The worst atrocity yet committed in the Viet
Nam war began its course last week when a
handful of Viet Cong crawled up to the wall-and-wire perimeter of the
hamlet of Dak Son, some 75 miles north east of Saigon. The V.C. called
for the hamlet's inhabitants to surrender and come out. When they got
no takers, they withdrew, hurling behind them their ultimate epithet:
“Sons of Americans!” Earlier in the day, villagers had reported to
their 140-man defense force that some Viet Cong were roaming through
the surrounding fields. But that was hardly unusual, or cause for any
particular alarm. The Viet Cong had steadily harassed Dak Son, and four
times this year had mounted an attack and tried to overrun it; each
time they had been stopped short of the defense perimeter and thrown
back. The reason for the Communists' in tense interest in Dak Son, a hamlet of
2,000 Montagnard people, was that it was the new home and sanctuary of
some 800 Montagnard refugees who 14 months ago fled from life under the
Viet Cong in the surrounding countryside, where they had been forced to
work in virtual slavery as farmers and porters. The Montagnards are the
innocents of Viet Nam: primitive, peaceful, sedentary hill tribesmen.
The women go bare-breasted and the men, who scratch out a living by
farming and hunting with crossbows and knives, wear loincloths. The
Viet Cong not only missed the services of those Montagnards who had
fled to government protection, but also feared that their lead might be
followed by the 20,000 other Montagnards in the province of Phuoc Long,
many of whom are still serfs of the V.C. Lest the others should get the
idea of seeking government protection, the Communists decided to make
an example of the refugees of Dak Son. Yelling & Screaming. As in most Vietnamese villages, the people of Dak
Son were completely unarmed, and most of them were women and chil dren.
The Viet Cong began their attack at midnight, pouring machine-gun,
mortar and rocket fire into Dak Son as they had in the past. This
attack, however, was to be very different from the others. The 600 Viet
Cong who assembled outside Dak Son were armed with 60 flamethrowers.
Yelling and screaming, they attacked the town, shooting countless
streams of liquid fire that lit up the night and terrified by its very
sight a people who had only recently discovered the use of matches. The Viet Cong first broke through the perimeter opposite the refugee
quarter and forced the outmanned militia force to retreat aross the
road into the town proper. There the militiamen were surrounded and
isolated—and for the rest of the macabre night pointedly ignored by
the marauders. The Viet Cong were not intent on a military victory but
on the coldblooded, monumental massacre of the helpless Montagnards.
