World: A Terrible Price

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One of the war's biggest and bloodiest battles took place last week around an egg-shaped clearing at Suoi Tre, 55 miles northwest of Saigon in War Zone C. There, surrounded by a treeline of sparse woodland blighted by defoliants, U.S. helicopters flew in three batteries of 105-mm. howitzers and some 450 young U.S. draftees of the 4th division, led by Lieut. Colonel Jack Vessey, Lieut. Colonel Jack Bender and a sprinkling of toughened veterans. They were part of Junction City, the war's biggest operation, and at first they did not expect much heavy action. Junction City has been sweeping through Zone C, destroying bunkers and tunnels and capturing significant documents and equipment, but it had so far achieved few major encounters with the enemy.

It was immediately obvious that something was different at Suoi Tre. When the helicopters first set down in the tiny, vulnerable clearing, Viet Cong scouts in nearby trees detonated heavy charges of explosives, blowing up three of the choppers. Still, the rest of the Americans came on and set up their perimeter around the howitzers, even though unusually large groups of Viet Cong were spotted moving in the area. Though they did not know it, the draftees had landed practically in the midst of 2,000 Viet Cong professionals spearheaded by the crack 272nd main force regiment. For two days the Viet Cong watched and waited, carefully counting the number of Suoi Tre's defenders, noting the departure of one battalion for another operation.

Lethal Stings. They attacked at 6:30 a.m., lobbing the first mortar shell onto the doorstep of one U.S. company command post. Seconds later another exploded just outside battalion headquarters. Then the earth erupted all through the U.S. positions, as some 650 mortar shells rained down. Under cover of the holocaust, the Viet Cong moved up machine guns and 75-mm. recoilless rifles. Even before the vertical death of the mortars had ceased falling, the horizontal death of patterned gunfire was strung man-high across the clearing. The battle quickly became one of pure firepower, as close to a classic infantryman's fire fight as Viet Nam has yet seen. Instead of trying to rush the G.I.s and overwhelm them in a sudden, ragged, do-or-die charge, the Communist commander maneuvered his men cautiously, gradually squeezing the perimeter and trying to cut down the 4th's cannoneers with machine guns and rockets while his infantrymen gave covering fire and grenaded the Americans in their pits and bunkers.

Untried and outnumbered, the Americans worked together blazing away with everything they had. A "quad-fifty" of four 50-cal. machine guns mounted on a turret was fired without respite until its barrels burnt out. The big howitzers were cranked down to ground level, point-blank range. The gunners opened the breeches and took aim through the open barrels straight into the faces of the steadily advancing Viet Cong. The three batteries fired more than 2,200 shells, including dozens of awesome "beehives," a hitherto classified anti-personnel shell that spits 8,000 finned fléchettes (steel darts), each an inch long, whose lethal stings turn an ordinary artillery piece into a monster shotgun.