The Showdown

The showdown began at siesta time on a warm, summery day. Premier Ngo Dinh Diem was sitting down to a late lunch at Freedom Palace when nine 81-mm. mortar shells thumped down around the grounds, killing a civilian and wounding a couple of soldiers. The Premier rushed to the phone. "The palace is being shelled," he told French Commissioner-General Paul Ely, his voice disrupted on the line by adjacent explosions.

"I can't understand you," said the Frenchman. "The palace is being shelled," Diem repeated. "If it happens again, I shall order the National Army to respond."

Twenty-five minutes later, more mortar shells dropped into the palace, and the private army of the Binh Xuyen, 2,000 terrorists in arsenic-green berets, opened concerted fire against three main Vietnamese Nationalist strongpoints. Ngo Dinh Diem, long criticized for pacifism and procrastination, first ordered counterfire against the Binh Xuyen defenses. One hour later he sharply raised the stakes, and told the army to clear the Binh Xuyen out of the city.

Bombardment at Headquarters. For two days and one night the battle sputtered and flamed along the Boulevard Gallieni, a one-mile thoroughfare between Saigon's European quarter--which was ringed off from the shouting by the big French-colonial army--and the cluttered Chinese suburb of Cholon. The nub of the action was a cream-colored Vietnamese headquarters, defended by 100 Nationalists beneath a darkening pall of smoke. From there, TIME Correspondent John Mecklin reported:

"Headquarters was milling with Nationalists in khaki shorts and shirts, carrying Tommy guns. Small-arms fire was rattling from the Binh Xuyen a couple of blocks down the road, and Nationalist Tommy-gun fire rattled back at them. Next came the sullen, unmistakable, paralyzing crump of mortars, three in the courtyard outside, filling headquarters with dust and falling plaster. A deep red flame spouted out of a weapons carrier parked next to our car. Black, oily smoke drifted upwards. We could hear a staccato cry ai ai ai from someone who had been hit."

"The bombardment lasted for more than an hour, an enemy shell every two minutes or so--American shells as it happened, given to the Binh Xuyen by the French during the Indo-China War, when the terrorists were supposed to be helping fight the Communists. Our Nationalist garrison leaned forward impassively on their weapons, expecting an infantry attack. 'We are completely encircled.' a report came through to us. Outside I could see a number of grotesquely related things: fire leaping from densely packed wooden shacks; a rat scurrying down a gutter to escape; refugees huddled or fleeing, silhouetted against the red backdrop, beneath the city-wide canopy of smoke. Here and there on the sidewalk lay pairs of wooden clogs; their owners had jumped out of them so they could flee more quickly, barefoot, to shelter."

"Mortars started up again, but the Binh Xuyen fire was inaccurate. Nationalist reinforcements--a battalion of paratroops--moved expertly, strung out in single files along the boulevard, using the picturesque trees for cover. Scout cars zigzagged towards Binh Xuyen bunkers, slamming at them with 37-mm. cannon fire. Sirens howled. Telephones jangled. A baby wailed. A scout car was hit, its machine gunner twisted dead out of the hatch, and it came screaming back out of the battle in reverse. Yet for all the commotion and concussion, the young Vietnamese Nationalists were calm. Just as one terrorist shell exploded a few feet from headquarters, pitting the walls with its fragments, one Nationalist turned on the overhead fan to keep me--a visiting foreigner--cool in the seasonable summer heat."

Victory at the Arroyo. As the day darkened, the sky a shroud of smoke, the Nationalists concentrated four battalions and 18 armored cars against the sandbagged Binh Xuyen strongpoints. In the European quarter, French colonials and a few Americans sipped aperitifs on balconies and watched the distant show--most Frenchmen rooting for the terrorists and most Americans for Ngo Dinh Diem. Soon the news looked bad for the French: the young Nationalists, it seemed, were fighting with efficiency and fervor. During the night the Nationalists attacked and knocked out half a dozen Binh Xuyen strongpoints, one after the other. Paratroopers stormed the big Binh Xuyen garrison at Petrusky High School in a wild, shouting charge. Among the prisoners taken in one Binh Xuyen bunker: a couple of French noncoms, who claimed they had been trapped there "unintentionally" when the shooting began.

On the battle's second day the Binh Xuyen fell back across the Chinese Arroyo, an evil-smelling canal on the southern edge of Saigon, blowing the bridges. The Nationalists regrouped, and in the evening they crossed the canal on both of the Binh Xuyen flanks, clobbering them, driving the terrorists clean out of town. The Nationalists destroyed the headquarters of the Binh Xuyen's General Le Van Vien, the place where he kept his pet crocodiles. Only three Binh Xuyen posts remained; they were inside the cordoned-off French quarter. "Your courage has written a glorious page," Diem proclaimed to the flushed young troops.

The Premier's first and bloodiest battle was over. As the succeeding days of struggle for power continued and shifted from the streets to the seats of power, the Nationalists counted their losses: about 100 killed and 400 wounded against 200 killed, 600 wounded for the outgunned and badly beaten Binh Xuyen.

Nobody knew how many hundreds were dead or injured among the civilians--those scurrying, desperate people whose impassive faces have looked out upon years of vain struggle without peace.

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