South Viet Nam: Opening an Artery

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South Viet Nam's sprawling Mekong Delta is a military planner's nightmare. May-to-October monsoon rains churn the paddyfields into oceans of viscous slop that bogs down troopers and tanks alike. But for all its unpleasant mud, the Delta is far too vital to be ignored. It is the home of one-third of South Viet Nam's 16.5 million people, produces fully one-half of the country's food. It is also infested with Viet Cong. As long as the U.S. has concentrated most of its military muscle in other areas, the V.C. have been able to use it as their main source of new recruits and food. Last week, even as U.S. planes hit North Viet Nam with a record 197 missions in a single day, U.S. forces went into the Delta in earnest.

Square in the Middle. Primary target was a stretch of Route 4, a potholed two-lane highway over which moves most of the food that the Delta now sends to Saigon. Explained Lieut. General Frederick C. Weyand, the U.S. Area Commander: "For every day the road is closed, the price of rice in Saigon goes up 10 piasters [20]." In the past fortnight, the Viet Cong concentrated three hard-core battalions near Route 4 and mined the road eight times, bringing traffic to a virtual stop. The V.C. were obviously trying to push up food prices just as the presidential campaign began.

In a combined American-Vietnamese sweep called Coronado II, four battalions from the 9th and 25th Divisions were helilifted into the area; two others swarmed ashore from river as sault boats. The Americans' job was to link up with ten South Vietnamese battalions to make a 250-sq.-mi. rectangle surrounding the V.C. battalions. While the perimeter formed, two battalions of tough South Vietnamese Marines came clattering in by copter to flush out the quarry. By chance, the Marines landed squarely in the midst of a crack V.C. outfit. At once they were in a furious firefight and the Marine commander stubbornly waved off U.S. artillery fire and air strikes so that he could keep his own men in close contact with the enemy. After 22 hours of almost nonstop righting, the V.C. broke off to slip away by night. They left behind 150 dead and a number of prisoners, including the battalion's deputy commander. Along the rectangle's rim, U.S. and South Vietnamese troopers killed 135 other guerrillas, blew up nearly 700 bunkers.