South Viet Nam: Plan & Counterplan

Word was flashed to Saigon of a night attack by Communist Viet Cong guerrillas on Due Hoa village, only 18 miles from the capital and the site of the nation's largest sugar refinery.

The raid, just before Christmas, was exactly what U.S. Lieut. General Lionel McGarr wanted. For months, McGarr and his Military Assistance Advisory Group have been drawing up a Counter-Insurgency Plan with staff officers of the South Viet Nam army. The plan aims at getting the South Vietnamese out of their defensive posture and into a mobile and determined pursuit that will carry the war to the heart of the Reds' jungle strongholds. Due Hoa represented the plan's first trial run.

South Viet Nam planes dropped flares over Due Hoa and used the glaring illumination to strafe and bomb the Viet Cong positions outside the village. By morning, truckloads of troops were converging on Due Hoa to follow up the retreating guerrillas. Not only South Vietnamese combat soldiers were being employed. U.S. Specialist Four James T. Davis, 25, of Livingston, Tenn., was riding a three-quarter-ton Signal Corps truck equipped with a location finder to spot a clandestine Red radio transmitter that has been broadcasting messages to Communist North Viet Nam. On Communal Road No. 10, a little before noon, the Signal Corps truck was blown up by an electrically detonated land mine. From both sides of the road, Viet Cong guerrillas opened withering fire. Specialist Davis and eight South Vietnamese soldiers died.

Costly Battle. Next day 20 helicopters with U.S. pilots were kept busy jungle-hopping troops of the South Vietnamese 7th Division to build up an assault on the Viet Cong stronghold near Due Hoa. One helicopter crash-landed on a muddy pineapple field and was battered by Communist mortar and rifle fire, killing two Vietnamese soldiers and injuring three Americans, who set the helicopter afire to keep it out of Viet Cong hands. Said one hard-worked U.S. pilot: "It sounded like World War II out there." Even Saigon was not safe: on Christmas Day, a 26-year-old U.S. Army specialist went bicycling and has not been seen since. He was presumably kidnaped by the Viet Cong.

At week's end the outcome of the costly fight around Due Hoa was still in doubt. But U.S. planners are pressing forward on half a dozen fronts: in the highland region bordering Laos—a favorite Red supply route—the U.S. is arming and organizing some 6,000 mountaineer tribesmen long neglected by President Diem's government and wooed by the Communists. The U.S. is superintending the building of jungle airstrips capable of handling planes as big as C-47s, and encouraging the development of auxiliary arms, ranging from communications teams to girl sharpshooters. The U.S. is also sponsoring anti-Red guerrillas in North Viet Nam, to give the Communists a taste of their own medicine.