Trap of the Harvest Moon

The elusive enemy in Viet Nam rarely shows himself in force except to spring an ambush. So last week, in the largest joint Vietnamese-U.S. Marine operation of:the war, the allies purposefully set out to be ambushed--and thereby lure the Communist ambushers into a giant ambush of allied design. The prey: some 3,700 veteran Viet Cong troops who have been roaming at will up and down the province of Quang Tin between the coastal Marine enclaves at Danang and Chu Lai. The province, for more than a year a hardcore Communist stronghold beyond the reach of government troops, is a paddy-checkered producer of rice used to feed enemy troops. It is harvest time. And Viet Cong control of the region has made Route One--the natural north-south highway between Danang and Chu Lai--too hazardous for allied use.

"Operation Harvest Moon's" plan was simple enough. Vietnamese troops were to move deep into Quang Tin as bait. When the Viet Cong struck, waiting U.S. Marine units at Danang, Chu Lai and aboard the aircraft carrier two Juma would helilift in to the rescue, surround, and hopefully wipe out the Viet Cong attackers.

Narrowing Horseshoe. The first part of the plan worked, but at fearful cost. The initial force, a battalion of Vietnamese rangers, was barely 15 miles west of the district town of Tarn Ky when a regiment of V.C.s buried deep in bunkers and armed with .50-cal. ma chine guns and 81-mm mortars let loose at point-blank range. The battalion's two lead companies were virtually wiped out. The Marines dashed to positions south and west of the Viet Cong, while other South Vietnamese troops took up blocking positions. The enemy turned the flank of one Vietnamese infantry battalion and, coming up by surprise from behind, decimated the force. Meanwhile the Marines, working methodically through villages and scrub forest, tried to close the trap, while allied planes flew some 200 sorties and artillery pounded the Viet Cong. By week's end, some 6,500 allied troops, including three Marine and five Vietnamese battalions, had more than 3,000 Viet Cong squeezed into a nine-square-mile horseshoe.

Down in the Mekong Delta, South Vietnamese infantrymen flushed another hidden hard-core Viet Cong unit into fierce fighting scarcely 40 miles southwest of Saigon. The Communists blasted back with machine guns and 57-mm recoilless rifles. Saigon soon concluded that it had a veteran Viet Cong battalion at bay, ordered in the largest number of Vietnamese troops to be used in a single battle in the long war to try to encircle and crush the Reds.

Twelve-Hour Truce? While the fighting raged in the south, the U.S. mulled over a Viet Cong offer, broadcast over the enemy's clandestine radio, of a twelve-hour truce starting Christmas Eve. It might well be a trap: last year the Communists used a Christmas lull to take more strategic positions and to blow up a U.S. billet in downtown Saigon, killing two and wounding 107.

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