Fire Fight in Tayninh

In mountainous Tayninh province, 60 miles northwest of Saigon, the Communist Viet Cong had it made. Over a five-week period, the Reds had am bushed South Vietnamese patrols at will and had captured or killed five U.S. military advisers.

Most of the province is securely in Viet Cong hands, but under Lieut. Colonel Raymond Call of the U.S. Special Services, three "oil stains" or advance bases were set up in the Viet Cong territory under Black Virgin Mountain, named for a black-clad maiden who, fable says, leaped to her death from its heights. Colonel Call was determined to make the Viet Cong pay for the lives they had taken and to gradually merge the oil stains.

Information extracted from Viet Cong prisoners by Vietnamese government interrogators convinced Colonel Call that two of the U.S. captives were dead. One Red prisoner admitted that he knew the actual location of their graves and offered himself as a guide. Followed by two battalions, Colonel Call flew in a helicopter to the spot indicated by the prisoner. Sure enough, there was a neat graveyard with a white gate. The helicopter sat down on a paddy near the graves. Suddenly shots rang out. Both pilots were slightly wounded, but Call and Chaplain Aubrey Smith made it back to the chopper, and the chaplain fired several shots at the enemy. "I was carried away," he explained.

It had been an ambush, with the phony cemetery as a lure. Quickly Call launched the South Vietnamese battalions, supported by five tanks and 14 armored personnel carriers against the Viet Cong defense positions. The Reds proved to be dug into three lines consisting of foxholes, dugouts and bunkers with escape tunnels. While the armor made a frontal assault, 15 helicopters and T-28s raked the Reds with ma chine guns, rockets and flaming napalm.

Call's armor broke through two of the Viet Cong lines and might well have carried the final one. But most of the tanks had to retire when they ran out of .50-cal. ammunition. The Viet Cong began moving around each flank, and the order came for government troops to disengage. Although the Reds remained in control of the field of battle, the cost had been catastrophic. The South Vietnamese lost only five dead and 29 wounded. Estimates of Viet Cong casualties were over 200. Though U.S. Viet Nam military chief Lieut. General William Westmoreland flew in especially to congratulate the troops, Colonel Call had little reason to relax. Intelligence reports said that the Viet Cong of Tayninh, aided by a long border with Cambodia, were for the first time building up to division strength, and were even equipped with artillery. "I've seen them," said one U.S. adviser, who had also spotted up-to-date road-building equipment. "Their roads," he said bitterly, "are better than the ones we've got."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.