Battle of Binh Gia

U.S. intelligence indicates that the Viet Cong insurgency in the South is rapidly growing in numbers and military effectiveness. The insurgency boasts increasing Chinese and Soviet support, and many Viet Cong units have begun to replace their older and obsolete weapons with newer and more powerful versions, including Chinese-made AK-47s, large-caliber mortars, rockets, and recoilless rifles. With help and direction from Hanoi, the Viet Cong now plan to escalate their offensive actions against the South Vietnamese armed forces in the coming months, hoping to further demoralize South Vietnam’s troops and to destabilize and topple the regime in Saigon.

In the last months of 1964, Viet Cong attacks overwhelm numerous Strategic Hamlets and other small villages, forcing South Vietnamese troops to repeatedly counter them. South Vietnamese casualty rates climb from about 1,900 per month at the beginning of the year to 3,000 per month at the end.

On December 28, the insurgency launches its largest attack to date when two Viet Cong main-force regiments, joined by local militiamen, overrun the town of Binh Gia, approximately 40 miles southeast of Saigon, in the Mekong Delta. The attackers occupy Binh Gia, which has a population of approximately 6,000 people, most of whom are Catholic refugees who fled the Communist regime in the North a decade earlier.

Despite a numerical and technological disadvantage, the Viet Cong force holds Binh Gia for more than four days, repelling all South Vietnamese attempts to retake the town. The South Vietnamese military suffers heavy casualties, and 200 of them are killed, along with five American military advisers. The Viet Cong soldiers decimate a South Vietnamese ranger battalion as well as a battalion of marines before voluntarily abandoning Binh Gia on January 1, 1965.

The battle of Binh Gia is the costliest defeat yet for South Vietnam’s armed forces in their fight against the Viet Cong insurgency. The battle demonstrates the increasing military proficiency of the Viet Cong. Perhaps more significantly, it shows that South Vietnam’s military remains fatally weak, despite American resources and training, and that the Saigon government is unable to effectively defend the country, which seems dangerously near collapse.1