Jan. 2, 1965 - A major defeat for the South Vietnamese Government’s forces became apparent today as fighting subsided in Binh Gia after six days. Helicopters streamed toward Saigon, loaded with Vietnamese and American dead and wounded. (Pictured below, Vietnamese and U.S. troops rest after a tense night awaiting a Viet Cong ambush near the village of Binh Gia.)
The bodies of three Americans and scores of Vietnamese servicemen were recovered in the rubber plantations and rice paddies after most of the Viet Cong forces had withdrawn from this Roman Catholic refugee town 40 miles southeast of Saigon.
Government casualties were expected to reach 100 dead, 200 wounded, and 100 missing.
Although the Viet Cong also suffered heavy casualties, the Government’s losses were described as disastrous because of enormous losses in equipment, including three U.S. helicopters, and because the guerrillas proved capable of striking at will in Government-held territory.
The hardest blow since Monday, when Communist guerrillas overran the village, occurred Thursday, when 200 Vietnamese marines moved to recover the bodies of four Americans shot down in a helicopter.
When they ran into an ambush, 400 more marines were rushed to their relief. They met the same ambush and were beaten furiously.
Lieut. Philip Brady, a marine from New York, said the 600-man Vietnamese marine battalion he accompanied had lost a third of its men in the Thursday ambush.
Today, marine reinforcements linked up with Vietnamese Ranger troops at the site and recovered three of the Americans’ bodies. The body of the fourth crewman was recovered earlier.
In casualty figures and in the sizes of the forces that clashed, this battle was among the biggest in four years of the war.
Preliminary estimates showed that besides the four Americans killed in the fighting, 11 were wounded. Three more are listed as missing and presumed captured. Two of the missing were identified as Sgt. Harold G. Bennet of Perryville, Ark., and Pvt. Charles E. Crafts of North Jay, Me.
The American casualties brought to 245 the number of Americans killed in action since the military support program began in 1961. According to U.S. records, 107 more died in noncombat incidents.
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