South Viet Nam: The Strain of Constant Combat

After a week of major battles, furious fighting and heavy casualties (TIME, Jan. 11), the war in South Viet Nam settled back last week into its normal pattern of vicious, hide-and-seek, hit-and-run engagements. One band of Communist Viet Cong guerrillas beheaded a government provincial district chief northwest of Saigon, and another knocked over a strategic hamlet in the northeast, capturing enough U.S. weapons to equip an entire Red company. With U.S. helicopter crews working overtime, government troops killed and wounded 75 Viet Cong and captured tons of supplies in a sweep through a Red-infested area near the Cambodian border. But the strain of constant combat was beginning to tell on the U.S. chopper pilots. Heading back to base after 15 hours of continuous assaults against Red positions one night last week, a U.S. whirlybird suddenly toppled out of formation and, with its red flying lights carving crazy patterns in the darkness over the Mekong River, spun into the ground. When rescue workers reached the copter's twisted wreckage, they found the mangled bodies of seven U.S. crew members. With ten Americans already killed in 1963, one U.S. adviser remarked bitterly: "It looks like this is going to be a hell of a year for us."