Fresh from the North

It was just a year ago, in the Central Highlands valley of la Drang near Cambodia, that infiltrated North Vietnamese regulars for the first time chose to engage a U.S. unit headon. The result was not only the war's bloodiest battle and a stunning defeat for the Communists, who suffered 2,000 dead, but the beginning of a new phase in the war. Since then, despite heavy bombing of the North and a steady buildup of U.S. troops to interdict the southward flow of troops, infiltration has continued unabated, providing the chief source of new Communist manpower to keep the war going.

Last week the U.S. announced that 48,000 fresh troops infiltrated from the North to the South during the first nine months of this year. Moreover, they are still coming in at a rate of 5,300 a month. Though the Allies have killed nearly 43,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in the same period and captured or wounded at least that many more, the combination of infiltration and local conscription has actually raised the number of Communist troops in the South by some 39,000 to a present total of 279,000. The infiltrating troops wear fresh, light green North Vietnamese army uniforms, carry new AK-47 automatic rifles and gas masks and are well fed and healthy.

Too Many Gooks. In a search-and-destroy mission in la Drang Valley, within sight of the Cambodian border, an American unit last week ran headlong into a powerful force of just such men, the freshly infiltrated 101C North Vietnamese Regiment. Once again, la Drang became "the Valley of Death"--though the battle was on a far smaller scale. Lured into an ambush when they pursued a small group of Communist troops that they had sighted, two platoons of the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile), the division that inflicted last year's la Drang defeat on the Communists, were heavily outnumbered and badly mauled by the "gooks"--as the Air Cav has taken to calling the North Vietnamese to distinguish them from the Viet Cong.

Of the 21-man 3rd Platoon, only two men, one of them critically wounded, survived the murdering crossfire from the Communists. After overrunning the outgunned Americans, the North Vietnamese moved methodically across the platoon's battleground, shooting in the head any American still left alive. The other platoon was better positioned and fought on, calling napalm air strikes down to within 15 ft. of themselves on the charging enemy. The Communists caused heavy casualties before withdrawing, but they left 145 of their own dead on the battlefield. Still, it was one of the worst ambushes of Americans in the war.

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