Word: commandants
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Safe within the sanctuary of an ordered society, dreaming of glory--Walter Mittys of the left (or are they left?)--they play at being revolutionaries and fancy themselves rising to positions of command atop the debris as the structures of society come crashing down...
...enemy force of at least 700 men tackled the city's most vital military target: Tan Son Nhut airstrip and its adjoining MACV compound housing Westmoreland's headquarters and the 7th Air Force Command Center, the nerve centers of U.S. command in the war. The Communists breached the immediate base perimeter, slipping past some 150 outposts without a shot being fired, and got within 1,000 feet of the runways before they were halted in eight hours of bloody hand-to-hand combat. All told, the Communists attacked from 18 different points around Tan Son Nhut, getting close enough...
...jets, Skyraiders and helicopters blasted at their positions. Fighting flared in one part of the city and, when troops moved in with air support to damp it down, broke out in another area. Though the allies claimed 2,000 enemy dead in the city, the U.S. command was worried by the presence of a reserve unit of some 1,000 Viet Cong still lurking in Saigon and not yet committed to battle. Allied troops ringed the city to cut off their retreat...
South Vietnamese infantry units closed in on the city from all sides, and three companies of U.S. Marines, spearheaded by a platoon of army tanks, moved in to rescue a besieged U.S. military advisory unit trapped in its command. That mission accomplished, they turned to aid the South Vietnamese in rooting out the NVA, who reportedly were being guided and fed by Hué students. In the twisting alleyways of the old city, digging out the Communists turned out to be a tough task. After two days of combat, President Thieu phoned ARVN I Corps Commander Lieut. General Hoang Xuan...
According to the evidence available, in fact, his total command of the current Communist offensive in South Viet Nam was accorded him quite by accident. One of his Politburo archfoes, Nguyen Chi Thanh, who had shared control of operations in the South, died last summer-of what Hanoi describes as a heart attack but U.S. officers refer to as "B-52-itis" caught in the South. Thanh's death left Giap unchallenged, and he has spent a large part of the past six months planning the New Year's offensive that began last week...