Monday, April 24, 1972
Not Much Left To Defend In War-Shattered An Loc
LAI KHE, Vietnam (UPI) --From a military standpoint, defense of An Loc may have reached the point of diminishing returns.More than half of the provincial capital 60 miles north of Saigon lies in ruins.No one knows how many North and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians lie dead and wounded in the rubble.Despite the tremendous cost in blood, South Vietnam is determined to deny An Loc to the Communists.That is so because, from a political standpoint, the defense of An Loc still is important to the Allies, who claim they have documentary proof the Communist are determined to make An Loc their capital in the south.The town will not make much of a capital -provincial, provisional or any other kind -for either side for a long time to come.When I flew over it Friday for three and a half hours in a U.S. Air Force spotter plane, the northern half of An Loc already had been leveled. The southern half is under the same heavy fire and bombardment which has battered the town for 17 days.An Loc is well on its way to being destroyed in the interest of saving it from the Communists.It is reasonable to assume that the terrified civilians still cowering in and around what is left of An Loc are less interested in politics than survival.No one knows how many, if any, can survive the siege, but the day after it began only a few of them were trying to get out.Photographer Jeff Taylor and I spent the day of April 7 in An Loc. The heavy shelling had started the previous day and the adjacent Quan Loi military base had been abandoned.Jeff and I saw two American helicopter crews brave enemy fire to rescue a couple of dozen frightened women and children who wanted to get out then. But it was obvious most of the people in An Loc hoped to wait out the shelling in their homes. It appears they made a tragic mistake.At Lai Khe, 30 miles south of An Loc on Highway 13, there are very few refugees coming down from the north. That is understandable. Between Lai Khe and Chon Thanh, a district town 10 miles north of here, the 21st South Vietnamese Division, used to fighting only guerrillas, now is fighting the 7th North Vietnamese Div.A relatively small number of civilians have risked their lives to escape southward along the highway.Originally, the mission of the 21st Div. was to push up Highway 13 and relieve pressure on An Loc. The mission was changed when it was discovered that the 21st, which was hastily dispatched here from the delta, had all it could contend with just fighting the 7th Div. between here and Chon Thanh.A week ago Chon Thanh was a sleepy little town that turned out to welcome the advancing South Vietnamese soldiers. But now, the South Vietnamese push north has stalled at the town. Most shops in Chon Thanh are shuttered and people are moving south.The perimeter of the Lai Khe base, the last big one before the big military complexes at Bien Hoa and Long Binh on the outskirts of Saigon, appears to be lightly defended.A few bunkers are manned, a few soldiers peer out over the flat terrain from some old wooden watch towers, erected when this former rubber plantation was the usually undisputed turf of the U.S. 1st Inf. Div. (the Big Red One).When Loc Ninh, a district town 15 miles north of An Loc, fell early this month to the North Vietnamese, American advisers were confident the South Vietnamese could hold An Loc.And so they have, in manner of speaking.Maj. Gen. James F. Hollingsworth, the tough-talking U.S. adviser in the provinces surrounding Saigon, virtually claimed victory in An Loc several days ago.He said the North Vietnamese were trying to escape back to Cambodia and he intended to "kill as many as I can."He compared the enemy to "mice in a haystack," an analogy which seemed simplistic to some observers who thought the tough North Vietnamese looked more like tigers than mice.When the civilian dead and wounded are some day tolled at An Loc, it should prove once and for all that in this dreary war the people who stand to gain the least were among those who paid the most."Not Much Left to Defend In War-Shattered An Loc", by Leon Daniel, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Monday, April 24, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.