Hand-To-Hand Fighting In Vietnam Battle

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31006, 11 March 1966, Page 11

Hand-To-Hand Fighting In Vietnam Battle

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) DA NANG, March 10. Outnumbered, American “Green Beret” troopers and Montagnard tribesmen were today fighting hand-to-hand with a large force of Viet Gong, United Press International reported.

The guerrillas overran the Allied outpost on the Laotian border and inflicted heavy casualties.

An American radio operator in the American Special Forces Camp was reported to be calling down air strikes on his own position.

The camp was out of radio contact with Allied command posts for more than four hours, and at first it was feared resistance had been wiped out in an all-out guerrilla assault.

Later radio information indicated that the remaining defenders were still holding a large portion of the camp against overwhelming odds and fighting hand to hand amid flaming debris. Scores of American planes were reported striking at guerrilla positions at midday today to help the besieged defenders.

A full regiment of Viet Cong—anything up to about 2000 men—have been engaged in a bitter two-day siege of the As Hau camp, a mile or so inside the ill-defined Viet-nam-Laos border, according to a South Vietnam military spokesman in Saigon. Latest radio reports from the camp this morning said

many of its 400 defenders—irregular militia and Government troops led by a dozen Americans—had been killed or wounded. At one point overnight a radio operator signalled urgently the camp was partly overrun and he appeared to be the only survivor.

But at dawn the garrison still held out. Aircraft were sent in on bombing and strafing runs against the attacking guerrillas, but bad weather, with low cloud rolling down from surrounding mountain peaks, hampered any attempt at strong air support.

Dramatic staccato radio messages filtering into Da Nang and Saigon throughout the night built up a vivid picture of the defenders’ plight. At midnight, the operator reported all quiet. Three hours later he said they could hear the Viet Cong digging in only a hundred yards or so from the camp perimeter, in readiness for a mass attack. The assault came within the hour and the radio operator quickly reported <ne wall of the camp breached, the defenders “badly cut up,” and everything in sight destroyed or burning. At 4.25 a.m. he said he thought he was the only man left alive, but he stuck to his post to guide in aircraft firing rockets at guerrilla positions. A little later he reported

fresh hand-to-hand fighting inside the camp perimeter. As Hau, some 375 miles north-west of Saigon, is one of several camps strategically sited along the Laotian frontier only a few miles east of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Guerrilla ground fire brought down one of the attacking planes today. The pilot of the United States Air Force Skyraider made an emergency landing on the camp’s air strip. In what was described as one of the most spectacular rescues since World War 11, his wingman landed right behind him in a hail of guerrilla fire.

As the camp defenders cheered, the pilot leaped from his plane, dashed to his wingman’s plane, and vaulted into the cockpit. The rescue plane took off safely.