A Terrible Price

One of the war's biggest and bloodiest battles took place last week around an egg-shaped clearing at Suoi Tre, 55 miles northwest of Saigon in War Zone C. There, surrounded by a treeline of sparse woodland blighted by defoliants, U.S. helicopters flew in three batteries of 105-mm. howitzers and some 450 young U.S. draftees of the 4th division, led by Lieut. Colonel Jack Vessey, Lieut. Colonel Jack Bender and a sprinkling of toughened veterans. They were part of Junction City, the war's biggest operation, and at first they did not expect much heavy action. Junction City has been sweeping through Zone C, destroying bunkers and tunnels and capturing significant documents and equipment, but it had so far achieved few major encounters with the enemy.

It was immediately obvious that something was different at Suoi Tre. When the helicopters first set down in the tiny, vulnerable clearing, Viet Cong scouts in nearby trees detonated heavy charges of explosives, blowing up three of the choppers. Still, the rest of the Americans came on and set up their perimeter around the howitzers, even though unusually large groups of Viet Cong were spotted moving in the area. Though they did not know it, the draftees had landed practically in the midst of 2,000 Viet Cong professionals spearheaded by the crack 272nd main force regiment. For two days the Viet Cong watched and waited, carefully counting the number of Suoi Tre's defenders, noting the departure of one battalion for another operation.

Lethal Stings. They attacked at 6:30 a.m., lobbing the first mortar shell onto the doorstep of one U.S. company command post. Seconds later another exploded just outside battalion headquarters. Then the earth erupted all through the U.S. positions, as some 650 mortar shells rained down. Under cover of the holocaust, the Viet Cong moved up machine guns and 75-mm. recoilless rifles. Even before the vertical death of the mortars had ceased falling, the horizontal death of patterned gunfire was strung man-high across the clearing. The battle quickly became one of pure firepower, as close to a classic infantryman's fire fight as Viet Nam has yet seen. Instead of trying to rush the G.I.s and overwhelm them in a sudden, ragged, do-or-die charge, the Communist commander maneuvered his men cautiously, gradually squeezing the perimeter and trying to cut down the 4th's cannoneers with machine guns and rockets while his infantrymen gave covering fire and grenaded the Americans in their pits and bunkers.

Untried and outnumbered, the Americans worked together blazing away with everything they had. A "quad-fifty" of four 50-cal. machine guns mounted on a turret was fired without respite until its barrels burnt out. The big howitzers were cranked down to ground level, point-blank range. The gunners opened the breeches and took aim through the open barrels straight into the faces of the steadily advancing Viet Cong. The three batteries fired more than 2,200 shells, including dozens of awesome "beehives," a hitherto classified anti-personnel shell that spits 8,000 finned flechettes (steel darts), each an inch long, whose lethal stings turn an ordinary artillery piece into a monster shotgun.

On Their Knees. Even so, more than a third of the American perimeter caved in, yielding yard by yard to Viet Cong pressure. Young troopers took reckless chances to fetch more bullets and grenades. Using his master sergeant as a sort of artillery spotter, Specialist Four Samuel Townsend, 21, a draftee and former high-school athlete from Detroit, pitched grenades with deadly accuracy at an enemy now less than 30 yds. away. In some spots the fighting was even closer. Private First Class Edward Edwards, 20, clubbed down one surprised Viet Cong with his rifle butt. SP4 Richard Hazel, 21, sprinting for a rifle, literally ran into a Viet Cong. "I bumped into him," he said. "There were no fancy punches, I just knocked him down." An armed artilleryman finished him off.

U.S. jets flew 117 sorties over roiling Suoi Tre, bombing the attackers with explosives, napalm and anti-personnel bomblets. Two distant artillery batteries walked more than 2,000 shells through the enemy's ranks, some striking as close as 100 ft. to the shrunken U.S. perimeter. A big Chinook chopper swept through smoke and fire to drop slings of fresh ammunition. But the G.I.s were down to their last bullets, and in some bunkers to a single grenade. Eleven of the batteries' 18 howitzers lay silenced by enemy fire; artillerymen loaded the remaining guns while kneeling amid burning shells. As the enemy fire poured in and the Viet Cong, scenting the kill, closed in for a final assault, everyone in Suoi Tre from gunners wielding pistols to cooks and bottle washers desperately resisted the onslaught.

Like the 10 O'Clock Show. Within a half hour after the battle began, an armored column only two miles away was dispatched to aid Suoi Tre's defenders. It was delayed by difficulty in crossing the steep-banked, muddy Suoi Samat River. Finally a crossing was filled in by a tank mounting a bulldozer blade. Just as the Americans at Suoi Tre were about to be overrun entirely, the delayed column of 80 armored personnel carriers and tanks rumbled through the trees. As they came, they crushed the massed Viet Cong beneath their treads and sprayed the enemy ranks with withering machine-gun fire. Hands popped from tank turrets and dropped grenades to blast off Viet Cong fighters who had swarmed over their steel shells. When the Viet Cong finally grasped what they were up against, they hastily retreated. "It was," exulted Bender, "just like the 10 o'clock show on TV: the U.S. Cavalry came riding to the rescue."

The Americans lost a comparatively moderate 31 dead in the battle, suffered another 109 wounded. But the fleeing Viet Cong paid a terrible price for coming so near to victory. They left 617 bodies on the field of Suoi Tre, having carried away as many other dead as they could. It was one of their worst single defeats of the war.

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