Cavalry Attacks On New Front; 3 Copters Lost
Lull Ends In Ground Fighting

By Edwin Q. White

August 10, 1967

SAIGON (AP) - Troopers of the U.S. First Air Cavalry Division battled entrenched North Vietnamese regulars Wednesday on a Communist stomping ground that officers said the Allies had never before penetrated, the Song Re Valley.

The action in the Song Re Valley, in the Duc Pho sector near the central coast 330 miles northeast of Saigon, and other scattered engagements ended another of the periodic lulls in the ground fighting.

FIRING EBBS
The valley shooting ebbed at nightfall and the cavalrymen were believed to have dug in to await daylight.

They had suffered nine killed and 24 wounded in what a division officer called "the heaviest resistance the air cavalry has met in many months."

Forty of the enemy were killed, but said only two bodies had been found on the battlefield. The North Vietnamese initially engaged, largely screened within their fortifications, were believed to total at least two companies - 250 or more men.

Heavy fire from an enemy strongpoint filled with bunkers and tunnels shot down three troop-carrying helicopters and badly damaged two others in the opening assault by a company of about 200 cavalrymen. Four Americans died in one downed helicopter.

The dawn action on the coast came in Binh Dinh Province about 175 miles above Saigon. A company of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division ran into 200 to 300 Communist troopers. After a sharp exchange the Communists split up and scattered in the brush and low hills of the rugged area-with the Americans pursuing and calling in artillery and helicopter gunships throughout the day. The initial reports listed 32 Communists killed and there were no American casualties.

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