Victory in the Valley

Of all the varied and difficult terrain in South Viet Nam, the jungled peaks and malarial valleys of the Central Highlands would seem least worth winning. Scant crops grow there, and scarcely any Vietnamese live there. The triple canopy of jungle foliage shadows the ground in a perpetual, skyless twilight. But, on the Highlands border where Laos and Cambodia meet, there is a valuable piece of real estate: a natural valley that funnels through the worst border mountains out into the gentler highland countryside rolling down to the sea. Astride the valley sits Dak To, until three weeks ago a dusty airstrip guarded by one U.S. battalion and a 500-man Vietnamese paramilitary unit in a Special Forces camp.

Flares Like Fireworks. The North Vietnamese obviously saw Dak To as not much of an obstacle to their plan to sweep down through the valley to overrun the town of Kontum, then turn eastward for a damaging drive into the Highlands' heart (see map). Four regiments of North Vietnamese, some 10,000 men strong, began positioning themselves in the hills around Dak To.

The U.S. watched the buildup carefully, monitoring it with infrared body-heat detectors mounted in planes, "sniffer" helicopters able to locate hidden groups of men by their sweat, and covert, long-range reconnaissance teams operating in the jungles. Three weeks ago, the U.S. began pouring reinforcements into Dak To, joining the battle for access to the Highlands before the North Vietnamese were ready. By last week, as the fighting went on, some 10,000 allied troops had entered the battle and in 18 days had killed 764 Communist soldiers v. 136 U.S. dead. It became clear that the Communists were not going to get a military victory at Dak To.

A few accurate North Vietnamese mortarmen did manage to inflict some spectacular damage on Dak To before pulling back. Firing 82-mm. mortars from less than two miles away, the Communists destroyed two big C-130 transport planes sitting on the Dak To airstrip. Then, in a second attack the same day, they scored a direct hit on the hastily built-up Dak To ammunition dump. For the next eight hours U.S. soldiers in and around Dak To cowered in their bunkers while tracer bullets arced in all directions, flares popped like fireworks and shells exploded. Seven tons of C-4 plastic explosive went off simultaneously, producing the largest blast of the Viet Nam war. A 1,000-ft. ball of fire shot upward, lighting the whole valley and billowing into a mushroom cloud. The shock wave knocked men off their feet half a mile away and all but destroyed the Special Forces camp. Astonishingly, no one was killed, and only three men were injured in the holocaust.