The Vietnam War, This Week, The Standard-Speaker, Hazelton PA

Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages

 6 March 1966 – 12 March 1966

The Standard-Speaker, Hazelton PA 

Overrun.

*****

The US Marines on Monday brought their first year in Vietnam to a thunderous finish by joining with crack South Vietnamese troops to shatter a 2,000-man North Vietnamese regiment, in “Operation Utah.” Nearly 1,000 Communists were said to have fallen before the 6,000 Leathernecks, government paratroopers, and rangers in three days of blistering fighting, that the Marines called their roughest action – and best showing – of the war. But the victory was costly for the Allies Marine officers told correspondents at the battle scene along the central coast had the heaviest losses of any singe battle in Vietnam, although the overall Marine casualties were described as light. The toll came in the initial assault on Friday. The intelligence information that enabled the Allied force to trap the Red regiment was provided by two North Vietnamese soldiers captured at the beginning of the month.

The American air war against North Vietnam climbed to record intensity in the preceding 24 hours from Tuesday but also cost four US jets and the crews of three of them. Pilots reported they knocked out a fuel dump and a missile site. Air Force and Navy pilots flew several hundred sorties against targets in the Communist north, a peace-setting performance since the raids began 13 months ago. The total number of planes was not discussed, but there were 53 missions. With the skies clear, the Americans also attacked roads, railroad tracks, ferries, and bridges on a wide front ranging from the 17th parallel frontier to the coastal city of Vinh. Late in the week jungle cover and bad weather slowed down the air offensives against the Communists.

On Thursday North Vietnamese regulars overwhelmed an isolated Special Forces camp after a fierce, two-day fight put up by several hundred mountain tribesmen and their 15 to 20 US advisors. The commander of the US Special Forces detachment at Da Nang pronounced the doom of most of the garrison which was in the forested hills near the Laotian border. Casualties among both the Americans and Montagnard defenders were heavy. The next day US Marine helicopters flew under Communist guns to rescue 59 survivors of the fallen camp on the Laotian frontier. Five of those rescued in the daring flights were crewmen of two Marine choppers shot down Thursday during a dramatic evacuation of 69 wounded in the final hours of the 39-hour battle before North Vietnamese regiment overwhelmed the garrison.

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Hazelton Standard-Speaker)