Word: battalion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...regularly by helicopter, North Vietnamese commanders are at the mercy of reports from the field. How fanciful those reports can be was illustrated by the captured enemy summary on the battle of Loc Ninh. Instead of admitting disaster, the Communist commander reported that his forces destroyed "a U.S. armored battalion, a U.S. rifle battalion, a U.S. artillery battalion and one puppet (South Vietnamese) regiment." In fact, only 29 Americans and 21 Vietnamese were killed...
Night of Terror. One mile away, at the town of Song Be. Dak Son's intended defenders, a battalion of South Vietnamese soldiers, clenched their fists in helplessness as they watched the flames on the plateau mount higher and higher into the dark sky. Their small force of helicopters had earlier been sent out on another mission and could not be recalled. A march on foot to relieve Dak Son would lead through a wild and deep ravine separating the burning hamlet from Song Be. It meant three miles on a tortuous and twisting trail in the darkness...
...first fight began when a 62-boat Allied flotilla churning up the Rach Ruong Canal 65 miles southwest of Saigon was suddenly hit by intense fire. It carried a battalion of Vietnamese Marines and a battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry, part of a probing arm of Operation Coronado 9. The Vietnamese troops were in the lead boats, and when rockets began to rip through the flotilla's armor plate, Major Pham Nha, the Vietnamese Marine battalion commander, made an instant decision to counterattack. "We're in an ambush and we are going in," ordered Nha, without waiting...
Bunker by Bunker. Nha's Marines drove in on the enemy from the north and east. The U.S. battalion jumped ashore and set up a position on the south, and another U.S. battalion was helilifted in on the west. Boxed in, the Viet Cong's 502nd Battalion fought with the bitterness of despair. Sometimes neck-deep in water, wallowing in mud, the Vietnamese Marines moved in bunker by bunker, dropping grenades into the Viet Cong firing slits and forcing the Viet Cong in the dikes out into the open, where air support and artillery, when it arrived, could...
...second battle was entirely a Vietnamese victory. Two companies of a Ranger battalion were moving along a canal line 22 miles southwest of the Delta's largest city, Can Tho, when they ran into two Viet Cong battalions: the local force U Minh 10 and the 303rd main force unit. In a fierce fight that raged through most of one day, the South Vietnamese killed 265 of the V.C., and supporting helicopters and fighter-bombers accounted for another 100 dead. The total of 365 enemy dead was the largest ever inflicted in a Delta battle, with more probably...