Response. Minutes after the attack started, nearly every American officer was either wounded or dead. Among the dead was the battalion commander, Lieut. Colonel Terry de la Mesa Allen Jr., 38, whose father had commanded the Big Red One in its World War II drive from Tunisia to Sicily. At a temporary base camp one mile away, the battalion operations officer heard the firefight and hesitated not a moment. With the agility that made him an All-America end at West Point in 1954, Major Donald W. Holleder, 33, raced toward the furious action and rallied a group of troopers to start hacking out a landing zone for medical-evacuation helicopters. Before he could get the area cleared, Major Holleder was cut down by a burst from a V.C. machine gun.

After 1 1/2 hours, the 271st broke off the attack and retreated through the heavy jungle, carrying its wounded and most probably many of its dead. It left behind 103 V.C. corpses. U.S. losses were the heaviest taken in a single engagement since early summer: 55 killed, 66 wounded. But elsewhere the ground action was relatively light. Though the Allies sent a total of 56 battalion-size sweeps searching for enemy throughout South Viet Nam, the only other place where the Communists fought rather than ran was in the northern I Corps area. Near Quang Tri City, 80 miles north of Danang, U.S. Marines fought a series of sharp skirmishes with North Vietnamese regulars; in the same vicinity a South Vietnamese battalion flushed a battalion of Communists and killed 195 of them in a 20-hour battle.

Soviet Helicopters. In the air, Typhoon Carla and the onset of the monsoons accomplished what innumerable SAMS, MIGS and antiaircraft guns could not: U.S. flyers were forced to slacken their pounding of North Viet Nam. On the only two clear days, Thunderchiefs hit rail lines and bridges on the Hanoi-to-China route, and shot down the 89th MIG of the war. Navy raiders from the Oriskany bombed Haiphong bridges and the military compound in the city's suburb where giant Soviet helicopters and SAMS are assembled.

It was the fourth raid on the compound since it was removed from the proscribed list two weeks ago. One reason U.S. planners are anxious to destroy the helicopters is that they could be used to transport mobile SAM antiaircraft missiles into positions near the DMZ. Once in place, the SAMS could zero in on the big and unmaneuverable B-52s, whose huge bomb loads have so effectively broken up North Vietnamese troop concentrations around Con Thien.

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