The Vietnam War, This Week, The Press, Pittsburgh PA

Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages

 18 December 1966 – 24 December 1966

The Press, Pittsburgh PA

A Christmas truce is swiftly violated.

*****

Bloody jungle fighting erupted in the Central Highlands on Sunday as US Air Cavalrymen jockeyed to trap and destroy an estimated Communist battalion desperately trying to escape. The Communists were trying to flee soldiers of the First Division moving in on three sides towards the South China Sea coast. A multi-company force of cavalrymen suffered moderate casualties in fighting the previous day, 285 miles northeast of Saigon. The death toll for the Communists climbed to 46 on Sunday and was expected to go higher as the cavalrymen squeezed in on the Red battalion – possibly between 400 and 600 men. The troops were supported by heavy airstrikes and artillery bombardments.

The impression was growing in Washington that the Johnson Administration was moving in Vietnam toward a version of the enclave theory it so wrongly ridiculed in 1965. The US troop buildup was slowing down, big battles with the enemy were becoming fewer, and the South Vietnamese were being told to take care of the guerrillas. The Communist main force, overwhelmed by superior US firepower and mobility, appeared to be breaking up into smaller units and moving underground. By the end of 1967 US commanders believed the Viet Cong will have been defeated or suppressed as a conventional army, incapable of fighting large-scale battles. But, in the opinion of many key military men, the Communist guerrilla structure, already deeply entrenched, may be bigger and stronger. However, the uprooting of the guerrillas in pacification of the countryside would not, under present ground rules, be the responsibility of US troops.

The United States asked UN Secretary-General U Thant on Monday to “take whatever steps are necessary” to start discussions on a lasting Vietnam cease-fire. Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg assured Thant that the United States “will cooperate fully with you in getting such discussions started promptly and bringing them to a successful conclusion.” Mr. Goldberg made the appeal to Thant after weekend consultations with President Johnson and Henry Cabot Lodge, US ambassador to Vietnam. Both the Allies and the North Vietnamese had agreed to two 48-hour truces, one at Christmas and the other at New Year. The Reds had rejected any idea of extending the brief truces through the holidays.

On Tuesday a mob of 7,000 persons protesting US policies in Vietnam heavily damaged the US consulate in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in a demonstration encouraged in advance by the official Yugoslav press. Similar demonstrations were called in the major cities of Yugoslavia but the most violent was in Zagreb. The mob, in a demonstration lasting nearly three hours, broke all the windows in the three-story consul building. Police and firemen stood by for the most part, but police finally intervened and dragged away several youths trying to break into the building. The demonstrators had a clear invitation for the event. The Zagreb daily Vjesnik said on its front page: “Come and demonstrate against the Americans.”

Midweek, U.S. Navy jets from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk intercepted two enemy aircraft menacing ships of the US Seventh Fleet off North Vietnam and apparently shot them down with air-to-air missiles. The nuclear-powered cruiser USS Long Beach, which served as flagship for the 7th Fleet, spotted two slow-moving aircraft on its radar last night and flashed an alert that sent two F-4B Phantom interceptors screaming into the air. The 1,200 mile-per-hour Phantoms also picked up the approaching planes on their radar and launched air-to-air missiles. The blips disappeared from a radar screen and a Navy spokesman said the intruding planes apparently were shot down.

The state department said on Thursday that it was almost certain that US bombs did not strike civilian areas of Hanoi during recent raids, but if they accidentally did “we regret it.” All available evidence, including talks with pilots of the planes involved, indicated the only targets hit “were military ones well outside the city proper,” the department said. “However, we cannot rule out completely the possibility of an accident,” the department said. “If, in fact, any of our ordinance caused civilian injury or damage, we regret it.” Meanwhile one-third of Hanoi 's population – including nearly all the children – had been evacuated, and North Vietnamese officials had placed the city on a war footing because of feared US air attacks, it was reported on Thursday. Initial reports from the Soviet news agency TASS, however, indicated the mass evacuation was carried out before last week's international controversy over alleged US bombings of Hanoi's residential areas. American officials repeatedly had denied the Communist charges. Hanoi 's population was estimated at 660,000. There had been several reports, mostly from Communist news agencies, that Hanoi residents, fearful of US air attacks on downtown Hanoi, had been moving to the less congested suburban areas in recent months.

A Communist battalion of 350 men launched two mortar and small arms attacks against a U.S. Marine unit near Hue on Thursday but was driven back in an hour-long battle fought in a monsoon downpour. The Marines, who called in artillery to blunt the Communist attacks, found the bodies of nine Communist troops, raising the total to 68 enemy dead in two days of fighting. US losses were reported light. While fighting flared on the 5th anniversary of the first American soldier killed in Vietnam, spokesmen also reported the loss of another plane over the north and a heavy sea bombardment of Red positions in the South. A Navy A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by ground fire over North Vietnam on Wednesday, and its pilot was listed as missing. At sea, four Seventh Fleet destroyers and a guided missile cruiser fired more than 650 shells at North Vietnamese camps and weapons positions along the northern coast of South Vietnam.

At the end of the week American troops were warned that the Communists may launch a major offensive just before the Christmas truce went into effect at 0700 Saturday. To forestall such an offensive, B-52 bombers were dispatched on one of their rare flights to North Vietnam to bomb suspected troop concentrations just north of the Demilitarized Zone. South of the zone U.S. Marines tracked down Red forces in a three-day operation that had killed 175 Communists. But soon after the truce took effect Communist troops attacked U.S. Marines with mortars and machine guns near Da Nang and heavy fighting was reported raging for hours after the truce began. Communists also attacked US First Air Cavalrymen in the Central Highlands. In isolated incidents, Viet Cong snipers opened fire on US helicopters flying reconnaissance missions to check reported truce violations, but no aircraft were reported shot. In most cases the helicopters returned the fire.

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Pittsburgh Press)