N.Z. troops clash with guerrillas

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32425, 12 October 1970, Page 2

N.Z. troops clash with guerrillas

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.AJ NUI DAT, October 10. After several weeks of calm, Australian and New Zealand troops have been plunged back into the war.

On Thursday a battle began when Charlie Company of the 2nd Anzac Battalion came across an encampment of guerrillas. The guerrillas, remnants of the once-powerful Cau Due unit, could not avbid the troops, and three times in the next seven hours and a half sections of Charlie Company fought groups of Cau Due. At the peak of the fighting, a Charlie Company platoon battled a group of up to 30 guerrillas firing rocketpropelled grenades. But casualties on both sides were light.

When the guerrillas fled for safety they left behind two dead, and as they ran they became targets for Australian helicopter gunships, which reported killing four.

The Cau Due, who once roamed freely through the north and west of Phuoc Tuy Province, have been hit hard in the last two months. They have lost more than 40 men in clashes with Australians

and New Zealanders, and are thought to have only about 50 fighting men left. Yesterday a reconnaissance plane saw eight to 10 guerrillas in the Nui Dinh hills, four miles west of Nui Dat and known to be the unit’s base camp area. New Zealanders of Victor Company, one of the two New Zealand companies attached to Australia’s 2nd Battalion, were quickly flown to a spot about half a mile from where the guerrillas

were seen. One guerrilla surrendered under the Chieu Hio “open arms” amnesty as the New Zealanders began

their sweep along a junglecovered ridge. But late last night it appeared that the other guerrillas had fled. This is the recent pattern of the war here. Enemy groups, apparently short of supplies and low in morale, are concentrating on survival and on keeping away from the Anzacs, and are fighting only when they cannot flee.