 Because of the following CBS News Special Report, the program normally seen at this time will not be presented today. We can't reach those big guns and they just keep dropping in. There's nothing you can do. This is like being a big bullseye on top of a hill and you just sit there waiting. You can't be safe. You can be lucky. That's it. You can't be safe. You can be lucky. That's it. You've got land in all over, bouncing off you. And you get just as scared every time. And it gets worse. The closer they get, the more they throw. The more you get scared. When you get up, one of the feelings is to be alive, to be able to walk around after one of those. If I live a hundred years, I'll just never ever be able to tell the story, the way it really happened. These young kids who just run up to them, and when we're all boxed in, they're all around and they're all over our perimeter and we're throwing grenades. And I got pretty close and just run up to one of these kids and say, Marine, we're going to get out of here, aren't we? And the kid look up to you and say, you're damn right we are a skipper. Those Marines are talking about a place named Con Tien, an obscure American outpost in Vietnam, as Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal were once obscure. Con Tien is a bitterly exposed target just two miles below the DMZ. American Marines have been under fire there since last May. In just the last four weeks, they have suffered over 70 dead, 1,000 wounded. In the next half hour, we shall examine the ordeal of Con Tien. This is a CBS News special report. The ordeal of Con Tien. This broadcast is brought to you by West... Here is CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace. Con Tien is here, two miles south of the demilitarized zone at the narrow top of South Vietnam, 12 miles inland from the South China Sea. It is a desolate hilltop collection of guns and bunkers looking north across the DMZ into North Vietnam. Its crucial importance lies in the fact that it's on a main infiltration route into the South. The loss of Con Tien could help open the way for the estimated 35,000 communist troops now massed in the DMZ area. Its loss would block the construction of that electronic barrier along the DMZ to seal off South Vietnam from the north. But more than that, its loss would give the North Vietnamese that one big elusive propaganda victory they've been searching for at such a cost in lives. They would prize a victory at Con Tien as a miniature replica of their victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Con Tien is vulnerable. It is the least defensible of any of the American outposts because it's so close to North Vietnamese territory. The enemy artillery, about 100 big guns plus mortars and rockets, can pound Con Tien around the clock with devastating effect. And our ground troops cannot go into North Vietnam to knock out those guns. For the Marines at Con Tien, this is what it's like. Chopper forward. Six eight zero one zero zero. Six eight. Let's get them on there. Over. Okay look, here are the two tanks. Do you see them? Yes sir. Do you see where that smoke is? Yes sir. The smoke landed about 300 meters right where that big tree is out there. 300 to 400 meters. Uh, southeast. What happened to your squad? Oh, they was hit, most of them were hit by a strap mill and it was metapay. Well tell me, you came here at full strength? I had 13 men when I came and it's four days later now and how many are still here? Six. I think we're just occupying ground and losing too many men. I'm losing too many men. If we were to stay here too much longer, we wouldn't have much left of this platoon, let alone the company. I see what about three, four people get it a day. Uh, not real bad, but enough to be medevac. Cut my platoon down. Well, isn't that all part of war, as the general would say? Sure it is, but for seven months up here, one battalion ain't gonna have much left if that's part of war. That'll rotate a little more, I think. Send us back where we can get new men and train them. See, we're getting new men out here. They coming out what you might call green and then they don't know really how to act. The rifles have been jamming, the mud's been slowed everything down, and the artillery comes in everywhere. And it just gets pretty futile and frustrating sometimes. The really depressing part about it is, like, there isn't really much you can do, you know what I mean? The rounds come in, you see your buddies get blown away and wounded and stuff like that. Well, I can't say that I'm scared stiff, but I'm scared. I mean, after a while, you know it's gonna come, and you can't do nothing about it. And you just look to God. It's about the only thing you can do. Will you get any idea from up around Cancun how the war is going? Yes. If we, uh, if we don't get some more people up in this area real quick, if we don't get some more B-52s real fast, then these people are gonna be all the way down to Da Nang before anybody knows it. Does everybody agree with that? 100%. What kind of support are the Marines getting? General Westmoreland says the Americans are responding with the greatest concentration of conventional fire power in history. The U.S. artillery fire is 10 times greater than the enemies. It comes from Dong Ha, Kam Lo, Jo Lin, the other outpost corners of what is called Leatherneck Square, and from these big guns at Camp Carroll. The batteries fire off as many as 10,000 shells daily, lobbing them over the heads of the Manit Contien deep into the demilitarized zone. And then there are the B-52 bombers striking from nearby Thailand. They pound the zone day in, day out with tons of explosives. With this saturation, why haven't the North Vietnamese positions been destroyed? Marine commanders say the enemy guns, most of them highly mobile, roll in and out of deep caves and tunnels. Only a direct hit can silence them. And there has been no silence at Contien. The story of how Contien came to be a miniature chorea began last May. The Marines there were in construction battalions clearing strips to help protect against attacks. The outpost was little more than a few trenches dug in a hilltop, still green and unscorched, manned by 300 South Vietnamese civilian irregulars advised by a handful of American special forces troops. A few bunkers looked more like temporary homes for the men who were there to operate the graders and earth movers. But they were some protection against occasional artillery attacks. Then things got rougher. On the morning of May the 9th, burning tanks and personnel carriers marked a battle that had begun at 2.30 a.m. and lasted until after daybreak. The hilltop was strewn with dead. 200, 200 of them, like this one. North Vietnamese regulars. The enemy had struck with a force of 1,200 men. Captured enemy weapons were gathered from all over the perimeter. The cost of the Americans in that first battle at Contien included 124 wounded. Of these 110 were Marines the rest special forces men. And there were our own dead, 44 Americans altogether, all of the Marines. The first to fall at Contien. For the next few months there was less action than preparation for action. The Marines had come to stay to take control of Contien from the South Vietnamese. The plan now was to establish a post on the hilltop that could be more easily defended. That meant more bunkers and well protected gun emplacements. The expectation then was for another ground assault. Enemy artillery was fairly inactive until July when it got busier. The Americans retaliated with airstrikes. For the rest of July and August the Marines at Contien used their own guns to good effect. The ammunition, an endless supply, came in daily. And it was used up daily. This was the end of a supply lifeline that began in Da Nang and arrived at Contien by way of Dong Ha. Six miles to the south. There were tents nearby to house a compliment that included about 1,000 men. No matter how you look at it those were better days. There was more time for things like the casual cleaning of weapons. But nothing at Contien has been casual since September came. For the first 25 days of this month Contien had to fight back against ground assaults and a sudden calculated escalation of enemy artillery. The most intense artillery barrage of the war. At times the shouts of incoming could be heard above the noise of our own guns. There has been a slight let up in the last few days. But Marines still must patrol the perimeter of Contien and for these men the danger is multiplied by the threat of ambush. The kind of war that's going on around Contien inspired one young Marine to put his feelings into a poem. When youth was a soldier and I fought across the sea we were young and cold hearts, a bloody savagery, born of indignation, children of our time, we were orphans of creation and dying in our prime. What made you write that poem? Well, just the way things are. The commanders in Vietnam, the men who must decide when ordeals must be born, look at the ordeal at Contien from a different vantage point. We talked with General William Westmoreland, Commander of American Ground Forces and Lieutenant General Robert Cushman, who commands the Marines there. There have been some questions from outside and in your own command structure all the way down to some privates I met on Contien about the defense of that outpost and some who perhaps aren't as confident as the general may be. Well, when you sit in a place such as that and a night comes on you really have to rely upon yourself and upon supporting fires and naturally the confidence may not be as great as it is back here where I can see the many forces that can be brought to bear and which those right on the spot may not be aware. I am confident that we can hold this area and we have been doing it furthermore from what reports we've had from prisoners and documents we've been hurting the enemy badly. They have attempted to make it appear that they are winning a military victory. Their target is American public opinion. They had hoped that by inflicting these casualties it being fully understood by them that the casualties inflicted upon their ranks were unknown to us that they would achieve their psychological victory and this is the only way they can conceivably win this war. Contien, then, you're saying is not really a military action but a political or psychological warfare. Precisely. Their objective is political and psychological. It is designed to weaken the will of the American people to make it appear in American and world opinion that they are stronger than they are in fact and to discourage our resolve. We asked two of our CBS News correspondents to begin under fire with the Marines at Contien for an assessment of the situation there. John Lawrence and Robert Chackney. We asked them first what are the Marines saying right now about Contien? Well, Mike, if the Marine happens to be an infantryman he feels that he'd rather be someplace else. I've heard a lot of Marines say that Contien is a very poor place to defend because the Marines can't move out on the ground with infantrymen and with tanks to attack the positions from which the North Vietnamese are firing their artillery. That's on the other side of the border. Now, if the Marines were to pull back 5 or 10 miles and the North Vietnamese were to follow them with their artillery then the Communists would no longer be invulnerable from a Marine counterattack on the ground. The Marine riflemen on Contien, or grunts as they call themselves would rather be anywhere out on an operation marching or back at their ears sleeping, anywhere but Contien. In their simple teenage philosophy they don't understand the significance of holding on to what you've got or as it's said in the Orient, saving face. The Pentagon gives orders to the generals and the generals give order to the colonels and so on and all the orders are obeyed. But the grunts don't seem to understand that they're holding Contien because of a Pentagon decision to win the war with a kind of modern Maginot line that hasn't been built yet. And what lies ahead for Contien in the coming weeks? There's not likely to be much change, Mike, as long as the monsoons last. The heavy range is supposed to start this month and they'll last two or three months and during that period it's unlikely that the Marines can reopen the roads. Marines say that they can resupply themselves for defensive purposes with helicopters but all that's very limited. The Marines won't be able to move out and enforce until the road dries out. Now whether the North Vietnamese are going to use this period to continue to shell the Marines or whether they'll try something more substantial is of course something that nobody on this side can answer. But during the monsoons, Contien is most isolated. Air power is most limited and the Marines will be most vulnerable. The big question really seems to be whether or not the North Vietnamese intend to overrun Contien. The Marines have tripled the number of troops guarding the outpost and they've moved up more battalions to be ready to reinforce. If the North Vietnamese decide to attack Contien they must know it will cost them between 5 and 10,000 casualties. They've only decided to do that once before in 1954 when they felt it would be the final victory and it was. But the United States could survive the loss of Contien, get more troop backs and retake it. So it would not seem to be in the best interest of the North Vietnamese to attack Contien in the near future. They'll probably continue to shell it and the Marines will continue to take it. Two years ago when the first of 500,000 Americans began settling into their enclaves here with the fresh Pentagon promises of a quick victory the generals were promoting the new military strategy of the air mobile offense. Now in the light of Contien the generals are explaining their successes with the words mobile defense. Mobile defense seems to mean putting 3,000 men on the ground and allowing them to sit in the mud and wait for the shell with their name on it. The military can no longer justify this war with a casualty count. It may be that more Marines are dying along the DMZ than enemy. Anyway, no one doubts general G.A.P's strategy of sacrificing 10 of his own for one American and few here believe our own exaggerated guesses at enemy casualties. The Marines have not run any operations into the DMZ since this summer because there are not enough regiments to be sure of victory. They stay fairly close to their bases to within a few hundred yards for most. It begins to sound like a conventional war with a conventional front and in a few years the Marines who have come down off Contien look as proudly as those who came back from the Choson Reservoir. What it all seems to mean is that American Marines have been committed to protect a key outpost along a cleared fortified barrier that was originally conceived in controversy and at present cannot be constructed. What seems to be overlooked is the ability of the North Vietnamese to escalate this war step-by-step with Washington. You begin to suspect that we've reached the limits of our present strategy when the generals are talking openly about an invasion of the North and the men around Contien are talking about the need for tactical nuclear weapons. There seems little doubt that it is the administration's resolve to stay at Contien. The president made that clear last Friday night in his speech to the nation. When he pointed to the Marines up at the DMZ as the real peacekeepers, Lyndon Johnson understands that a defeat or even a withdrawal now at Contien could be for him a political Dien Bien Phu. The president's dilemma is how to persuade the North Vietnamese to quit up there. Up to now, pure firepower hasn't done it and it seems unlikely that he would order American troops into North Vietnam to do the job. Moscow and P. King would be bound to react sharply to such an escalation. Meantime, for the Marines at Contien the months ahead look grimmer than ever. The fall monsoon rains have just begun. They will go on till February, hampering American air power, depriving the men on the ground of at least some of the air support they desperately need. The artillery duel at Contien will go on and on. This battle is different from any other action in the war in that there is no let-up. Day after unchanging day, as long as the North Vietnamese can resupply their troops and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements, there is little the Marines can do about it. Mike Wallace, CBS News, New York. CBS News film cameraman at Contien, Keith Kay, Gerard P., John Smith, Carl Sorensen, Kurt Volkert, P. B. Watt, and the CBS News soundman, Pham Van Wei, the Loop Rod Boone, Pham Chan, The Nong Hirunsee, D. V. Rhee, Pham Tan Don. This has been a CBS News special report. The ordeal of Contien. This broadcast has been brought to you by Western Electric, the manufacturing and supply unit of the Bell system, as part of their continuing coverage of important news events. The preceding program was a CBS News special report. Programs regularly scheduled at this time will return next Sunday.