Word: infantryman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...kill at Tay Ninh demonstrated, the arsenal of American weapons in Viet Nam is the deadliest ever developed for man-to-man combat. The U.S. infantryman in Viet Nam today shoulders six times the firepower of his Korean War counterpart; behind him stand rank upon rank of mobile mortars and howitzers that can be called in by air as quickly as he needs them. Overhead hover helicopters bristling with machine guns, rockets and automatic grenade launchers; above the "gunships" circle jet fighter-bombers armed with searing napalm, white phosphorous and bomblets that can unleash deadly patterns of tiny steel pellets...
...does have drawbacks. Its lightweight, plastic butt is liable to shatter in hand-to-hand combat, where the infantryman often clobbers his enemy with the stock. Moreover, its high sight -necessitated by the carrying handle that serves as the rear sighting plane-means that a dug-in rifleman must expose his head and chest to aim carefully. But the rapid rate of fire more than compensates: in Korea with the slow-firing Garand, less than one-quarter of the troops fired their weapons in battle; in Viet Nam with the M16, everyone fires copiously. Many riflemen lug 600 rounds into...
...productive. He was born in Maiden, Mass., of Greek parents from Asia Minor, and his first language was Greek. He majored in sociology at Harvard ('42, cum laude) and planned to go to Harvard Law School, but World War II interfered. After 3½ years as an infantryman, mostly in the Pacific (five campaigns, Bronze Star), Kalem turned to another of his many interests-finance. For the next two years, he wrote a weekly stock-market letter, later did book reviews for the Christian Science Monitor, which caught TIME...
...Idiot." United Press International's Steve Van Meter, 20, agrees. After his tour as a 101st Airborne infantryman, he stayed on to take pictures. "A photographer has to be where the action is," he says. But for all the danger in the field, Van Meter found his scariest moments two weeks ago in the Tinh Hoi pagoda incident at Danang (TIME, June 3). "When you're out in the field, you always know there's your side and the other side. In Danang, I didn't have either side. The street stuff is ten times more...
...resume bombing the North is that it may inspire exaggerated hopes that it will assure a quick and relatively inexpensive victory. It will not, for Viet Nam remains a ground war, and the bomber runs north of the 17th parallel, however effective, can only help protect the allied infantryman and harass the enemy...