Viet Nam: Remember the Card!

Although Saigon had been ready for trouble and had taken special precautions against terrorism by the Communist Viet Cong, May Day had come and gone quietly. But at 5 the next morning, the South Vietnamese capital was jolted by a roar from the harbor. There, the 9,800-ton U.S. aircraft-transport ship Card was sinking fast —it touched bottom in just 24 minutes—into the silt of the Saigon River, a 28-ft. by 3-ft. hole ripped in her starboard side. Apparently Viet Cong agents had placed plastic charges on the hull 10 ft. below the water line.

Of 73 crewmen, none was seriously hurt. A World War II baby flattop with seven Nazi U-boats to its credit, the New Orleans-based Card had arrived in Saigon with a load of new helicopters, had been scheduled to sail in five hours with a return cargo of bullet-riddled, scrapped "banana" transport choppers. Because of the Card's deep draft, her superstructure remained above water, and within hours she was being raised for repairs. While the incident was hardly grave, it gave further evidence of growing Viet Cong boldness and the frequent inefficiency of South Vietnamese security measures. Only weeks earlier, American advisers had requested that the dock be better guarded, but received no response. On the evening after the Card explosion, eight U.S. servicemen in Saigon were wounded when a terrorist on a bicycle threw a bomb.

In the guerrilla war, the Viet Cong distinguished themselves with one of their grisliest blows. Ambushing a truck convoy transporting twoscore women and children in the central mountains, 150 Communist terrorists shot or stabbed to death six women and five children, wounded 21 other women. Then the Reds mutilated several of the bodies, carving out the victims' hearts and spleens. The government retaliated with less savage successes of its own. Three hundred miles north of Saigon, Rangers overran a Viet Cong ordnance depot, capturing 166 weapons, TNT, and 1,000 detonators. Twenty miles north of the capital, a self-defense corps post even tried a bit of Viet Cong-type cunning. Getting word that the Reds planned to cut the post's barbed-wire fence by night and stage a raid, the corpsmen lay in ambush outside the post. They allowed the Viet Cong to snip through the first layer of wire, then pelted them with hand grenades. The defenders lost one man; but the Viet Cong's 37 attackers were wiped out.

In addition to their U.S. advisers, the government troops stand to receive some additional expert counsel. Last week, in line with U.S. President Johnson's recent call for "more flags" in South Viet Nam, the Philippines were negotiating to dispatch 75 Filipino special-forces troops to Saigon. Many will be veterans of Manila's successful anti-guerrilla campaign against the Communist Huks.