Word: kontum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Saigon thinks the enemy may well try to pair its new terrorist campaign with an offensive in the field. Most likely spot: the Kontum-Pleiku region in the western highlands, where the Ho Chi Minh trail feeds men and supplies from Laos into South Viet Nam. The Communists have been notably quiet there since the bloody battles in the la Drang valley last month. Intelligence experts say they detect signs that the North Vietnamese regulars are busily regrouping, perhaps preparing for an unprecedented division-sized assault...
...months the Viet Cong and troops from North Viet Nam have been massing on the plateau, and except for a handful of strongly fortified district villages, and the province towns of Pleiku, Kontum and Ban Me Thuot, they still range at will through the mountainous countryside. Since the Viet Cong blew out three of Route 19's bridges some six weeks ago, the highlands' vital western tier of towns was accessible only by air. Despite an airlift that brought hundreds of tons a week into Pleiku, supplies were growing critically short when Saigon decided that Route...
Though Pleiku was open for the moment, the peril in the highlands was hardly diminished. The next likely pressure point in the Viet Cong's plateau push is Kontum, once a pleasant mountain village of open-air cafés with circus awnings and a population of 14,000. Though only 30 miles from Pleiku, Kontum is surrounded by some 6,000 guerrillas backed up by an estimated 10,000 North Vietnamese regulars, and is still accessible only by airlift, as is nearby Ban Me Thuot. If the Viet Cong attack, as seems almost certain, Kontum's fate...
Horde of Locusts. Kontum is not waiting idly. Each night the garrison's 105-mm. howitzers pound the surrounding hills, shellbursts alternating with flares dropped by patrolling C-123s, which illuminate the jungle fronds. When guerrillas probe the perimeter wire, alarm gongs bang, trumpets sound and tin cans tied to the endless concentric coils of barbed wire rattle. By day life goes on. In the French seminary, 50 sandal-clad Vietnamese and French priests keep to their prayer schedules. Sixteen American Protestant scholars continue compiling alphabets and grammars for some 48 Montagnard tribal languages...
...quickly snapped back, drove the Reds out and pinned them down while U.S. planes came in, inflicting heavy casualties. A second Communist blow fell farther to the west, where Viet Cong raiders overran the district capital of Dak To, then ambushed a relief column corning in by road from Kontum. Again the Reds could not hold onto what they had taken: after two days of fighting, the Viet Cong pulled...