Monday, May 1, 1972
An Loc: A Battlefield In Hell
(The information from which the following story was written was obtained from a freelance reporter who went into An Loc by helicopter. The helicopter he came out on was shot down. He was rescued, uninjured. He agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his identity not be revealed.)An Loc, Vietnam (UPI) --The lead helicopter dove for the landing pad at the south end of town, still held by South Vietnamese Forces but under intense Communist fire.Just before the chopper was hit by antiaircraft fire, the pilots and eight tense South Vietnamese infantrymen spotted about 200 soldiers, many of them wounded, crowding the edge of the pad.Standing, and on bended knees, they clasped their hands in front of them, begging the pilot to land and carry them out of An Loc.To call An Loc "the battered provincial capital, 60 miles north of Saigon" is the understatement of the war. To its besieged defenders, holding the city on direct orders from President Nguyen Van Thieu, it is quite simply hell.The Communists control all of the northern half of the town -or what remains after the hundreds of air strikes -part of the southern half and most of the surrounding rubber plantation.South Vietnamese troops control two small military compounds and the ground they stand on -a few rolling hills overlooking An Loc.Both sides claim their flag flies over An Loc and both are right.Since April 7, the South Vietnamese have held their tiny plot of ground on An Loc's southern edge against tank, human wave and shelling assaults.The troops have been unable to get out. Reinforcements are landed miles away and sometimes fight their way through to the town to take the places of the hundreds of dead and wounded among the original defenders.Helicopters Saturday made the first try in two weeks at taking troops into An Loc. Even the 96 soldiers they carried would be welcomed by the defenders.The wounded and the shell-shocked prayed the helicopters would come in so they could be carried away.One helicopter was hit, perhaps by antiaircraft fire, perhaps by one of dozens of snipers in trees around the helicopter pad. It dropped heavily but the crash caused no casualties.A score of South Vietnamese troops rushed for covering gunship choppers as they swept in to pick up the downed crewmen and a reporter who was with them.They grabbed the skids, grappled at the smooth body, trying to get out of the battlefield.The seriously wounded clasped their hands to their chest, praying and begging for another helicopter.The prayers went unanswered. Two other helicopters, hit by ground fire, quickly dropped off their load of infantrymen and took off without stopping.Five other pilots decided they would not risk the ground fire. They just turned in midair and headed back to base, the would-be reinforcements still on board, the wounded and malingerers left on the ground."An Loc: A Battlefield in Hell", by (UPI), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Monday, May 1, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.