Word: giap
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From the beginning of the North Vietnamese buildup around the Marine base, the U.S. command was convinced that North Viet Nam's Defense Minister, General Vo Nguyen Giap, intended to try to overrun Khe Sanh as he had stormed Dienbienphu 14 years earlier. As he had done against the French garrison, Giap assembled large numbers of his best-trained assault troops around Khe Sanh, together with huge quantities of weaponry...
...addition, deep in the Laotian hillsides Giap placed Russian-made 152-mm. cannons, their long tubes zeroed in on besieged Marines. Altogether, Hanoi's gunners poured more explosives into Khe Sanh than they had into Dienbienphu, reaching a peak on Feb. 23, when 1,300 rounds slammed into the U.S. base. And, as in 1954, the North Vietnamese by night tunneled ever closer to the Marine perimeter, drawing the net of fortified attack positions ever tighter. In terms of firepower and supplies, the Communists were better prepared to strike at Khe Sanh than they ever had been at Dienbienphu...
...command whose sole mission was to orchestrate an aerial operation around Khe Sanh. Working over a sandbox model of the Khe Sanh area, two of the U.S. Army's most gifted tacticians-General Creighton Abrams and Lieut. General William B. Rosson-figured out the most logical places for Giap to concentrate men and supplies, then designated those areas as prime targets for U.S. planes. Dozens of reconnaissance aircraft were sent out to crisscross the area around Khe Sanh; even the heat from a match was enough to warn their sensitive infra-red cameras of Communist presence below...
Relief for Giap. The bombardment was the most intensive in the history of aerial warfare. Tactical fighter-bombers flew nearly 9,000 sorties in March alone. On a single day, giant B-52s made as many as 34 strikes with their 2,000-lb. bombs. All told, more than 110,000 tons of explosives rained down during the siege, breaking up formations, destroying supplies and setting off thousands of secondary explosions. The U.S. had good reason to believe that among the targets hit was the headquarters for the Communist campaign...
...Sanh. Spiraling in by helicopter for a quick visit to the base just before his trip to Washington, Westmoreland declared: "We took 220 killed at Khe Sanh and about 800 wounded and evacuated. The enemy by my count has suffered at least 15,000 dead in the area." General Giap may well have been glad to see the men of Pegasus approaching Khe Sanh. Pegasus not only relieved the Marines of Khe Sanh; it also relieved the Communists of a siege that they could no longer profitably maintain...