Death Among the Rubber Trees

The district town of Loc Ninh, some 70 miles north of Saigon, was a company town and, until last week, a tranquil and prosperous one. Most of its 10,000 inhabitants worked for a giant French rubber plantation, the Societe des Caoutchoucs d'Extreme-Orient, whose trees marched away row upon row, mile after mile, across the low hills toward the Cambodian border.

Overlooking the town stood the red-roofed villas of the French plantation managers. Tropical flowers climbed their villa walls from green lawns, and their country club boasted a large swimming pool and a red-clay tennis court --the remnants of a prewar colonial past.

The wartime present in Loc Ninh was embodied in four understrength Vietnamese irregular force companies and an American Special Forces unit, both of which were assigned to guard the town's airstrip and the district sub-sector headquarters, a rambling set of old French buildings and bunkers ringed by concertina wire and crowned by an improbable, rickety observation tower. Down the airstrip from the headquarters (see map) was an only slightly more substantial, diamond-shaped Special Forces camp, its walls made of logs and earthworks like something out of the old American West. To the Viet Cong's main-force 272nd and 273rd Regiments, assigned the task of spoiling South Viet Nam's inaugural week with a major victory, Loc Ninh must have seemed an ideal target: a district headquarters defended by underforce irregulars and a handful of Americans, close both to the Viet Cong's source of supplies and to the sanctuary of the Cambodian border only nine miles away. They were wrong: in a week of fighting, the Viet Cong suffered their biggest defeat since the twelve-day battle around Khe Sanh last May, when they lost 1,200 men.

The Viet Cong struck just after midnight one night last week, pouring a rain of rocket and mortar rounds on the Special Forces camp and on the sub-sector compound. Part of their 273rd Regiment roared into the undefended town itself, took it over and used its dispensary to treat Viet Cong wounded. At the same time, other elements of the 273rd attacked the subsector compound from the north and west, filtering through the gloom of the rubber trees and throwing themselves against the guns of the 105 men inside.

Despite bombing and strafing by U.S. jets and helicopters zooming in to aid the defenders, the headquarters soon appeared doomed. Punching through the wire, the Viet Cong raced from building to building, setting each afire. They silenced the bunkers one by one, dropping grenades through their slits. Soon only the command bunker and one other were still firing back, and in the command bunker Captain Tran Minh Cong and his twelve men were running out of ammunition. So Captain Cong radioed for Vietnamese army artillery to zero right in on his bunker. The artillerymen were reluctant to do so at first, but Cong, as he explained later, was unworried: "This is the best bunker in Viet Nam, even if you hit it with a B-52." Thereafter, every time the Viet Cong swarmed over the bunker, fused shells set to go off in the air blasted them. By dawn, a South Vietnamese relief company, helilifted to the rescue from Phu Loi, 60 miles away, was able to launch a counterattack out of the Special Forces camp. They drove the Viet Cong back into the rubber trees, forcing them to leave behind more than 100 of their dead.

Bleeding White Sap. Meanwhile, the U.S. 1st Division's reaction force was moving in reinforcements. The first to arrive were two helilifted batteries of 105-mm. howitzers and two rifle companies, the vanguard of two battalions. A third battalion later followed and began sweeping the rubber groves east of Loc Ninh. It proved an eerie enterprise. Moving down the corridors between the evenly spaced, parallel rows of trees, the troops were frequently brought up short by jungle birds whose screeches mimicked the whine of bullets. The almost purple earth underfoot teemed with a fierce breed of red ant whose bite meant torment. But the battalion soon did some tormenting of its own. Running into a company of Viet Cong, it killed 83 in a four-hour firefight that left the bullet-punctured rubber trees bleeding white sap.

Despite their heavy losses, the Viet Cong tried again next day, this time attempting a two-pronged attack from the east across the airstrip runway. It was a disastrous tactic; a howitzer at the south end of the field was in a position to fire right down the runway--"like shooting down a bowling alley," as one of the gunners put it. As the Viet Cong, 30 and 40 at a time, tried to sprint across the strip, the big howitzer shells exploded in their midst. The gunners fired off 575 rounds during the battle, blistering the paint on the lone gun's barrel. Helicopter gunships laced the Viet Cong from above with their mini-guns, and Air Force jets made one screaming run after another, dropping anti-personnel bombs. The few Viet Cong who survived the lethal gauntlet to reach the strip's west side were caught in a murderous crossfire between the Special Forces camp and the subsector compound. Again, more than 100 Viet Cong died.

Douse That Light! Next day was the only quiet one in Loc Ninh's bloody week. The Vietnamese irregulars dug huge pits for the Viet Cong dead, washed their clothes in the French Club's swimming pool and helped themselves to the wine cellar. Because the Viet Cong had returned each night to occupy the town itself for a few hours, the villagers were evacuating it by the thousands. To try to build up their morale, the 1st Division sent in medics and armored personnel carriers, and the division band went oompahing through the streets in full battle dress, brass horns gleaming in the sun. The effort was unsuccessful. Understandably frightened by the ferocity of the battle, the villagers continued to stream southward, their possessions on their backs. By week's end Loc Ninh was virtually a ghost town.

To the surprise of U.S. commanders, the Viet Cong stayed around despite their losses. Next night the fighting resumed, in perhaps as weird a contact as either side has made in the war. About 8 p.m. a group of men walked through a U.S. company's command post, one of them with a flashlight in his hand. "Douse that light," snarled a U.S. sergeant major, at the same time noticing that the offender was wearing black pajamas and carrying a Chinese AK-47 gun. But the group kept right on walking, and it was several startled seconds before everybody started firing. Four of the Viet Cong were captured, one by a young lieutenant who hit him with a football body block and a right to the jaw. Later that same night, the Viet Cong massed among the trees for another attack across the runway but were driven off by U.S. jets. Still another large force of Viet Cong tried to overrun a U.S. battalion positioned west of Loc Ninh; they were forced back in bloody combat, suffering 200 dead.

By the fifth day of the battle for Loc Ninh, the enemy had lost more than 900 men in their frantic, futile efforts to seize it. Allied losses were fewer than 50 dead.

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