Word: dongxoai
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1965-1965
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...intelligence reports, as many as four Viet Cong battalions were massing in the dense thicket near Bencat for another devastating attack on government positions along Route 14, a mere 30 miles north of Saigon. In the hope of avoiding a disaster like the one fortnight ago at nearby Dongxoai (rhymes with wrong's why), U.S. planners in Saigon searched for a means to trap the concealed Communist troops by surprise in their jungle hideout. SAC had long been restless to get into the war, and General William C. Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in South Viet Nam, gave...
Also, the cost of ground war is high. Last week Saigon revised its casualty totals for the bloody battle of Dongxoai. The toll: more than 700 government troops and 150 civilians dead v. an estimated 700 Viet Cong. But Saigon's new military leaders seemed ready and willing to keep up the grim ground battle. To buttress their fighting force, 600 U.S. paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade were now holding a vital flank of Route 14, at the same time guarding the airstrip at Phuocvinh, a few miles from Bencat and Dongxoai...
Like a swarm of angry locusts, the helicopters descended on the soccer field at Dongxoai. Out of them poured Vietnamese rangers, who were greeted by a hail of Viet Cong fire. Three fell within a minute; the rest bolted for a ditch by a road. But one hulking figure, a Leica camera bobbing about his neck, threw himself against a hut and started snapping pictures. In the bloody melee, he took some memorable ones: a ranger as he was hit, his hand clutched to his stomach; a Viet Cong, his head popped up over a bunker to stare with surprise...
...Along the defense perimeter lay twelve disemboweled children. An American, his body as black and twisted as a burnt match, sprawled among the debris in the Special Forces camp, his dog tags soldered to his bones and his charred pet monkey clinging, even in death, to his back. The Dongxoai church was cluttered with severed heads; bodies of South Vietnamese soldiers used as human shields lay bound and eviscerated...
...their failings, the South Vietnamese are still killing nearly three Viet Cong for every loss of their own (see chart). And despite the grim headlines about Quangngai and Dongxoai, the Reds have yet to capture and hold a district or provincial capital for more than a few hours. What South Viet Nam's fighting men need is relief, however momentary, to shed the fatigue and despair of too much combat. Only the U.S. and its allies can provide that respite. When they do, the leadership and combativeness exemplified by Corporal Tu and Laughing Larry Luong, Major Cuong and Lieut...