South Viet Nam: The Growing Pressure

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It was just a year ago that the first wave of U.S. Marines, M-14 rifles clutched at high port, waded ashore at Danang. The landing came at a dismally low point in South Viet Nam's long struggle for independence, with the Viet Cong on the offensive and threatening to cut the country in half. The marines were the U.S. reply, the commitment of the first organized American combat units to the ground war in Southeast Asia.

Since then, that commitment has grown to 215,000 U.S. fighting men, and the character of the struggle for South Viet Nam has vastly changed. Beginning with small, tentative "search-and-destroy" missions last spring, the U.S. moved out to hit the enemy where he lives, by last October was staging major offensives. Since New Year's Day, the pace has steadily increased. Over each of the past four weeks, allied troops have averaged 13 operations of battalion size or larger.

End of the 36th. Appropriately enough, the most spectacular one last week belonged to the marines, who celebrated the anniversary of their arrival by virtually destroying the North Vietnamese 36th Regiment. The marines had been hunting the 36th for nearly three months when the Red command post was finally pinpointed between Chu Lai and Quang Ngai. Four battalions of marines and four of Vietnamese government troops closed with the 36th in Operation Utah, a three-day battle that gave the marines their toughest fighting in a year of war. The 36th was well disciplined and well armed with the new Chinese Communist 7.62-caliber family of weapons. It not only stood its ground—rare enough for the Reds—but twice counterattacked.

Red fire was so heavy that for nearly a day in one paddy area the marines had to forget their hallowed rule that no body be left on the battlefield. As the marines fought toward the 36th's command post, they met machine-gun nests so tightly held that only flamethrowers could knock them out. But in the end, the 36th was decimated, with over 600 confirmed dead and perhaps as many again killed but uncounted, while allied casualties were "light."

TNT & Rockets. All over Viet Nam the allies were on the hunt. Operation White Wing, spearheaded by the 1st Air Cav, ground to a close last week with 1,841 enemy killed in nearly five weeks of campaigning. Near the Cambodian border, the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division continued Operation Hattiesburg, which so far has captured 240 tons of rice, three base camps and eight way stations, caches of TNT and 40 3.5 rockets. The men of the Big Red One also got 189 Communists in Operation Coco Beach near Ben Cat—150 when a regimental-size force of Reds charged a 1st Division bivouac in the predawn darkness. The 1st fired back at point-blank range with everything it had, including 105-mm. howitzers. Near Tuy Hoa, the 101st Airborne's Operation Harrison has so far accounted for 189 enemy dead.

All told, Red casualties have been 21,500 dead, 3,200 captured, 40,000 wounded and 5,500 defected in South Viet Nam since the allies took the initiative away from the Communists in October. And over the North, whenever the weather clears sufficiently for strikes, the enemy is being hit harder and harder, from the Red River railway to China to supply depots hard by Haiphong—by as many as 300 planes a day.