THE BATTLE OF BUNKER'S BUNKER

THE most daring attack of the week--and certainly one of the most embarrassing--occurred when 19 Viet Cong commandos of the C-10 Sapper Battalion made the U.S. embassy their target. When Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker opened the white reinforced-concrete complex last September, few American missions ever settled into more seemingly impregnable quarters. Looming behind a lO-ft.-high wall, the six-story symbol of U.S. power and prestige is encased in a massive concrete sunscreen that overlaps shatterproof Plexiglas windows. The $2.6 million building contains such an array of fortresslike features that Saigon wags soon dubbed it "Bunker's Bunker." Yet the Viet Cong attackers gained access to the embassy compound and rampaged through it for 6 1/2 hours before all were killed and the embassy was once again secure.

At 3:03 a.m., supporting V.C. troops positioned around the embassy began lobbing mortar fire onto the grounds. Then the 19 commandos appeared, wearing civilian clothes (with identifying red armbands) and carrying automatic weapons, rockets and enough high explosives to demolish the building. Attacking simultaneously, some of the guerrillas blasted a hole in the concrete wall with an antitank gun and swarmed through it; others quickly scaled a rear fence. Though allied intelligence had predicted the attack, the embassy's defense consisted of only five U.S. military guards--just one more than normal. They fought back so fiercely that only their courage denied the enemy complete success. Sergeant Ronald W. Harper, 20, a Marine guard, managed to heave shut the embassy's massive teakwood front doors just seconds before the guerrillas battered at them with rockets and machine guns, thus denying the V.C. entry to the main building.

Unable to penetrate the main chancery, the V.C. commandos ran aimlessly through the compound, firing on everything they saw. Meanwhile, small groups of Marines and MPs began arriving outside the walls of the embattled embassy. The Viet Cong burst into the embassy's consular building and various other buildings in the compound, but the Americans on the scene threw such heavy fire at them that the guerrillas were kept too busy to set off their explosives.

Finally, just before 8 a.m., Pfc. Paul Healey, 20, led a counterattack through the front gate, personally killing five V.C. with grenades and his M-16 rifle. Minutes later, two paratroop platoons from the 101st Airborne Division at nearby Bien Hoa landed on the embassy's rooftop helipad. Working their way down, they met no resistance. Though V.C. prisoners are usually turned over to the Saigon government, this time the troopers had orders to kill every V.C. in sight, lest any had seen secret codes or plans in the embassy.

As the troopers advanced, a wounded guerrilla staggered into Mission Coordinator George Jacobson's white villa behind the embassy. When U.S. troops tried to flush him with tear gas, he started upstairs, spotted the 56-year-old retired Army colonel there, and fired three shots. The guerrilla missed, and Jacobson finished him off with a .45 that had quickly been tossed up to his second-floor window by troops below. That fearsome finale ended the 6 1/2-hour battle. Five Americans lay dead, as did two Vietnamese chauffeurs for the embassy who were apparently caught in the crossfire.

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