World: Night of Death

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The Communist attack opened suddenly with a fiery burst of 60-and 81-mm. mortar fire that jolted the residents of Thanh My and two nearby hamlets out of their sleep at 1:30 a.m. one night last week. Many of the shells were white-phosphorous ones that set fire to the flimsy huts.

The Communists, apparently a mixed force of North Vietnamese sappers and Viet Cong guerrillas, skillfully pinned down one platoon of U.S. Marines and one of the Popular Forces that were on night ambush duty near by. A Regional Forces platoon was trapped inside its compound near the village's only military target, a bridge across the Ba Ren River. After pounding the three hamlets with some 200 mortar rounds, enemy troops slipped into Thanh My. By then, many of the residents, trying to escape the mortar explosions, had taken refuge in bunkers. They soon became graves.

The Communist troops moved through Thanh My hurling various sorts of explosives—grenades, satchel charges and homemade devices called "Chicom grenades," which are fashioned from Coca-Cola cans filled with plastique or TNT, rocks and nails. Explosives dumped into one large bunker killed 24 persons. "When the V.C. came, they shot every house," says Hoan Than Tick, 56, a resident who escaped. "When people ran, they shot them too. Then they threw grenades into the bunkers."

All the hamlets were heavily damaged, and Thanh My was virtually destroyed. At least 114 inhabitants died in the raid in the worst Communist massacre since the deathly days of the 1968 Tet attacks. The survivors wandered dazedly through the smoldering ruins of their homes. One old dwarf carried two severed hands wrapped in paper—all that he could find of his twelve-year-old son, who was in one of the bunkers. Even as the people of Thanh My mourned their dead, the women of a village controlled by the Viet Cong only a few miles away showed up to carry off the 16 Communists killed during the attack. Neither group of mourners disturbed the other.

Thanh My, located 18 miles south of Danang, had been considered one of the safer points in 1 Corps' Quang Nam province. The Communists apparently had no objective in mind other than to break that reputation by killing as many of Thanh My's men, women and children as they could in one night of terror.