Word: combative
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...pristine Cam Ranh Bay, where czarist Russia's fleet took shelter just before its crushing defeat by the Japanese navy in 1905, combat engineers turned the natural harbor into a major port. Twenty miles down the coast, the "Screaming Eagles" of the 101st Airborne Brigade began operating as a mobile strike force. In the guerrilla-infested jungles around Saigon prowled the 1st Infantry Division ("Big Red One"), the 173rd Airborne, a 1,200-man battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, a 250-man New Zealand artillery unit...
...battles, the Communists lost more than 1,200 men. U.S. casualties-240 dead, 470 wounded-were the worst of the war, higher than the Korean War's weekly average of 210 combat deaths. Costly as it was, Westmoreland calls it "an unprecedented victory" in the struggle for South Viet Nam. He says proudly: "At no time during the engagement were American troops forced to withdraw or move back from their positions except for purposes of tactical maneuver...
Westmoreland belongs to the age of technology-a product not only of combat but also of sophisticated command and management colleges from Fort Leavenworth to Harvard Business School. The son of a textile-plant manager in rural South Carolina, Westmoreland liked the cut of a uniform from the time he was an Eagle Scout. Though he never made the honor roll at West Point, he was first captain of cadets (class of '36) and won the coveted John J. Pershing sword for leadership and military proficiency...
...young artillery officer, Westmoreland worked out a new logarithmic fire-direction and control chart that is still in use. During World War II he got a chance to try it out as commander of an artillery battalion in North Africa and Sicily. During ten months of front-line combat from Utah Beach to the Elbe, he had two bouts of malaria and a brush with a land mine that blew a truck out from under him but left him almost unscathed...
...Mischief. Volunteering for Korean duty in 1952, Westmoreland went over as commander of the tough 187th Regimental Combat Team, made a couple of paratroop jumps before the armistice was signed. Fretful that the cease-fire was playing havoc with his men's discipline, Westmoreland set them a spartan regimen: reveille at 5, a two mile run, digging fortifications all day, baths in an icy creek and, after dinner, 2½ hours of intramural sports, especially boxing. "By 10 o'clock every night," grins Westmoreland, "they were so exhausted they couldn't make mischief of any kind...