Word: cong
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...followed the bombing halt last fall. The number of U.S.-initiated ground contacts with enemy forces doubled between November and February, and the New York Times reported several days ago that this trend appears to be continuing. According to no less an authority than Averell Harriman, the recent Viet Cong "offensive" is in reality a response to this stepping up of the ground war by American forces...
...From the early antiwar days, we have the mystique of resistance and myths about the feebleness of illegitimate authority. The growth of the hippie movement contributed to the left a hodgepodge of cultural notions that were dubbed "revolutionary" and stuck into the movement. Finally the success of the Viet Cong has helped to create a tremendously powerful mystique of Third World Revolution...
...could muster. By contrast, most of the darts on this year's board were the result not of ground attack but of "indirect fire"-shooting and shelling from safely remote points. Almost nowhere did Hanoi commit troops in more than company strength. Moreover, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong concentrated attacks on military rather than civilian targets, bypassing all but 138, or only 1%, of South Viet Nam's 12,900 hamlets...
Heavy Blow. By thus avoiding contact wherever possible, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops have been able to cut their own losses by nearly two-thirds of last year's fearful toll: so far, their dead have numbered about 11,000 (v. nearly 30,000 after two weeks of fighting during the last offensive). Though still a heavy penalty, U.S. officials believe that Hanoi considers it within range of "acceptable" losses...
Even so, the strategy of noncontace lasted only up to a point. Some of the fiercest close-in fighting came at Landing Zone Grant, a U.S. fire-support base in III Corps near Saigon. The camp was hastily installed last January to block a vital junction in the Viet Cong's "Saigon River" infiltration route from Cambodia. Two weeks after the offensive began, no fewer than 800 Communist troops stormed Landing Zone Grant, charging through three rows of concertina barbed wire. In the battle, a rocket crashed into the command post, killing the base commander, Lieut. Colonel Peter Gorvad...