Word: airstrips
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...Rockpile Replies. Khe Sanh bears some topographical resemblance to Dienbienphu, sitting at the bottom of its bowl of hills, vulnerable to artillery and machine-gun fire from the heights both at the camp and its 4,000-ft. airstrip. Some of the hills are controlled by Marines. But others, like Hill 881 North, which the Marines took with such blood last May, were abandoned during the quiet months since and have been repossessed by the North Vietnamese. One Communist-held hill, numbered 950 (all are named after their height in meters), runs parallel to Khe Sanh's runway only...
...over North Viet Nam. Even so, roughly 80% of the trucks get through, and the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh were oiling their weapons in preparation for the worst. Other Marines at "The Rock Pile," the fallback base 16 miles northeast of Khe Sanh, hurried to complete an airstrip so that supplies and reinforcements can be flown in, and giant B-52s daily dumped tons of bombs on infiltration routes from Laos...
...Highlands border where Laos and Cambodia meet, there is a valuable piece of real estate: a natural valley that funnels through the worst border mountains out into the gentler highland countryside rolling down to the sea. Astride the valley sits Dak To, until three weeks ago a dusty airstrip guarded by one U.S. battalion and a 500-man Vietnamese paramilitary unit in a Special Forces camp...
...accurate North Vietnamese mortarmen did manage to inflict some spectacular damage on Dak To before pulling back. Firing 82-mm. mortars from less than two miles away, the Communists destroyed two big C-130 transport planes sitting on the Dak To airstrip. Then, in a second attack the same day, they scored a direct hit on the hastily built-up Dak To ammunition dump. For the next eight hours U.S. soldiers in and around Dak To cowered in their bunkers while tracer bullets arced in all directions, flares popped like fireworks and shells exploded. Seven tons of C-4 plastic...
Despite their heavy losses, the Viet Cong tried again next day, this time attempting a two-pronged attack from the east across the airstrip runway. It was a disastrous tactic; a howitzer at the south end of the field was in a position to fire right down the runway-"like shooting down a bowling alley," as one of the gunners put it. As the Viet Cong, 30 and 40 at a time, tried to sprint across the strip, the big howitzer shells exploded in their midst. The gunners fired off 575 rounds during the battle, blistering the paint...