Word: giap
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Teak & Mahogany. Those U.S. analysts who believe that Khe Sanh will be attacked are convinced that Giap envisages it as a second Dienbienphu. He is out after a victory that would completely smash the will of the U.S. to continue a hard and dirty war of rising casualties and fitful overall progress in bringing South Viet Nam to where it can defend itself. Around Khe Sanh he has ringed 40,000 troops. Northward is grouped his 325C Division, to the south lies the 304. To the east lies the 324B and another division, and to the southeast there are elements...
Well over 5,000 U.S. Marines oppose Giap in the base camp of Khe Sanh, elbow to elbow in their bunkers and trenches inside a perimeter only half a mile wide. But U.S. units numbering 40,000 men support the Marines within reinforcing range, with all the massed artillery and air power that Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe are needed to defend the Marines. In the past ten days alone, B-52s have averaged four strikes daily on the Red-held hills around Khe Sanh...
Symbolically Vital. Khe Sanh is eminently worth holding?and defending. It is a major point on the DMZ defense line, the barrier that U.S. forces have sought to string from the sea below the DMZ to the Laotian border. It now blocks off the easiest supply line that Giap has into South Viet Nam. By taking Khe Sanh, the Communists would outflank all the allied forces in Quang Tri province and part of Thua Thien province as well, probably forcing a fallback to a new defense line?perhaps as far back at Hué. As Giap well knows, Khe Sanh...
...Marines expect the attack to come this week or next, at the end of the Tet (lunar new year) ceasefire. The truce began at the end of last week, after five days of intermittent shelling of Khe Sanh by Giap's long guns from North Viet Nam and rockets, mortars and recoilless rifles fired at closer range. The giant U.S. 175-mm. artillery at Camp Carroll and the Rockpile, another Marine base, answered back. U.S. fighter-bombers, many diverted from hitting North Viet Nam, rained down the heaviest explosive loads of the war on the enemy around Khe Sanh...
...Vietnamese crept up, neatly cut a passage through for future use, and replaced it to look as though nothing had been disturbed. Each day, as they wait, the Marines dig in deeper, filling shiny grey sandbags and adding more layers atop their bunkers, preparing for the inevitable moment when Giap makes the ultimate test of Khe Sanh's defenses...