Word: lam
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...WHEN Lam Son 719, the invasion of Laos, began early last month, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird predicted that there would be "some tough days ahead." Last week the Communists made good on that prediction-with a vengeance...
...fighting raged, the smoking hulks of broken Communist tanks and shattered U.S. helicopters littered the battlefield; B-52 strikes thundered so close, said a downed chopper crewman, that the dust "made our eyes water." Though the outcome of the battle remained in doubt at week's end, the Lam Son toll was already substantial: in three weeks, no less than five ARVN battalions had, for all practical purposes, been knocked out of action...
Mounting Skepticism. In Saigon, the popular mood was sullen, even acrimonious. Vietnamese complained that Lam Son was a U.S. concoction designed to accomplish U.S. goals and the ARVN was paying a dear price. Every hour, truckloads of fresh corpses rolled into the Bien Hoa military cemetery, where gravediggers had been ordered to double their normal 100-graves-a-week pace...
...designed to frighten Hanoi into keeping its reserve troops in place. But Hanoi's warning that such a thrust would bring China into the war seems to have ended threats of an invasion of North Viet Nam-a contingency that the U.S. would endorse only if the Lam Son forces were near annihilation...
...area in the very first day. Last week, 14 days after the first ARVN troops pushed across the Laotian border to strike at the Ho Chi Minh Trail network, they had covered only some 15 miles and were coming under increasingly intense enemy pressure. U.S. commanders insisted that Operation Lam Son 719, despite its slow pace, was scoring military gains. But Defense Secretary Melvin Laird warned President Nixon that the 17,000 ARVN troops and the 9,000 Americans who are providing logistical support and rearguard cover could expect "some tough days ahead...