The War: The Bloodiest Truce

Hanoi long ago instructed its troops in South Viet Nam that the day might come for fighting and negotiating at the same time, with the Communist military arm reinforcing the diplomatic hand at the bargaining table. Whether or not the Communists were really ready to talk last week (see THE NATION), their soldiers were busy fighting up and down the length of South Viet Nam. Coming in the wake of the New Year's truce, the ferocity of the action was hardly unexpected; both sides always use the few day's respite of truce to position themselves to come out fighting hard. This time the Communists did not even wait for the truce to expire. More than 170 truce violations—and a major Viet Cong attack two hours before the truce ended—made the New Year's lull the bloodiest of the Viet Nam war's eight ceasefires. Despite their initiative, the Communists lost most of the blood.

The sneak attackers were units of the Viet Cong 9th Division, and their quarry was an 1,110-man force of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade, which was setting up a powerful artillery base at Suoi Kut, only seven miles from the Cambodian border. The Communists hoped to even an old score: last March the men of the 1st Brigade had killed 647 soldiers of the 9th Division at nearby Suoi Tre in the biggest single one-day victory of the war. The Viet Cong also hoped to catch the 1st unprepared, since the U.S. infantrymen had arrived at Suoi Kut only three days previously, were still clawing bunkers out of the teak jungle—and had not yet received any barbed wire to set up around their perimeter.

A Crater with a View. The V.C. first opened up with mortars on the U.S. base, then sent snipers scurrying under cover of the moonless night into the camp's very midst to sow confusion. Then, from north and south, the Communists charged in force. The big U.S. 155-mm. guns were lowered to fire pointblank, and cooks and headquarters clerks joined the gun crews in manning the defense. U.S. planes, directed by Sergeant Mark Ridley of San Antonio, soon swept in to blast the attackers. When the attack began, Ridley and his squad found themselves out on patrol a quarter of a mile from the camp and with a direct view of the enemy's principal rallying point. Time and again as the Communists moved to fresh attack, Ridley called down explosives and napalm right on their heads—once within 16 yards of his own position in a crater. When the V.C. finally gave up and withdrew at dawn, they had killed 23 Americans, but at the huge cost of 355 of their own dead left behind on the battlefield.