Word: lull
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...eerie lull settled over Southeast Asia last week, broken only by the rumble of Polish-built trucks on Red in filtration routes and the steady thump of American bombs aimed at interdicting them. The lull was reflected in South Viet Nam by battle statistics: the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies suffered only 456 dead in the previous week-the lowest toll since January 1965-and even when U.S. air cavalrymen surrounded three Red regiments near Bong Son last week, the bulk of the Communist force slipped furtively away. The enemy battalion that was finally trapped...
...party. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, challenged the very legality of U.S. involvement in the war. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield urged that the bombing be suspended "indefinitely." Nearly half of the Senate's Democrats are known to want Johnson to continue the lull; 77 House Democrats have formally expressed that hope in a letter to the President...
...Lull on the Ground. The idea of a holiday from death was first proposed on Dec. 7 by the Viet Cong, which does not celebrate the birth of Christ. Since it was plainly intended as a propaganda ploy, the Communist offer of a twelve-hour cease-fire was at first ignored in Washington and Saigon. Finally, though still skeptical that the Communists would honor their commitment, the U.S. last week raised the ante and proposed a 30-hour truce...
...anticipation of the lull, fighting on the ground was light all week. But over North Viet Nam U.S. bombers dumped more tons of bombs on Communist installations. In a series of pre-truce raids near the Haiphong industrial area, eight U.S. planes were shot down by Red anti-aircraft fire and SAM missiles. American pilots knocked out key bridges and destroyed the important Uong Bi power plant, which had first been raided the previous week. All action stopped when the truce began...
Twelve-Hour Truce? While the fighting raged in the south, the U.S. mulled over a Viet Cong offer, broadcast over the enemy's clandestine radio, of a twelve-hour truce starting Christmas Eve. It might well be a trap: last year the Communists used a Christmas lull to take more strategic positions and to blow up a U.S. billet in downtown Saigon, killing two and wounding...