Word: ak
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There were no mortars, but the two dozen guerrillas that crept up to the base one night last week carried AK-47 automatic rifles and satchel charges. The men penetrated the northern edge of the base at a point where there was no fence. Thai guards responsible for base security flashed the alarm. By that time, however, the intruders had already damaged two planes, an F-4D Phantom fighter bomber and a C-141 jet transport fitted for medical evacuation. In the confusing half-hour firefight that ensued, a Thai guard was killed and four Americans were wounded, one critically...
...units might not be readily committed. There is considerable incentive for "Mike force" troopers. A private gets more monthly pay than a regular Vietnamese master sergeant ($58 v. $48). There is also the promise of booty money for captured Communist weapons: an AK-47 assault rifle brings $25, a 120-mm. mortar $200, a tank...
...some release, a pushing back, for a time, of the horizons. There is talk with one's neighbor, the compulsion to relive the moment when you were hit, to hear how it was when he was hit. The helicopter pilot tells over and over how the shattered AK-47 slug he is fondling came up through the armored floor of his chopper, ripped through his calf and embedded itself in the dashboard. As do the others, he reconstructs his adventure with the clarity of total recall-the surprise, the pain, the pleasure of having faced death and stared...
...ARMAMENT. Unit by unit, ARVN, when Abrams arrived in Viet Nam, was hopelessly outgunned by the enemy-undoubtedly a factor in its lack of aggressiveness. Armed with World War II-vintage M-1 and .30-cal. Brownings, an ARVN company was no match for a Communist company fitted with AK-47 automatic-firing Chinese assault rifles. Long before the decision to move ARVN toward taking over the brunt of the fighting, Abrams fought to rearm the South Vietnamese with the best U.S. weaponry, and the first ARVN units received M-16 rifles late last year. Now the supply will...
...valuable matériel. In only a cursory search of the area, U.S. troopers counted 182 rockets and mortars, 260,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition, 13,000 rounds of larger-caliber ammunition and 8,700 hand grenades and mines. Several hundred North Vietnamese even left behind their AK-47 rifles, violating the most basic principle of war-that an infantryman never loses his weapon even in retreat. The idea that the North Vietnamese pulled out as a voluntary gesture of de-escalation is thus contradicted by all the facts. The biggest fact is that at Khe Sanh they were...