Limited War

During weeks of hit-and-run sniping, the Viet Cong Communists ran up an impressive score. Two National Assembly Deputies were shot dead in a Jeep outside Banmethuot. A bus was dynamited. Several district chiefs were wounded. Fortnight ago, eight Vietnamese Catholic priests were kidnaped. The old pattern of isolated terror seemed to be reasserting itself, and Vietnamese morale sank steadily.

All the while, South Viet Nam's Seventh Division--which smashed two Red guerrilla battalions on the Plain of the Reeds five weeks ago--was laying a trap for another showdown. U.S.-trained Colonel Huynh Van Cao traveled around Kien Tuong province telling villagers exactly where and when he intended to attack the Communists, showily deploying his men to back up his threats. Predictably, the cautious Viet Cong melted deep into their Plain of the Reeds stronghold, exactly where Colonel Cao wanted them. Suddenly shifting his troops, he deployed four infantry battalions on the Viet Cong's south flank. Three airborne battalions, backed up by armored companies moving overland, closed in on the Communists from the west and north. Provincial militia were called up to block off all roads into the plain.

For three days Cao feinted and jabbed, using U.S. Navy landing craft on the canals that crisscross the plain. Viet Cong Battalion 514 was backed into a corner 20 miles square. Then Cao struck. Mortar and howitzer shells pounded the square while sturdy AD6 Skyraiders swooped down, strafing and dropping napalm bombs. Some 100 soldiers of the 450-man battalion were killed, many more wounded. Colonel Cao's men captured 22 prisoners, including two nurses and two 15-year-old boys who claimed that their job was to sing and dance to entertain the guerrillas.

More important, the Seventh Division captured five tons of ammunition, five portable munitions factories, a printing press for propaganda. "These are the kinds of losses that hurt the most.'' exulted Brigadier General Le Van Nghiem. "A man can be replaced. A gun can be replaced. But a printing press or a munitions factory is hard to come by. It takes at least six months to set up a munitions factory.''

Though small in scale against the massive rumblings as East and West sparred verbally over Berlin, the battle on the Plain of the Reeds was a significant reminder that in Southeast Asia, the two worlds war with guns as well as words, and that for some the struggle is measured out in death. The battle was all the more heartening because it showed that there are times when the West can limit Moscow's adventures in limited war.

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