Word: bases
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Well over 5,000 U.S. Marines oppose Giap in the base camp of Khe Sanh, elbow to elbow in their bunkers and trenches inside a perimeter only half a mile wide. But U.S. units numbering 40,000 men support the Marines within reinforcing range, with all the massed artillery and air power that Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe are needed to defend the Marines. In the past ten days alone, B-52s have averaged four strikes daily on the Red-held hills around Khe Sanh...
...imposing setting for a large battle. Around the plateau occupied by the Marine base lie tier after tier of higher ground, mountains ranging from 4,000 to 8,000 feet. Separating the enemy looking down on Khe Sanh lie deep ravines and draws, layered with a triple canopy of foliage on teak and mahogany trees as high as 200 feet. In topography, Khe Sanh looks like a smaller version of Dienbienphu, but the terrain and underbrush are far worse for an attacker. The Communists must go downhill through terrible maneuvering grounds, cross the ravines, then climb the plateau on which...
...both General Westmoreland and President Johnson interpreted Giap's attacks primarily in hard military terms: as a specific effort to draw U.S. troops away from the U.S. Marine base of Khe Sanh, where Giap has assembled some 40,000 men for what could be the largest single battle of the entire war. Not all of Westmoreland's and Johnson's subordinates agree. The dissenters suspect Giap of intending just the opposite?of having created the threat to Khe Sanh as a diversion designed to draw U.S. forces away from cities and towns and thus give him a foothold...
...enemy force of at least 700 men tackled the city's most vital military target: Tan Son Nhut airstrip and its adjoining MACV compound housing Westmoreland's headquarters and the 7th Air Force Command Center, the nerve centers of U.S. command in the war. The Communists breached the immediate base perimeter, slipping past some 150 outposts without a shot being fired, and got within 1,000 feet of the runways before they were halted in eight hours of bloody hand-to-hand combat. All told, the Communists attacked from 18 different points around Tan Son Nhut, getting close enough...
...violence in Saigon was only a small portion of the fighting that raged through the rest of the country. The first attack fell on Danang, site of the giant Marine base, where 300 Viet Cong infiltrated to the boundary of the Danang airfield and the walls of the South Vietnamese I Corps Headquarters before being driven back. Then, in a domino pattern, the attacks moved southward through the coastal cities of Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa and Nha Trang, leapfrogged over into the highland cities of Kontum and Pleiku and continued southward into the Delta?where some of the first attacks...