Night Assault

Prowling along the coastal plains of Quang Tin province some 40 miles south of Danang, the 400 U.S. Marines found their prey just before noon one day last week: some 2,000 Communists of the North Vietnamese 2nd Division.

The enemy was so deeply dug into a valley floor that the Marines, despite reinforcements and withering air and artillery strikes, failed to dislodge the Reds in all-day fighting. So, in the dark of night, a Marine assault force stormed in, supported by AC-47 Dragonships. Next morning the sun rose on the bodies of 450 enemy dead littering the valley, at the cost of 54 Marines killed.

The Quang Tin battle was the biggest in a week of continued enemy pressure and Allied counterthrust in the five northernmost provinces of South Viet Nam that comprise I Corps. After the Reds struck in a brief terror attack on the ancient imperial capital of Hue, U.S. Marines from the Seventh Fleet launched Operation Bear Bite. A force of some 2,000 leathernecks streamed ashore 21 miles northeast of Hue in an amphibious and heliborne assault. Sporadic fighting also broke out along the Demilitarized Zone, where the Marines discovered and destroyed no fewer than 77 Communist bunkers, stacked with food and supplies, within a three-mile radius of their Con Thien base camp, just south of the DMZ. Near the Marine base of Dong Ha, a 5,000-man South Vietnamese task force killed 150 Communists of the Viet Cong's elite 708th Battalion.

In the air war over North Viet Nam, U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots hit railroad facilities, missile sites, and two oil depots within four miles of downtown Haiphong. The cost of the bombing was disclosed in summary figures released by the U.S. command in Saigon. Since the war began, the U.S. has lost 1,398 airplanes and 888 helicopters--567 of the airplanes and six choppers over North Viet Nam. In another set of figures, the U.S. noted that the week ending May 28 had produced the largest number of American casualties of any week in the war, with 313 dead and 2,616 wounded. But during the same week, 2,216 Communists were killed, for a monthly total of 8,270 Red dead and unnumbered more wounded.

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