World: Erupting Delta

Despite the heavier fighting that has marked most regions of South Viet Nam in recent weeks, the Delta remained notably quiet. Then last week the country's richest and most populous area suddenly erupted in two major battles, including one that turned into the Communists' biggest defeat of the war in the Delta. The battles were remarkable for two reasons. One was that the Delta is still the sole domain of indigenous Viet Cong forces, some 80,000 strong, who seldom choose to do battle in the large numbers and on the scale of their North Vietnamese allies operating farther north. The other was that the Allied forces that inflicted the damage on the Delta Viet Cong were largely South Vietnamese, who have sometimes been accused of having an "accommodation" with the local Viet Cong to avoid bloodletting.

The first fight began when a 62-boat Allied flotilla churning up the Rach Ruong Canal 65 miles southwest of Saigon was suddenly hit by intense fire. It carried a battalion of Vietnamese Marines and a battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry, part of a probing arm of Operation Coronado 9. The Vietnamese troops were in the lead boats, and when rockets began to rip through the flotilla's armor plate, Major Pham Nha, the Vietnamese Marine battalion commander, made an instant decision to counterattack. "We're in an ambush and we are going in," ordered Nha, without waiting for artillery and air support. Seconds later, Nha's troop carriers rammed into the canal bank and his Marines stormed ashore.

Bunker by Bunker. Nha's Marines drove in on the enemy from the north and east. The U.S. battalion jumped ashore and set up a position on the south, and another U.S. battalion was helilifted in on the west. Boxed in, the Viet Cong's 502nd Battalion fought with the bitterness of despair. Sometimes neck-deep in water, wallowing in mud, the Vietnamese Marines moved in bunker by bunker, dropping grenades into the Viet Cong firing slits and forcing the Viet Cong in the dikes out into the open, where air support and artillery, when it arrived, could plaster them. The Marines paid dearly for their courage, suffering 41 dead and 162 wounded; U.S. losses were 13 killed and 73 wounded. But at the end of the daylong battle, 235 Viet Cong bodies were awash in the paddy waters.

The second battle was entirely a Vietnamese victory. Two companies of a Ranger battalion were moving along a canal line 22 miles southwest of the Delta's largest city, Can Tho, when they ran into two Viet Cong battalions: the local force U Minh 10 and the 303rd main force unit. In a fierce fight that raged through most of one day, the South Vietnamese killed 265 of the V.C., and supporting helicopters and fighter-bombers accounted for another 100 dead. The total of 365 enemy dead was the largest ever inflicted in a Delta battle, with more probably to come as fighting continued at week's end. Moreover, the Communist casualties were so youthful—between 15 and 20 years of age—that Allied intelligence took that as a sure sign that the Viet Cong are having trouble recruiting fresh manpower to replace their losses.