The Vietnam War, This Week, The Morning News, Danville PA
Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages
8 August 1965 – 14 August 1965
The Morning News, Danville PA
“Charges the conscience of the world.”
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On Monday US jet bombers carried out round-the-clock bombardment of Communist North Vietnam, striking army barracks, storage areas, gun emplacements, and transportation facilities throughout the country. The air attacks followed a weekend of death-dealing raids on Communist positions in the south and north. The raids on the north Sunday were directed against ammunition dumps and army barracks.
In the south, Viet Cong guerrillas struck within six miles of Saigon, pouring automatic gunfire on the Tu Duc outpost east of the city. But the clash resulted in no reported casualties to either side. The Viet Cong continued the series of harassing attacks against government outposts in the Mekong Delta area for the fourth successive night. The rebels directed mortar fire on the town of Duc Long Sunday night, a US military spokesman said.
A massive, armored column of South Vietnamese troops, backed by bombing and strafing US planes, inched on Tuesday toward the besieged American Special Forces camp at Duc Co against “light but steady” communist resistance. A military spokesman said at least 219 Viet Cong guerrillas had been killed and six others captured thus far in the drive to break the Communist siege of the camp west of Pleiku in the central Highlands. There were 13 American advisers at the camp, five miles from the Cambodian border and the last government foothold in the Le Thanh district. The camp was the sole obstacle to complete Communist domination of strategic Highway 19. The next day, Viet Cong forces had sliced into the massive column. The development came as an emergency airlift brought a steady stream of American paratroopers to Pleiku, just 35 miles east of the camp where a showdown battle with the Viet Cong was in the making. The Viet Cong force was under continuous attack by Skyraiders and jet bombers. Despite the split in the three-mile-long relief column, the government forces had moved to within 3-1/2 miles of the camp.
On Thursday Vietnamese forces backed by armor and planes killed an estimated 256 Viet Cong in heavy fighting amid the rice paddies and canals near an American base in the Mekong Delta 90 miles southwest of Saigon. The battle raged Thursday about 15 miles southwest of Can Tho, a base for American aid and military operations in the delta. It marked an abrupt change in ground action after weeks of comparative calm in the region. In the central highlands, meantime, American paratroopers and infantry fanned out around Pleiku, posing their greatest challenge yet to the Communists to come out and fight. The Viet Cong avoided direct contact but made their presence known Thursday night by lobbing ten 81mm mortar shells into the US Special Forces camp at Duc Co. There were no casualties.
Late in the week a US Navy A4 Skyhawk plunged to earth 50 miles south southwest of Hanoi and returning pilots said it was a victim of a surface-to-air missile. No parachute was sighted, and the pilot was presumed dead. If the returning pilots’ report was confirmed it would mark a previously undisclosed site of the deadly SAM missiles supplied by Russia to Communist North Vietnam. The downed Skyhawk was one of four on a search and destroy mission from the US carrier Midway. Just previously, the Skyhawks had damaged a truck on a road 130 miles south of Hanoi with 2.7 inch rockets without incurring any anti-aircraft fire.
On Monday night President Johnson’s top diplomatic and military advisors dangled a tentative peace offer before the Communists in the Vietnam war. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said the United States was ready to “consider” ending its bombing of Communist North Vietnam if the Hanoi regime gave “some indication” that this would lead toward peace. At the same time, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said that if the Communists reduced their military effort in Vietnam the United States would decrease its activities “accordingly.” But he also reaffirmed US determination to resist Red aggression and said Americans were prepared to fight for 20 years if necessary to protect South Vietnam.
The Defense Department said 551 American servicemen had died in action in Vietnam since January 1961. Five had been killed the past week.
Eight of the ten living Nobel Peace Prize winners issued a joint appeal for an immediate political settlement and cease-fire in Vietnam. The war “charges the conscience of the world,” they said.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Danville Morning News)