Word: hued
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...political defensive, waiting uncertainly for the Communists' next blow and by no means confident that it could be wholly blunted. A full 25 days after the Communists first launched their general offensive, South Viet Nam was still a country taut with terror and riven by fire. In Hué, South Vietnamese and U.S. Marines were still engaged in the most desperate fighting of the war to drive the last of the North Vietnamese out of the ancient Citadel. At Khe Sanh, the pressure mounted on the waiting U.S. Marines, who underwent one of the most concentrated barrages...
...entire northern edge of South Viet Nam has come under the same sort of siege. Allied strength is clustered in pockets of outposts or in major cities-from Khe Sanh, the western anchor, through the Rockpile, Camp Carroll and Con Thien to Quang Tri city, Hué and Danang. Few of the allied bases are accessible now except by air. Last week the North Vietnamese infiltrated a fresh division into South Viet Nam, bringing to 50,000 their troop concentration in 1 Corps. Enemy troops now virtually surround Quang Tri city. One division is poised north of Con Thien...
...reduced it to rubble. An avalanche of bricks littered the streets and open spaces, and loose piles of masonry provided cover for both sides in the battle for the fortress. With every explosion of bomb or shell, the air turned red with choking brick dust. Having fought through Hué block by block, house by house, then yard by yard, the U.S. Marines were now engaged in what a company commander called a "brick-by-brick fight" to drive the North Vietnamese forces from the Citadel. Finally, when allied troops had shrunk the Communists' ground to three fortified pockets...
...North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong had holed up hard-behind the foundations of crumbled buildings, among the jagged battlements of the Citadel's six-mile wall, in darkened houses and inside the secondary wall of the imperial city. Enemy sharpshooters trained their scopes on the allies from Hué's highest spots; machine-gunners picked wide-angle vantage points; and mortar fire struck everywhere, like an infernal rain...
...important advance came when low-crouching U.S. Marines swept onto the long south wall overlooking the Perfume riverbank, a position that finally gave the allies sturdy positions on each wall of the Citadel. The Marines celebrated by triumphantly running up the Stars and Stripes in full view of modern Hué, across the river. The death toll was among the most expensive of the war: nearly 450 allied dead, including some 100 U.S. Marines, and so many casualties that the 5th Battalion's 1st Regiment was finally left at half strength...