Word: airstrips
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Viet Cong. But Saigon's new military leaders seemed ready and willing to keep up the grim ground battle. To buttress their fighting force, 600 U.S. paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade were now holding a vital flank of Route 14, at the same time guarding the airstrip at Phuocvinh, a few miles from Bencat and Dongxoai...
...from the tiny district capital, 55 miles north of Saigon, 24 U.S. seabees and soldiers were resting after a hard day's work building a Special Forces fort. Suddenly the radio in the darkened home of the district chief crackled, and a sentry on Dongxoai's unfinished airstrip blurted: "The Viet Cong are all over." In an instant, everything came unbuttoned: Communist mortar fire sent hot shrapnel up the village streets, recoilless-rifle shells slammed home, the night air buzzed with bullets. Then out of the ground fog swarmed wave upon wave of Viet Cong shock troops-some...
...When Kong Le moved in last year, after being pushed off the Plain of Jars by the Pathet Lao, Vang Vieng was a jumble of wrecked trucks, shattered huts and rusty barbed wire. Now tidy, white-washed barracks climb the hills around Vang Vieng's 4,500-ft. airstrip (recently resurfaced by U.S. aid), and a small sawmill snarls busily, cutting planks for a new school, shops and houses for 2,000 Meo refugees who fled when their villages were occupied by the Pathet...
Camp Kannack stands on the crest of a gentle hillock near the midfield stripe of South Viet Nam, balanced like a football waiting for the kickoff. From the Kannack compound and its adjacent dirt airstrip, some 400 American and montagnard defenders oversee dense jungle, slippery slopes and the crumpled folds of ravines ideally suited for enemy mortar attack. A single ribbon of road leads south toward embattled Route 19, the east-west highway where government convoys are frequent prey for Viet Cong ambushes. Last week the Communists hit Kannack...
...send me shovels," he said. Shovels he got-plus machetes, picks and hoes by the thousands, all of which went to the highlands. A few weeks ago, Belaunde invited a group of Indians to Lima and awarded them a small golden shovel. In one year, they had built an airstrip, dozens of classrooms and 50 miles of road-$300,000 worth of construction. As a further token, he gave them a check for $37,000. "Next year," he says, "that $37,000 will be another...