The U.S. Marines in Vietnam — now officially designated the III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF) instead of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade — are quickly settling into their three enclaves: Đà Nẵng, Phú Bài, and most recently, Chu Lai. Inevitably, there will be disputes among American military commanders about chains of command and operational concepts. One of the most pervasive disputes revolves around the Marines’ concept of enclave-defense and pacification as the best long-term strategy, as opposed to the offensive “search-and-destroy” strategy that Westmoreland prefers. The Marines pursue their pacification strategy in the three provinces of I Corps within their area of responsibility; for the next two years, they will expend considerable energy in civic action and village welfare work.
One such initiative will be the Combined Action Program (CAP) that is begun at the Phú Bài enclave and then taken up at Đà Nẵng: a specially trained Marine rifle squad joins a Popular Forces (militia) platoon to provide continuous security from the Việt Cộng in a rural area. A variation on this was a MEDCAP patrol, which provided immediate medical assistance to villagers. U.S. Marines not only spent government funds to aid the villages, but some of their own money as well. In the end, this pacification strategy failed, partly because the ARVN and other representatives of the South Vietnamese government failed to provide consistent support.
Vietnamese troops, exploring a Kiến Hòa Province swamp that the Việt Cộng had held for two years, have come across crates of some of the most advanced weapons in South Vietnam. The large cache, discovered yesterday after a well-staged government action, has yielded flamethrowers never before found in the country, large-gauge rockets and 70-mm. howitzer shells.
Except for 240 American Springfield rifles, the bulk of the equipment appeared to have been manufactured by the Chinese Communists. But members of a delegation from the International Control Commission, inspecting the cache today, said they had found no markings on any of the equipment except a swastika on one gun. Some ammunition had Chinese characters.
The weapons had been hidden in thatch-roofed huts built so low that thick jungle foliage obscured them from view from the air. Troops of the Vietnamese Seventh Division have found about 20 of the huts so far. Military officers from Saigon said the Việt Cộng cache was the largest ever uncovered as a result of a battle. Bigger depots, such as the one at Vũng Rô Bay, had been located through intelligence reports. The flamethrowers were simple, lightweight tank devices built for the slender physique of Asian soldiers. American officers said large North Vietnamese cargo ships probably had dropped anchor off the coast of the swamp area, 60 miles south of Saigon, and that sampans then apparently carried the crates through narrow canals to the hut area.
One of the 3.5-inch rockets was marked with Chinese lettering and with the date of August, 1963. The presence of new kinds of equipment, however, indicated to some American advisers that many of the arms in the cache had been brought in recently for use by regular North Vietnamese soldiers. A senior American adviser, Colonel Robert A. Guenthner, found a heavy and unfamiliar shell. “It’s much bigger than a 37-mm,” he said. “It would be armor piercing.” Later, at the South Vietnamese command post at An Hiệp, the shell was tentatively identified as the explosive for a Japanese howitzer, model 92, which, was first manufactured in 1932 and termed “battalion gun.” The Chinese Communists have for years copied the model, which has a maximum range of more than 2,500 yards.
American officers who came from Saigon to inspect the cache said they believed it might have been the biggest Việt Cộng supply depot in the Mekong Delta. One widely held theory among the military is that the new and more advanced weapons were brought in for one phase of a three-pronged Việt Cộng offensive in mid-May. The drives are expected in the delta around Saigon and in central Vietnam.
The South Vietnamese Government said today that 152 Việt Cộng insurgents were killed during the swamp action, including 52 at the site of the weapons cache. Thirty-five guerrillas were captured and 42 Communist suspects rounded up, the government said. South Vietnamese casualties were given as three killed and 11 wounded. Most of the Việt Cộng killed apparently were victims of air strikes by helicopters and fighter-bombers. About 60 guerrillas were hit by machine-gun fire from United States helicopters as they tried to swim. across a small river.
The danger of guerrilla attacks on the United States air base near Đà Nẵng, 375 miles northeast of Saigon, led to an order today placing the city of Đà Nẵng off limits to American marines and other servicemen stationed in and around the base. United States and Vietnamese security officials ordered Americans to keep out of the city of 150,000 inhabitants this weekend for fear that Việt Cộng agents might decide to mark May Day with a terrorist incident.
North Vietnam has put its people on an extended work schedule to compensate for production losses resulting from United States air strikes, according to the North Vietnamese press.
Poland’s Władysław Gomułka bitterly accused the United States in a May Day speech today of having “become the policeman of colonialism” through its policies in Vietnam.
The eight-nation Southeast Asia Treaty Organization meets in ministerial conference in London Monday confronted with the increasingly dangerous Vietnam conflict.
Cambodia said today that three conditions must be fulfilled before she agreed to an international conference to guarantee her neutrality and internal security. She listed the following:
- The conference must be of a sort convened in Geneva in 1954 to end the Indochinese war and not like the 1962 conference on Laos.
- The “pretended government” in Saigon, South Vietnam, must not attend.
- The questions of Vietnam and Laos must not be taken up.
A Government statement announcing the conditions did not elaborate on the first point. The 1962 Laos conference set up a coalition Government, among neutralist, rightist and leftist factions in that country, which like Cambodia and North and South Vietnam, is a former part of French Indochina, The parley also guaranteed Laotian independence. Fourteen nations participated.
In the Dominican Republic, United States troops pushed across the Ozama River bridge into a rebel-held downtown area today as all sides were reported striving to put a cease-fire agreement into effect. Three jeeploads of troops from the United States 82d Airborne Division ran into an ambush after having penetrated several blocks into the rebel stronghold. One soldier was unofficially reported to have been killed, and perhaps five were wounded by heavy sniper fire. Some shooting was also heard near the United States Embassy as sporadic fighting continued despite the cease-fire arranged yesterday by Msgr. Emanuele Clarizio, the Papal Nuncio, with the assistance of United States diplomats.
President Johnson announced tonight that two more battalions of airborne troops and additional marines had been sent to the Dominican Republic. The reinforcements are believed to comprise about 2,000 men, bringing to 6,200 the total number of United States troops in the battle-torn country. Earlier, the O.A.S. voted to send a five-man peace committee to the Dominican Republic. Through the day, a rebel radio kept calling for observance of the cease-fire agreement and for all insurgents to respect the International Safety Zone set up by United States Marines in western Santo Domingo as a haven for refugees. The radio instructed rebels not to shoot at Americans even if fired on themselves.
José A. Mora, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, arrived early in the day and conferred with the Dominican military junta, which claims control of the country outside downtown Santo Domingo. Mr. Mora said he would also seek to meet Colonel Francisco Caamano Deno, the rebel military leader. According to United States Embassy officials, the colonel added his signature to the truce agreement this morning. The accord was signed yesterday afternoon for the rebels by the colonel’s brother, Fausto, and by Hector Emilio Conde, a former army lieutenant. It was signed for the counterrevolutionary forces by the three junta members, headed by Colonel Pedro B. Benoit, and by Brigadier General Elias Wessin y Wessin, their military commander.
In the predawn hours, rebel snipers succeeded in penetrating the main United States compound at the Embajador Hotel. The officially announced American casualty figures in action yesterday and today were two marines killed and at least 12 wounded. But it was understood that the actual toll might be six Marine dead in addition to the one soldier reported killed in the airborne troops advance into the rebel-held downtown area. A statement by the military junta called for help from “the free peoples of the Hemisphere” to save the country from becoming “another satellite of Moscow.”
Rebel representatives at a downtown headquarters insisted, however, their only aim was to restore constitutional government. A correspondent who toured the downtown zone said the rebels denied Communist domination and denied charges of indiscriminate executions being leveled by junta representatives. In streets off a park, hundreds of rebel civilians, soldiers and sailors carried rifles and submachine guns, and some manned a tank.
Generally the city appeared quiet. From a helicopter, one bushy cloud of smoke appeared wisping from a warehouse near the Ozama River. The success of the snipers in penetrating the marine defenses around the compound at the hotel, where helicopters are landed, led this morning to an emergency decision to evacuate Marines wounded from there either to the carrier USS Boxer or to the San Isidro Air Force Base in territory controlled by the military junta across the Ozama River.
Since early this morning, marine units were being flown to the hotel area from the San Isidro base, where they were reported to have arrived last night from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The United States had a total of 4,200 marines and airborne troops in Santo Domingo. But military officers acknowledged that this force was not sufficient to secure the International Zone and to assist the junta troops in holding the Duarte Bridge across the Ozama River at the eastern end of town. It was apparent — and the rebel truce representatives have acknowledged it — that the military leaders in the rebel camp do not control the regulars and guerrillas who rampaged throughout the city.
Premier Fidel Castro denounced United States action in the Dominican Republic as “one of the most criminal and shameful events of this century” in a May Day speech late tonight.
The U.N. Security Council will meet Monday at the request of the Soviet Union to consider the “interference by the United States in the domestic affairs of the Dominican Republic.”
The Dominican crisis re-emphasizes that President Johnson has little hesitancy about making use of U.S. military power.
The Battle of Dong-Yin took place between Taiwan and Mainland China. A Republic of China Navy destroyer was patrolling the Taiwan Strait near Dongyin Island on its side of the border, when it encountered eight gunboats from the Navy of the People’s Republic of China, and two sides exchanged fire as the PRC combatants attempted to encircle the ROC ship. Four of the gunboats were sunk, and two others damaged, while the destroyer returned to Taiwan with minimal damage. The news, announced from Taipei by the ROC Navy, “did not identify the Nationalist ship further.”
Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri reiterated today that the entire Rann of Cutch belonged to India and said that Pakistani forces would have to evacuate ” the whole of that territory.”
Pakistan’s President Mohammad Ayub Khan said today that if India resorted to what he called further aggression, It would mean “general and total war.” In a nationwide broadcast, Marshal Ayub charged India with violation of a previous understanding that the status quo would be maintained in the Rann of Cutch. He expressed surprise over India’s stand that the Rann, or wasteland, was not disputed territory. The President said Pakistan was prepared to join in talks to settle the dispute, not out of any sense of fear but because it was common sense and good for both India and Pakistan. Noting that Pakistan had been accused of “naked aggression” by India, the President said that if the Pakistanis had wanted to take such action, “we would have chosen a better area than the mudflats of the Rann of Cutch.”
About 20 sticks of dynamite exploded early today at the United States Consulate in Montreal, the scene of many recent anti-United States demonstrations. No one was injured.
President Gamal Abdel Nasser warned his people tonight to be prepared for the end of American Economic aid and implied that Washington had tried to attach unspecified strings to a new aid agreement.
The veneer of Arab unity is disintegrating because of bitter quarrels among members of the United Arab Republic and domestic conflicts, stalling a planned showdown against Israel.
Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s Government is conceding defeat after months of earnest effort to establish a workable political partnership with France. Senior officials here have appraised the behavior of President de Gaule and his government this week as the pursuit of narrow national aims largely at Germany’s expense. Even optimists in Bonn do not see how this can be squared with the purposes of the 1963 FrenchWest German treaty of cooperation. Bonn’s attitude is officially described as “deep disillusion.” Chancellor Erhard is understood to have reluctantly concluded that France will tolerate no meaningful progress toward European political union.
Argentine President Arturo U. Illia opened a new session of Congress today with a firm warning to the Perónist movement. He said the Perónists would risk losing their recently gained legal status unless they joined in a democratic opposition and avoided any violent obstruction of the government’s plans to improve the critical, economic situation. The warning was contained in a message read by Dr. Illia before a joint session of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, outlining the foreign and domestic policies planned for the second year of his moderate People’s Radical Party Government.
A new international effort to channel private investment funds into joint Greek and Turkish projects is being led by U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits.
The USSR launches Luna 5; it later impacts on Moon.
The Senate Commerce Committee is considering a bill requiring states using daylight saving time to make shifts on the same dates.
Alabama’s attorney general, a man who has a reputation of being as stubborn as the state’s fiery governor, has decided to go it alone in an all-out investigation of the Ku Klux Klan.
Nightriders fire-bombed two Black homes, a “freedom house” and a store in Indianola, Mississippi, in retaliation for voter registration activity, rights workers charged. The homes were destroyed.
A 17-year-old Black civil rights worker was stabbed and at least five other persons, four of them white, were injured this afternoon as about 50 persons tested accommodations at four restaurants and a drugstore in Somerville, Tennessee.
Nine Black students suspended from Alabama State University after demonstrations at the school last week have been reinstated under an agreement with school authorities.
The Mississippi River broke through a levee near Quincy, Illinois, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, but the breakthrough eased the flood threat for Quincy and nearby Hannibal, Missouri.
President Johnson has appointed 226 to federal office since November, 1963, with the result that his administration team is taking shape as a stable operating force.
Sargent Shriver, director of President Johnson’s antipoverty program, asserted today that the record showed its administrators were not getting excessive salaries.
Associate Justice Tom C. Clark of the Supreme Court of the United States called tonight for “a stupendous national effort to improve the administration of justice.”
A resolution of intent to participate in the formation of a national anti-Communist party was unanimously adopted by the Congress of Conservatives today at the final session of its three-day meeting in Chicago.
James Reston, associate editor of The New York Times, said today that Americans should become accustomed to “calculated limited wars” in the years to come.
Two new world records for flight speed were set by a Lockheed YF-12A jet interceptor on the same day by two different crews. On one flight, the crew broke the 2,000 mph barrier, flying at 2,070.102 miles per hour (Mach 3.27) and shattering the previous speed record of 1,665.8 miles per hour that had been set on July 7, 1962, by a Soviet Ye-166. The YF-12A also broke the record for a closed course flight (from one point to another and then back again) averaging 2,715.5 miles (4,370.2 km) per hour by flying 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) in 22 minutes, and breaking the record set by the Soviets in the Ye-166 the previous month. A new record was also set for highest sustained altitude, as the YF-12A flew for several minutes at 80,258 feet.
Liverpool won the FA Cup in extra time, beating Leeds United 2–1 before a crowd of 100,000 at Wembley Stadium. Neither side had been able to score in the 90 minutes of regulation time; three minutes into the extra time, Liverpool’s Roger Hunt headed the ball in after a cross from Gerry Byrne (who had broken his collarbone early in the match); Billy Bremner equalised the score to 1–1 ten minutes later. After 113 minutes of play, Ian St John headed in the game-winner on a pass from Ian Callaghan for Liverpool’s first FA cup ever.
91st Kentucky Derby: Bill Shoemaker wins aboard Lucky Debonair, the third of his 4 Derby victories. Lucky Debonair won by a neck today at Louisville, Kentucky. Dapper Dan was second, Tom Rolfe third and Native Charger fourth. Lucky Debonair, ridden by Willie Shoemaker and trained by Frank Catrone, covered the 1 ¼ miles in 2:01 ⅕ and paid $10.60 for $2 to win.
The Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in the seventh and deciding game of the National Hockey League best-of-seven series, beating the Chicago Black Hawks, 4–0. All seven of the series games were won by the home team; only 14 seconds after the final started, Jean Béliveau scored the first goal, and before the first 20 minutes were completed, three more were added.
Major League Baseball:
Dodgers leftfielder Tommy Davis suffers a fractured ankle sliding into 2nd base in a 4–2 win over the visiting Giants. Davis will not reappear until October 3rd.
The Cincinnati Reds bang out 16 hits off five Mets pitchers and win, 9–2. The game was tied until the Reds exploded for five runs in the fourth. Vada Pinson has three hits, one of them a three-run homer, and four rbis.
Felipe Alou drove in two runs with a pair of singles and Lee Maye cracked a homer today in leading the Milwaukee Braves to a 6–1 victory over Philadelphia Phils.
Phil Gagliano singled across Bill White in the seventh inning, giving the St. Louis Cardinals a 3–2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates today.
After a 6-4 victory in first game of the Astrodome twin bill, Dave Giusti and the Astros beat the Cubs again in the nightcap of a day-night doubleheader, 6-1, to extend the first-place team’s winning streak to double digits. The ten consecutive victories will remain a club record until 1999.
In a 9–8 loss at Detroit, Boston’s Chuck Schilling ties a Major League record with his 2nd straight pinch-hit home run in back-to-back games. But Boston loses both.
Two-run homers by Chuck Hinton and Rocky Colavito paced the Cleveland Indians to a 7–-2 victory over the Washington Senators today.
Don Buford, who had hit a homer earlier in the game, raced home on Cesar Tovar’s error in the eighth inning today to give the Chicago White Sox a 2–1 victory over the Minnesota Twins. Joe Horlen pitched a six-hitter for the White Sox.
An aging Whitey Ford strikes out nine and throws a complete game as the Yankees beat the Orioles, 9–4. Tony Kubek homers for New York.
Minnesota Twins 1, Chicago White Sox 2
New York Mets 2, Cincinnati Reds 9
Washington Senators 2, Cleveland Indians 7
Boston Red Sox 8, Detroit Tigers 9
Chicago Cubs 4, Houston Astros 6
Chicago Cubs 1, Houston Astros 6
California Angels 3, Kansas City Athletics 1
San Francisco Giants 2, Los Angeles Dodgers 4
Philadelphia Phillies 1, Milwaukee Braves 6
Baltimore Orioles 4, New York Yankees 9
Pittsburgh Pirates 2, St. Louis Cardinals 3
Died:
Spike Jones, 53, American comedian, musician, and bandleader; from emphysema.
History Diaries 