Word: battalion
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...Viet Cong had already overrun the protected jungle clearings where relief helicopters could be expected to land, Vien sent 40 choppers loaded with troops swooping suddenly onto a soccer field adjacent to the defenders' compound. Before the Viet Cong could react, the bulk of the 52nd Ranger Battalion was on the ground and fighting. By the following morning, the Communist attackers had had enough. They faded like smoke into the jungle, leaving behind 700 dead. The defenders' toll was terrible too: at least 108 dead (including 18 Americans), 46 wounded, 126 missing and presumed dead. Along the defense...
...rain forests around Danang, the Commu nists mounted a savage series of am bushes that snatched away the initiative from the government forces and killed more than 1,000 South Vietnamese troops. The deadliest assaults came in the Red-rife Central Highlands, with the Viet Cong attacking in battalion and even regiment strength as they swept down from the craggy Annamite chain...
...Viet Cong - numbering nearly 1,000 - started slowly, by ambushing a single battalion engaged in a routine roadclearing operation. Then, as relief convoys dashed out of Quangngai, the Reds snapped ever-fiercer traps on the would-be rescuers. It was the same trick-in the same place-that had destroyed several French regiments in 1953, just a year before Dienbienphu. Some of the ambushed government soldiers panicked, ripping off their uniforms and throwing away their weapons to hide out in hamlets and paddyfields. Those who surrendered received no mercy: many were found shot through the head and disemboweled...
...town, held it for three hours while other Viet Cong units ambushed three relief convoys in succession at almost the same spot on the highway. The toll: 106 government soldiers dead, 20 wounded or missing. Other Viet Cong traps clanged shut near Kontum and Quin-hon, and a full battalion of Reds struck the town of Binhchanh, just ten miles west of Saigon. The defending Ranger company was saved by armed U.S. helicopters, but the very fact that the Communists could mount a battalion-sized assault that close to the capital left many military men shaken...
Alvim called on both loyalists and rebels to "demonstrate democratic and humanitarian understanding by finding a dignified formula for the re-establishment of a lasting peace." That was obviously a long way off, but to underscore his message, General Alvim sent a battalion of Brazilian infantrymen to secure Santo Domingo's bullet-pocked National Palace on the fringe of the rebel zone. From the first days of the civil war, the palace had been held by Imbert's loyalists, who beat off rebel attacks. Now Alvim wanted the shooting to cease. As the OAS troops marched...