Saturday, April 29, 1972
ROK Casualties Higher?
SAIGON (AP) --South Korean forces suffered more than twice as many killed and wounded as official reports show in the 16-day battle to reopen the An Khe Pass in South Vietnam"s central highlands, informed sources said Thursday.The sources said the Koreans had 110 killed and 384 wounded in the fighting, their heaviest casualties in any single battle since the Tet offensive of 1968.Most of them were incurred as the Korean infantry tried to drive North Vietnamese troops from fortified positions on the top and slopes of Hill 638, which dominates the pass traversed by Highway 19. The hill was blackened by air strikes using napalm during the fighting.The fighting recalled the bitter, controversial 10-day battle of "Hamburger Hill" in May, 1969, when U.S. paratroopers repeatedly assaulted a 3,000-foot mountain in efforts to dislodge entrenched opposition.The Koreans officially listed their casualties in the Hill 638 fighting as 51 killed and 115 wounded. They claimed 705 North Vietnamese slain.The pass on the vital supply route from the coast to the central highlands was officially opened Thursday afternoon but too late in the day for any traffic to move through safely.Despite claims by U.S. and South Korean officials Wednesday night and again Thursday that the pass was open, nothing had moved through it yet except tanks.Korean engineers spent most of Thursday building bypasses around ruined culverts, filling in bomb craters and moving some vehicles destroyed in an ambush two weeks ago off the roadway."ROK Casualties Higher?" by (AP) published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Saturday, April 29, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.