Word: combative
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...never been in a gunfight: Houston McCoy, Jerry Day and Ramiro Martinez, who was off duty when he heard of the sniper, got into uniform and rushed to the campus. The fourth was Civilian Allen Crum, 40, a retired Air Force tailgunner, who had "never fired a shot" in combat...
Rising Gloom. With 60% of the nation's commercial air transport grounded, problems of all kinds continued to grow. In California, servicemen returning from Viet Nam on combat leave found themselves stranded for up to 72 hours at Travis Air Force Base. As many as 100 at a time curled up to sleep on sofas or in makeshift barracks while they waited for hitchhikes aboard military planes passing through the base. Mail deliveries that normally move by air were slowed; shipments of everything from electronic equipment to exotic flowers were delayed for lack of air cargo space. Businessmen hitched...
...life raft, flares, and other emergency gear. Besides, Stilwell had always had his father's famed knack for survival. As leathery and almost as prickly as Vinegar Joe, he came to be known among his troops as "Cider Joe." A 1933 West Point graduate, Joe Stilwell won his combat spurs as a colonel in Burma campaign headquarters and as commander of the 23rd Infantry Regiment in Korea. From 1962 to 1964, he commanded the U.S. Support Group in Viet Nam, earning frowns from higher-ups for spending as much time manning machine guns and riding helicopters...
...soon beyond repair, owing to a lack of spare parts. Lieut. Commander Roy E. McCoy, 38, who runs the division from his Empire desk aboard the Carronade, quickly jury-rigged an alternative system, known as the "bow and arrow" method. Spotters ashore send target coordinates to the ships' Combat Information Centers, where men with aluminum ballistic slide rules (copied from a cardboard original found aboard one of the ships) swiftly tot up the deflection, angle-bearing and elevation of the rocket launchers. Then, just to make sure, one officer stands on the bridge to double-check the course...
...counter the plan, General William Westmoreland ordered a massive spoiling operation. It was called Operation Hastings, and it involved nine battalions of U.S. Marines, the largest number ever thrown into any combat in Viet Nam, together with sizable South Vietnamese army and marine units. When it got under way fortnight ago, the total allied strike force numbered 11,000 men. It was a daring, defiant and, by its very nature, often disorderly operation. Into the dense river valleys and high mountains, marines were lifted by helicopter to begin a sweep through a 300-mile crescent of land, destroying Communists...