By CHARLES BLACK
Ledger-Enquirer Staff Writer
Catecka tea plantation with
its geometrical files of tea bushes, shaded lanes and general air of
civilization and detachment from the war has one corner completely
dedicated to
the conflict.
Lt. Col. Harlow Clark, First
Brigade Commander, had been running field operations for more than 21
days when
I saw him and he was still full of energy.
I found that he was out in
his command helicopter “tearing the tops off of trees” and as close as
he could
get to the scene of the latest action over where Lt. Col. James Nix’s
second
Battalion (Airborne), Eighth Cavalry, was mopping up the remnants of a
battalion of North Vietnamese soldiers.
In front of the building
which he had taken over beside the airstrip to house his headquarters,
there
was a big, roped-off area filled with hundreds of captured weapons and
equipment. I found that there had been
a steady stream of VIP visitors to this headquarters, and if they
weren’t
impressed by the equipment which the paratroopers had captured, I
certainly
was.
In one small area there were
five big .50 calibre machine guns, four 75 mm. recoilless rifles, and
at least
100 light machine guns and other automatic and crew-served weapons,
including
82 mm. mortars and .37 mm. rocket launchers.
Many of them bore the scars of bullets, attesting to the method
by which
they had come into American possession.
Capt. Ronald Summers, the
assistant intelligence officer for the brigade, showed me a tally of
what the
brigade had accomplished thus far in its relentless pursuit of the
101st and
66th PAVN regiments, who had attacked Plei Me Special Forces camp and
set all
of the past events into action.
The paratrooper battalions
had killed 216 by body count with an estimated 610 other Communist
soldiers
listed as dead. They had captured 117
prisoners, including two North Vietnamese officers.
They estimated the PAVN regiments had 780 wounded.
Some more figures came from
the First Squadron, Ninth Cavalry’s fight on the Tae River where there
were 57
PAVN’s captured (including 35 wounded) and 78 bodies counted with 57
more
estimated as being killed and 59 more
wounded. The ambush on Ia Drang River
by the Cavalrymen had killed 147 PAVNs and the defense at the patrol
base camp
during the night had killed 78 more.
The loss of equipment by the
Communists was crippling and the weapons captured ranged from pistols
to 12.7
mm. machine guns (four of these).
Capt. Summers told me that
the First Brigade’s operation from Oct. 26 until Nov. 9 had captured
more North
Vietnamese prisoners than any previous operation in this war’s history
and that
“the PAVN morale is low, very low.”
The prisoners were kept for
initial questioning in an area across the road from brigade
headquarters and I
heard that there were six who had just been brought in.
I walked over there with Capt. Summers.
The prisoners were huddled
in ponchos - it had started raining - and there were two concertina
wire
circles. One man squatted by himself,
watching the constant stream of helicopters landing and taking off with
intent
interest. Five others were together in
the other enclosure, two of them eating cans of C-rations.
“That one is a
lieutenant. He flagged down a
helicopter and came in with two of these others. He
said that he had become discouraged, that he was hungry, and
that he did not know he had come to South Viet Nam to kill Vietnamese. He is a Communist, however, and he doesn’t
like Americans. But everything we’ve
asked him he has talked about,” Capt. Summers said.
One of the guards, Sgt.
Ralph Robertson, waved to me and indicated a smiling little Vietnamese
sitting
near the gate.
“This one here is a
character. We figured that these
Communists wouldn’t sing for anything.
Listen to this,” he said.
He waved to the little North
Vietnamese private and said, “Jingle Bells!”
The boy - he looked 17 or
less - smiled happily and sang a very minor key version of “Jingle
Bells.” He then patted his stomach and
told the
interpreter something.
“He says he is too full to
sing very well now, that he has just eaten and doesn’t sing well then,
but that
he will sing you a Vietnamese song if you don’t mind,” Sgt. Van Thanh,
the
interpreter, told us.
He sang a quavering and
oddly beautiful melody then and despite the strangeness of the words
and the
tune, we listened and nobody talked until he had finished.
“It is a very sad song. It
is a song about a young man who has gone
very far from his home and never expects to see his family again. I think he is very said that he came here
and is singing about that,” Sgt. Van Thanh said.
A little later the prisoners
were put on trucks and sent to Pleiku where the Vietnamese army took
them
over. The lieutenant and the young
singer and another officer later were interviewed by newsmen and told
how they
had walked through Laos and Cambodia to come to South Viet Nam.
The journey had taken them
57 days and one of every four of their comrades had been stricken by
malaria or
other illness. They were hungry and
weary when they reached South Viet Nam.
They met a force which they had expected to overcome easily but
which
defeated them.
“Ambushes on the trails, bombs, helicopters shooting, artillery shells, that little black gun (M-16 rifle) are too much. The bombs and the helicopters and the artillery and that little black gun are too much to fight,” one said.
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