Word: bases
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...optimism that flowed all too easily before the shock of Tet. As the military experts see it, the Communists took crippling losses in the 40,000 of their soldiers killed during the Tet campaign and the 15,000 chewed up during their disastrous siege of the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh (see box). The Tet onslaughts failed to topple Thieu's government, failed to shatter ARVN, and, in fact, left it with more confidence than it had had before. The pacification program in the countryside turns out not to have been hit so hard as at first suspected...
From the beginning of the North Vietnamese buildup around the Marine base, the U.S. command was convinced that North Viet Nam's Defense Minister, General Vo Nguyen Giap, intended to try to overrun Khe Sanh as he had stormed Dienbienphu 14 years earlier. As he had done against the French garrison, Giap assembled large numbers of his best-trained assault troops around Khe Sanh, together with huge quantities of weaponry...
...Laotian hillsides Giap placed Russian-made 152-mm. cannons, their long tubes zeroed in on besieged Marines. Altogether, Hanoi's gunners poured more explosives into Khe Sanh than they had into Dienbienphu, reaching a peak on Feb. 23, when 1,300 rounds slammed into the U.S. base. And, as in 1954, the North Vietnamese by night tunneled ever closer to the Marine perimeter, drawing the net of fortified attack positions ever tighter. In terms of firepower and supplies, the Communists were better prepared to strike at Khe Sanh than they ever had been at Dienbienphu. During the early days...
...their targets from these spots, the B-52s were able to bomb with uncanny accuracy; the big bombers, in fact, were able to walk their sticks of bombs to within 100 yds. of the perimeter of the Marine bastion. Flying the 5,200 mile round trip from their Guam base, they averaged 40 to 50 strikes each day. Hardly an hour passed without a bombload falling on the Communists. In ten weeks, a total of 103,500 tons of explosives were dumped on the five-mile-square battlefield around the base...
...payroll for the starting nine is $565,000. For that kind of money, Owner Gussie Busch obviously expects handsome results-and so far, at least, he seems to be getting them. In two victories over Atlanta last week, the Redbirds pummeled five Braves pitchers for twelve runs and 25 base hits, then chorused happily in the locker room: "Only a hundred more wins...