Word: battalion
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...ensuing siege strained relations between the South Vietnamese and the American battalion at Dak To. As support troops, the U.S. engineers and artillerymen were counting on the South Vietnamese to provide the security force for their base. But Lien refused. As a result, the Americans had to do double duty guarding their own perimeter, leaving the gun crews and work teams overworked and exhausted...
...Gray Area. President Nixon moved to counter such criticism, sending one of his top advisers to brief the press. There had been, said the adviser in a background session, no significant (meaning not more than 10%) increase in battalion-size operations. Continuing high U.S. casualty totals in Viet Nam were the result, rather, of continued Communist offensives. Though admitting that figures on U.S. military operations in Viet Nam have always been of an "illusionary nature," he nonetheless cited some. In a typical week, when 35 to 40 enemy attacks are launched, some 150 to 200 Americans are likely...
True enough, say the military, the number of battalion-and brigade-size sweeps against the enemy has not increased since the peace talks started. But they insist with pride that overall pressure on the Communists has increased-in the form of many more smaller-scale actions. Abrams has found that forays by sub-battalion-size units -companies, platoons, even squads -can be mounted more quickly, more often and in more places. Such surprise sweeps also achieve better results. Thus the general's sting-ray tactics, designed to interdict the movement of North Vietnamese units and supplies, involve the same...
Assaults Repulsed. The battle for Hill 937 began uneventfully enough. On May 10, nine battalions of American and Vietnamese troops were helilifted into landing zones between the A Shau Valley and the Laotian border to disrupt possible North Vietnamese attacks toward the coast and to cut off Communist escape routes. There was little contact at first, but the next day, conditions changed for Lieut. Colonel Weldon F. Honeycutt's 3rd Battalion, 187th Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division. Wheeling away from the border and eastward toward Hill 937, Honeycutt's troops surprised a North Vietnamese trail-watching squad...
...There were lots of people in Bravo company [which had borne the brunt of the casualties] who were going to refuse to go up again," one soldier said. "There'd been low morale, but never before so low-because we felt it was all so senseless." Two other battalions from the 101st and a battalion from the Vietnamese 1st Division were brought up as reinforcements. On May 18, two battalions-all of their men loaded down with 40 magazines of rifle ammunition-tried again, and were thrown back just short of the crest in a blinding rainstorm...