PARACELS BATTLE 14 survivors found after 10 days

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33447, 31 January 1974, Page 17

PARACELS BATTLE 14 survivors found after 10 days

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SAIGON, January 30.

Fourteen South Vietnamese Navy men, more survivors of the South China Sea battle with the Chinese, were rescued yesterday by compatriot fishermen after 10 days adrift in rubber rafts, and are now in hospital.

The 14, who carried the body of one of their comrades with them, were picked up more than 30 miles off the South Vietnamese coastal city of Qui Nhon, about 200 miles from the scene of the battle for the Paracel Islands on January 19-20.

The rescued men had been on one of the three islands in the Paracel archipelago which were overrun by a Chinese amphibious force. On January 22, a Dutch merchant ship rescued 23 other South Vietnamese sailors, whose patrol boat had been sunk in the battle, but two of these died from their wounds shortly afterwards.

Revised casualty figures after the latest rescue are: 19 South Vietnamese killed; 43 wounded; and 101 missing.

The official Chinese news agency, Hsinhua, has reported that its forces captured 48 South Vietnamese, or roughly half of those now listed as missing. The captives will be released in batches, the first being freed tomorrow at the Hong Kong border. Hsinhua says that an American who is ill, and five sick and wounded South Vietnamese troops, will be released in the first batch. The United States State Department says that the American, Mr Gerald Emil Kosh, aged 27, a civilian, was acting as an observer when captured on the Island of Pattie.

Huynh Minh Trinh, of the Associated Press, records from Da Nang (through the N.Z.P.A.) an interview with one of the survivors rescued on January 22. “There was no rain, the sun was very hot, and our stomachs swelled up,” he quotes Lieutenant Ngo Hoa

as saying. “On the fourth day, we ran out of water, but then we saw the ship, and we were saved.” Lieutenant Hoa was describing how he and 22 fellow-sailors drifted for 79 hours after their patrol boat had been sunk.

“The battle began at 10.25 a.m. and lasted about an hour,” he said. “During the first few minutes our ship took a direct hit on the command bridge, and the captain was killed instantly. His second-in-command was also hit, and fell from the bridge on to the deck. A few minutes later, the next-in-command gave the order to abandon ship.

“We all volunteered to stay aboard the ship, but we were ordered to leave. The remainder of the crew were killed or wounded.

“The Chinese ship came within 20 yards of our rafts, and I thought that I was going to be a prisoner of war of those people. I waved at the crewmen aboard the Chinese ship, and they waved back, but made no attempt to rescue me, and my crew. “For the next four days our liferaft drifted about in the South China Sea. Three men died, and we threw the bodies overboard.

“We had only a little water, and we shared it

carefully. We had no food, but together we managed to catch fish, and we also caught a crab.

"We were eventually rescued by the Dutch tanker Kopinella about 175 miles from the South Vietnamese coast, and were later transferred to a South Vietnamese patrol boat which brought us to Da Nang.”