So, the beginning of the offensive towards the Cambodian border has begun. About 10 miles ahead, you can hear the shots of the mortars they’re firing at the North Vietnamese Army and the ALLIED VIET CONG. THEIR SHELLS WERE BEING AIMED LESS THAN 2 miles away, right into the middle of the North Vietnamese emplacements.
The communists began firing back at the tanks and armored personnel carriers 100 yards up the road. Okay, good copy. Uh we’re uh deployed out right now and uh awaiting uh further instructions. The dead have not been counted. No one has yet gone forward to bring the bodies back to base, but over 50 men have been wounded and soldiers carried them back as best they could.
The explosions hastened one decision. Can I ask you how seriously
you’re taking this offensive and coming this offensive here? Why are they killing them all? Is it a major offensive in this area? Oh, yes, major offensive. Yes, they fifth division and the ninth division. How many men involved against you? Well, we had to begin with we had the fifth division, that’s three regiments.
And those regiments about 1,500 each. We had three regiments of the fifth division at Lock Ninh. And uh then the 9th Division uh decided they uh they wanted to take uh the province headquarters at An Loc. In military terms, is it just a diversionary move to keep troops down in the south while they maintain their attacking the north? Well, I don’t know.
You gentlemen been in business a long time. I always thought Saigon was the target. It’s evident that when the communists first planned this offensive, they didn’t expect so many South Vietnamese to be massed against them so quickly. They came into the country this far south as a gesture to show they can still come and go as they choose and
destroy what they like when they decide to. But unless the North Vietnamese move out of those towns ahead within the next 24 hours, they may well find that the road back to their Cambodian base is now closed. It seems for the first time in this war that the South Vietnamese are now calling the tune.
And the military commanders here are seeing this just not as a counteroffensive, but as a time to see for the first time, one way or the other, whether the South Vietnamese, without the aid of the Americans on the ground, can compete with the North Vietnamese on their own terms. Michael Nicholson, News at 10, South Vietnam.
So the beginning of the offensive
towards the Cambodian border has begun. About 10 miles ahead, you can hear the shots of the mortars they’re firing on the North Vietnamese Army and the allied Viet Cong. All night they were mortaring this artillery base here, which is about 4 miles the other side of Quang Dang. It stopped.
Fighter planes have been bombing the area. A helicopter came over a minute ago to report that the area seemed to be cleared of Viet Cong and NBA. In a few minutes time, these armored personnel carriers and the tanks and infantry following will move ahead up this road towards An Loc, a town which has been now under siege by the communists for the past 6 days.
Once they’ve taken An Loc, the road the other side has been cut off. The communists who came themselves to ambush the South Vietnamese Army will themselves be ambushed. The road back to their Cambodian Cambodian base has been finally cut off. What was happening last night here? Last night at this particular spot there wasn’t anything going on.
Uh I served as a relay for two uh two positions. Fifth Battalion again was having contact all night long. What’s the What’s the purpose you think of keeping you here? I mean they’re about what, 5 mi ahead of you? What’s the point of holding you down here? There can’t be many left up there. Well, uh the purpose of holding us down I guess is to uh delay us as long as possible.
Is it to bring more people in? I don’t think it’s for them to bring more people in. I think it’s to uh cover moving out. Within the next 24 hours we should know
whether this counteroffensive has worked, whether the South Vietnamese have been successful in taking An Loc, and whether they’ve been successful in pushing the North Vietnamese ahead of them. Michael Nicholson, News at 10 on Highway 13, South Vietnam. Thursday the 13th, and until this morning things looked fine.
All day yesterday the South Vietnamese have been moving steadily forward up Highway 13 towards the besieged capital of An Loc. Still more troops moving up from the south, offloading, and then fanning into the bush each side of the road. As they moved up, new artillery positions were established immediately behind them.
Their shells were being aimed less than 2 miles away, right into the middle of the North Vietnamese emplacements. But at midday, the communists began firing back at the tanks and armored personnel carriers 100 yards up the road. For 2 hours the tanks kept their ground, sometimes moving in the grass to confuse the men inside the forest who were aiming B-40 rockets at them.
On the other side of the road, one of the tanks took a direct hit and caught fire immediately. But the crossfire was too fierce for anyone to move across the open space to try and help the two men trapped inside. A half an hour later, when there was a lull in the fighting, it was completely destroyed.
In 3 hours of fighting, the South Vietnamese lost four tanks and towed back to base another four, their tracks blown away by the B-40 rockets. Casualties were high today. The dead have not been counted. No one has yet gone forward to bring the bodies back to base. But over 50 men have been wounded and soldiers carried them back as best they could.
On the back of one of the damaged tanks they brought back to base was a captured North Vietnamese soldier, badly wounded in the face and arms. His unit, he said, had been badly hit. Their supply line had been cut. They had no food or water and very little ammunition left. In the strange way of the war, he was flown out on the same medical evacuation helicopter that came to pick up the South Vietnamese dead and wounded.
All were flown back to the emergency field hospital at Lai Khe, south down Highway 13. As the fighting stopped for a while, more troops moved across the bush into the forest to flank the tanks left back on the road. The brigade major moves into positions looking away and slightly behind. A favorite communist tactic is to move around behind the army during these lulls.
And as always, behind the South Vietnamese field commander, an American officer listens indiscreetly, advising when he thinks necessary. Michael Nicholson, ITN, on Highway 13, South Vietnam. All right, I got you Lima Charlie. Are you on your way up now? Okay, good copy. We’re deployed out right now and waiting
further instructions. Good copy. The North Vietnamese up the road seem determined to stay here. Despite the fact that he’d cited them on this Route 13 are two divisions of South Vietnamese troops. We thought yesterday morning according to the optimistic reports of American advisers here that by this evening we would be in An Loc, the provincial capital 15 mi up the road.
But we’re still here and there’s no immediate no immediate prospect of moving much further forward. Michael Nicholson, News at 10, Highway 13, South Vietnam. What is happening here?
Over the past few days makes it the most crucial war zone throughout South Vietnam. The rapid advance made by the South Vietnamese on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday has been abruptly halted by a battalion of North Vietnamese troops about a mile and mile and a half up the road. The South Vietnamese despite the heavy artillery they’ve been using, despite their tanks and despite the support from the air, have no prospect of moving any further forward while these North Vietnamese remain where they are. We sit in a ditch on Highway 13 with the infantry waiting for the next move to be made. Michael Nicholson, News at 10, South Vietnam. Despite the irregular movement of troops and ammunition up and down Highway 13 in
the past few days, we have been told by the South Vietnamese commanders and by the American military advisers that the situation is now stable. We take that to mean that Saigon is no longer threatened by an imminent communist invasion and that the army chiefs of staff are no longer anxious about decisions they’ve made to relieve the siege of An Loc.
How many NVA do you think are up there at the moment? Well, we think there’s still elements of two regiments around An Loc itself. And how how soon do you think it will be before we can start moving forward towards that capital? Uh who’s we? Well, the uh the South Vietnamese. They’re they’re moving towards that capital right now with a whole brigade.
Now if you’re talking about up Route 13, I can’t give you an answer on that. It’s going to be a little while. The enemy has got forces south of An Loc uh on along Highway 13. 21st Division’s out there fighting them and uh fighting them and mixing it up with them. All this weekend paratroopers have been standing by to be airlifted out of the base at Lai Khe, 25 miles north of Saigon, to An Loc and its perimeter.
Because of intensive communist AK fire along the route, many helicopters have had to turn back and these troops have had to sit and wait on the edge of the helicopter pad waiting for the okay. As they sat or slept under the trees, medical evacuation helicopters returned from the fighting and the men who were waiting to go to war watched as the dead returned from it.
That afternoon, four Viet Cong rockets hit one of the ammunition dumps on the base and for more than six hours, hundreds of tons of high explosive cut off one half of the base from the other. The explosions hastened one decision that the paratroopers waiting to go to An Loc should leave at once and in one afternoon, more than 1,500 men were airlifted into the fighting areas around the provincial capital.
We flew in one helicopter over An Loc and because of the AK fire, we kept above 2,000 feet. But even from that height, we could see the smoke rising from the houses which had been damaged either by South Vietnamese dive bombers or by ground fighting. As we flew over the town, a South Vietnamese spotter plane was photographing the day’s damage and over the northern part of it, a Cobra helicopter and a Skyraider dive bomber began their first runs before they began their attacks on communist held positions. Despite some reports, there has been no retreat by the South Vietnamese along Highway 13. But for the past few days, there has been a lull in the fighting along this road and the soldiers took full advantage of it. The communists have moved no further south this past week and the road through to Saigon is effectively closed to them.
Much depends on it staying that way. Michael Nicholson, News at Ten, South Vietnam. In this one cemetery alone in Saigon, more than 65 coffins were awaiting burial on the morning we filmed there. The South Vietnamese casualties in this war are much, much higher than the American casualties of 1968 and 69.
Higher because they are fighting a less sophisticated war without the all-embracing air cover the American troops demanded. The defense of Highway 13, probably the most famous road in South Vietnam now, has taken many lives. A small but crucial highway, it is the one that brings supplies from the docks in Saigon to the troops up front.
It is the one the communists would have to control if they were to try and take Saigon. Locally recruited militia, called popular forces, are stationed in and around villages which border the road, protecting, we are told, the people from attack or intimidation by the Viet Cong. Because so many of the young men are now in the army, the recruits are usually old men or young girls.
They are given a week’s training in firearms, a black uniform, and then they’re on their own. The South Vietnamese attempts to clear Highway 13 are often indiscriminate. Their artillery destroyed part of a village just south of the base at Lai Khe. It was a mistake. Their map coordinates were wrong.
But eight people died, including a family of five, and 20 more people were injured. In the past few days, a handful of communist snipers have been successful in keeping Highway 13 closed more often than it’s opened. This queue of lorries, cars, and coaches have been waiting to get through to Chon Ton for the past 30 hours.
Further on, about another 2 miles, we were caught in a sniper ambush, despite being part of a convoy on its way with supplies to Chon Ton. We watched as the local commander called IN ARTILLERY FIRE. AND AFTER THAT, IT CLEARED SOME OF the forest, he called in Phantom jets piloted by Americans, who began low-level bombing runs dropping napalm.
Then the infantry went into the forest to count the VC dead. They found none. Somehow they had escaped it all and had retreated deeper into the jungle without waiting too long for these South Vietnamese troops to make contact on any scale. But the South Vietnamese again took casualties, hit by an enemy they seldom ever see in an area supposedly under South Vietnamese control.
Maybe tonight or maybe tomorrow morning, that same communist company will attack again somewhere up or down this Highway 13. Michael Nicholson, News at 10, South Vietnam. These South Vietnamese soldiers, wounded higher up on Highway 14, and this mother and her children have been brought into Kontum by an American transport helicopter to wait for another lift going further south to Pleiku, or maybe Saigon if they’re lucky.
But these people in the refugee camps in Kontum can expect to stay huddled in the corner of a playing field until the war in these Central Highlands is decided one way or the other. The very worst that can happen to them is that Kontum will become another An Loc with both sides battling over who shall control it.
And there’s no reason to doubt that if that happens, Kontum will suffer like An Loc. Thousands of dead and wounded, and the town completely destroyed. On the roads leading out of Kontum, many of the townspeople have already begun their trek southwards towards Pleiku. It’s 40 miles, and some will make it, but delayed by air strikes, landmines, and Viet Cong snipers.
But like the mother with her children in the helicopter, they reckon they have no choice. Daily, Kontum looks more and more deserted. Cattle left by their owners stop and eat whatever food they can find. And the only regular customers at the few stalls left in the marketplace are the soldiers. Tanks guard all entrances to the town, but the North Vietnamese also have tanks, and we’ve seen that in the past few weeks they can use them to more effect.
The communists are going for the center of South Vietnam, and Kontum is its waist. Let them take this province, and the country will effectively be cut into two. Communist strategy seems to be that if they can effectively cut the north from the south, they can saturate the Central Highlands with troops at the moment waiting on the Cambodian border.
If they can do that, then they can in their own time start moving up and down South Vietnam. More than one observer has said in the last few days that this present communist offensive can be won or lost in the Central Highlands, which makes the battle for Kontum very crucial indeed.
Michael Nicholson, ITN, Kontum, South Vietnam. Two days ago this road to Quang Tri was open. Yesterday it could be used with caution, but today the communists have blown a bridge 3 miles on. There are snipers all along the route, and it is closed to everyone except the refugees. South Vietnamese convoys with supplies
for troops cut off in Quang Tri wait by the side of the road a safe distance from the snipers. Vehicles began moving forward, but they didn’t move far. Already some of the lorries have turned back to way. The soldiers follow carrying with them the wounded who’ve been hit by the first snipers earlier this morning.
The wounded are evacuated whenever a suitable vehicle passes. Sometimes it’s a bus or an oxcart or an ammunition truck. Sometimes the wounded just die waiting. A small unit of Rangers is left behind. A few stay on the bridge where the road crosses the river at Quang Tri. Though it’s more likely that if the bridge is blown up it’ll be by the South Vietnamese trying to stop communist tanks from crossing.
Already South Vietnamese tanks have been brought back from the hills to the road as the first line of defense. Which in all the fights in the past few weeks they have shown themselves not to be. On the road behind them I spoke to the American advisor in the area Major Robin Sheridan. Basically what’s happened here as far as we can tell from our small area here is that um when the refugees were moving south is the time that the NBA decided they would throw their 130 guns on the um on the highway and just about 1,000 m north of us they were just blowing away the women and kids um all day um They’ve moved very close to uh QL-1 with their um probably company sized units which have temporarily I would say closed US-1 until we can get enough assets in there to clear them out. We’ve been running air strikes um
all day and uh firing the naval guns in there um but we’ve got to get the road open to Quang Tri. That’s basically what we’re supposed to be doing. So Quang Tri is effectively under a state of siege now? I would think so. I would think so. uh Right now, if you can’t get into it, I would say so.
We can still get the helicopters in there, but um Uh by road, no. The surest sign that the communists are spreading their forces out across the countryside is to see the sprawl of refugees leaving it. They are not all from Quang Tri. They’ve moved out of their villages on each side of Highway 1 as the communist units have moved in.
They all want to get to Hue, and they fight each other for a place on any transport going there. And they fight with soldiers who thrown away their helmets and rifles and who are trying to smuggle themselves away from the fighting. If they’re caught, they know they’ll be shot. But today, that didn’t seem to worry them as they ran for the lorries.
No one here can remember such a flood of refugees south since the last communist offensive during Tet in 1968. The alarming thing is that thousands of South Vietnamese troops have joined them. Alarming because only a few small firebases are now left between the approaching communist forces and the city of Hue, which is the last line of defense.
The South Vietnamese have brought up their few remaining tanks and their armored personnel carriers. By radio, they are controlled by a South Vietnamese major 800 yd back. With him was an American advisor who was coordinating air attacks and fire from American destroyers who were off the coast 6 mi away. On the right of us, the road from Quang Tri was littered with what was left of a South Vietnamese convoy.
Lorries were still smoldering, ambulances with the dead still inside them, wrecked by B-40 rockets. So, the story is being repeated up here in the north, except that for Highway 13, we read now Highway 1, and except for An Loc, we now read Quang Tri. The South Vietnamese, despite their overwhelming power in the air, despite their artillery and strength on the ground, are now retreating back towards Hue, which is what the communists are after.
Michael Nicholson, News at 10, on the road to Quang Tri, South Vietnam.
