Victory in the Marshes

The struggling South Vietnamese army last week won its biggest battle against the Communists since the end of the Indo-China war in 1954.

For weeks the Red guerrillas, known as the Viet Cong, had steered clear of large-scale action, choosing instead to dart out in small bands on minor missions of sabotage and murder. U.S. military advisers, rushed to South Viet Nam after the debacle in Laos, used the lull to train government troops in special new mobile tactics. Dozens of U.S. "Special Forces" operatives joined army units to demonstrate night operations, sneak attacks, better use of landing craft in the canals of the Mekong delta. Fortnight ago, reports filtered in that big Communist groups were moving south from Cambodia toward the marshes of the Plaine des Jones (Plain of the Reeds), 60 miles west of Saigon. The government forces were ready to try their new tactics.

Stealthily, South Vietnamese troops under Colonel Huynh Van Cao encircled the region, concealed themselves in the undergrowth and sat back to wait. Two days later, two Viet Cong reconnaissance patrols moved into the ambush, were quickly wiped out in a quick, murderous burst of machine-gun and rifle fire. This was just the beginning. As the heat of the day rose, it became clear that the main Communist force was walking into the same trap. In this group were at least 500 guerrillas, many of them youths in typical black peasant pajamas, obviously recruited from the local villages. Some carried red banners with white hammer-and-sickle emblems; almost all were armed with mortars, machine guns, rifles or grenades. Splashing through the swampy land, they made easy targets as the government soldiers opened up with withering machine-gun fire and a barrage of shells from the well-hidden 105-mm. artillery pieces.

Splitting up, one Communist group fled north while another tried to escape south toward the Mekong River. Some guerrillas made it to the Cambodian border, and others simply disappeared in the South Vietnamese villages. But 167 Communists were dead, and dozens more lay wounded when the sun set over the Plaine des Jones.

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