Word: danang
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...early evening in Danang, a city blasted and weary of civil war. For eight days the six battalions of loyal Vietnamese troops dispatched from Saigon by Premier Nguyen Cao Ky had been closing the vise, block by block, street by street, on 800 rebellious soldiers in the military capital. Shattered trees, some completely sawed off by gunfire, lined Danang's bullet-spattered boulevards. Pocked walls, splintered doors and decapitated houses testified to the city's agony, in which over 80 had died and more than 400 were wounded...
...Stomach. In Danang, Ky's strategy was simple but relentless. His 3,000 loyal troops-marines, airborne and Rangers-slowly drove the rebel force of 1,200 into an eight-block area centering on the east bank of the Danang River and three Buddhist pagodas. At the outset, neither side had any stomach for killing: most of the gunfire was purposely aimed high. Government tanks cleared street after street, carefully hosing them with .50-cal. machine-gun fire as they moved forward. Government spotter planes circled the rebel area, dropping leaflets that announced the appointment of General Huynh...
Corps Commander Cao flew off to 1st Division headquarters near Hue in an effort to woo rebellious officers back to Ky's side, but no sooner had he ended his speech and climbed aboard the U.S. helicopter that was to return him to Danang than a South Vietnamese lieutenant took a shot at the chopper. An American machine gunner cut him down with a single burst...
...Dodge City." Back in Danang, the courtesies were over. On the fifth day, the rebels gave up most of their checkpoints, pulled down their multicolored Buddhist flags from the tops of oil barrels, and-except for manning a few streets in the vicinity of the pagodas-spread out through the city as snipers. They were everywhere, firing at anything, and being answered fatally by the heavy firepower of Ky's troops. "Dodge City," grunted a Vietnamese marine. When one grenade-throwing rebel was captured, the loyalist officer in charge of the patrol wasted no words; he whipped...
...Scared to Fight? Even in the rebellious I Corps area around Danang and Hue, the majority of the Vietnamese troops were still operating aggressively and effectively. Though the 1st Division-loyal to its dissident, dismissed commander, Lieut. General Nguyen Chanh Thi-has all but stopped operations for the moment, the 2nd Division at Quang Ngai is fighting hard and well. Countrywide, the Vietnamese have increased their weekly number of battalion-size operations from 51 in January to 77 in the first week of May. Simultaneously, U.S. forces have mounted more small-unit and battalion-scale operations than ever before...