The biggest battle that occurred during the latter part of March took place neither along Highways 1 or 19 nor in the lowlands but in a remote valley 60 kilometers north of Kontum City, where the North Vietnamese were establishing a base along the Laotian border. Information from a defector led to a search-and-destroy operation. On 26 March 1965, the 21st Ranger Battalion ran into a heavily fortified force on a hill west of Highway 

14, 10 kilometers south of Dak Sut. Twice, 1st Lt. Vo Vang led his company up the hill to attack a machine-gun nest that was holding up the entire battalion, only to be rebuffed. He succeeded on the third try. “It took real courage to charge that gun three times,” commented one adviser. “It was Vang’s leadership that did the trick.”37 Unfortunately, Vang’s bravery could not prevent the 101st PAVN Regiment from surrounding the rangers. Two battalions of the 42d Infantry were just 700 meters away, but difficult terrain and stiff resistance stopped them from reaching the embattled force. Lack of a suitable landing zone prevented helicopter extraction, and one U.S. Army helicopter crashed in the attempt. Dense jungle canopy likewise hindered fire support from aircraft and artillery. After the enemy had surrounded them for two days, the rangers, who by now were out of ammunition and water, escaped at night by crawling 37. “Gun KO’d . . . Vietnam Officer Wouldn’t Say Die,” Pacific Stars & Stripes, 12 Mar 1965, 20.

single file through the jungle for several hours. Because one of the advisers was injured so severely as to make it impossible for him to keep pace, the other seven Americans from the advisory team and the downed helicopter escorted him at the back of the column. When the enemy detected the exfiltration, the eight Americans took evasive measures and became separated from the rangers. Fortunately, two U.S. helicopters rescued them on 31 March. The battle cost the South Vietnamese twenty-four dead, forty-seven wounded, seven missing, eighteen firearms, and one mortar. Two Americans incurred wounds. The enemy lost eighty-two dead and three weapons. Far more important than the casualties lost or the bravery exhibited by the rangers was the fact that MACV now had the evidence it needed to confirm the presence of a major North Vietnamese Army unit in South Vietnam. The 101st PAVN Regiment was not an ad hoc collection of North Vietnamese “volunteers.” It was a full-fledged organic element of the North Vietnamese Army. America’s leadership now had no choice but to face the fact that North Vietnam, in accordance with decisions made a year earlier, had significantly altered the nature of the war.38 By the end of March, the immediate threat of the enemy splitting South Vietnam had passed, but the price had been high. In addition to the casualties suffered, the Winter Spring Offensive had forced Co to divert troops from pacification. He had reduced the number of regulars assigned to province chiefs from eighteen battalions in January to ten in February and to zero in March. The move weakened the already hard-pressed pacification effort. In March, for example, guerrillas had incinerated a community of 300 homes in Phu Bon. In Quang Duc, the revolutionaries had burned bridges to isolate areas, then used threats to compel 1,600 Montagnards to abandon their hamlets and return to the jungle. In Darlac, 5,000 people had fled land-development centers, and the lack of security led the 23d Division to ban all pacification work more than 5 kilometers from a main road. In Binh Tuy, another 7,000 people had poured into towns as the Communists spread their control over the countryside. Because government troops largely confined themselves to protecting the towns, USOM’s province adviser appealed for the deployment of “foreign troops” to garrison urban centers, thus allowing the South Vietnamese to take to the field.39 Military Region 5’s claim that it had captured 1,000 hamlets during the Winter Spring Offensive probably was exaggerated, but few doubted that the government had lost territory and that security in many areas had degraded seriously. In Lam Dong, the number of pacified hamlets had fallen from forty-three in January to twenty-nine by the end of March. In northern Kontum, where advisers had felt that the province was “quite clearly winning the ‘hearts and minds’ battle among the Montagnards,” the appearance of major North Vietnamese units had undermined the effort. The best advisers could hope for was that the people would follow the troops as Co withdrew some of them from the region. That many civilians did indeed vote with their feet and flee to government areas was gratifying, but it created severe socioeconomic dislocation. By the end of March 1965, the government admitted the presence of more than 90,000 refugees in II Corps and continued to be hard-pressed to deal with them. 

No fewer than 70,000 refugees were in Binh Dinh, where the allies believed the enemy maintained 3,600 regulars and 3,000 guerrillas.40 As dire as the situation seemed in northern II Corps, not everything went the insurgents’ way. They had not been able to keep either the western highlands or I Corps isolated from the rest of the country, nor had everyone given up. During the last week of March, the insurgents had killed twenty-five people who had refused their orders to leave their hamlet in the An Lao Valley. Elsewhere, Popular Forces soldiers successfully repulsed sixteen of the enemy’s twenty-two attacks on hamlets. Determined to renew pacification, General Co ordered his subordinates to draft revised plans that considered the current realities.41 Some advisers questioned Co and Sang’s focus on Highway 1. They noted that it was easier for the Front to sabotage the road than for the government to keep it open, and that by concentrating troops on the highway they had facilitated the enemy’s takeover of the countryside, including the An Lao and Vinh Thanh valleys. “Route 1 by itself doesn’t mean a damn thing,” said one adviser. “If they just stick to that, they’re right back where the French were. They have to get out into the villages where the people are.” Likewise, another adviser criticized government tactics, stating that “it is meaningless for troops to move out, make contact with the Viet Cong, take a casualty or two, and then call for an air strike, which may kill some Communists along with other people but surely will settle nothing in these crucial rural areas.” MACV, however, agreed with the government that political, economic, and logistical factors warranted keeping the major roads open to as much civil and military traffic as possible.42 Regardless of shortcomings in South Vietnamese military actions, advisers recognized that the infusion of North Vietnamese regulars and new weaponry, such as fully automatic rifles and potent antitank weapons, had altered the situation in II Corps. The morale of South Vietnamese soldiers dropped noticeably. Army Chief of Staff Harold Johnson, who visited II Corps in March, found General Co “very distraught” by the fact that enemy soldiers armed with AK–47s were outgunning his units. Johnson sympathized, adding that “they just didn’t have the ability to absorb that shock of initial contact.” Unless the allies could bring additional manpower and f irepower to bear, II Corps’ prospects appeared uncertain. If Military Region 5 grossly exaggerated its claims to have killed 15,250 South Vietnamese and 750 American soldiers during the Winter-Spring Offensive, the Communists were closer to the truth when they asserted that the offensive had driven “the American imperialist ‘special warfare’ strategy to the brink of defeat.” Over the previous six months, enemy forces had repeatedly demonstrated how they could overcome an admittedly shallow system