Word: lull
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Medieval War. Despite the promise of Truong's moves around Hué, the military initiative still belonged to the canny North Vietnamese Defense Minister, General Vo Nguyen Giap. Last week, after a lull of ten days, Giap resumed the offensive. The new Communist thrust was pure Giap-methodically prepared, lavish with firepower, and at an unexpected point. The U.S. and South Vietnamese commands had been awaiting attacks on Kontum or Hué. Instead, Giap once more drove on An Loc, the shell-torn rubber town near the Cambodian border, 60 miles north of Saigon. As usual, Giap...
Even as the buildup proceeded apace, a relative lull descended on the fighting, and there was muted optimism that the Communists might not after all succeed in taking Hué. But that would probably only mean a strike elsewhere. The prospect remained for more bloodshed in a war in which more deaths seemed pointless-and it cried out for negotiation. Yet, as so often in this agonizing conflict, there would obviously be no bargaining until the latest phase of escalation was felt on the battlefield. A tantalizing hope of a diplomatic breakthrough that might have avoided the showdown had flamed...
...only been stepped up; it has been re-Americanized. During the long relative lull in the fighting, Saigon's own air force had taken over 90% of the combat flying within South Viet Nam, while U.S. airpower focused on massive bombing of the infiltration routes in Laos and Cambodia. The Communist offensive changed all that. Within South Viet Nam, U.S. pilots have been flying a punishing 500 sorties a day, up from only 20 a day before the offensive (a sortie is one flight by one aircraft). For the pilots, attacking North Vietnamese tanks or defending beleaguered South Vietnamese...
...ensuing lull, ARVN troopers scavenged sandbags from a bunker that had been blown apart by an enemy mortar round. Some soldiers dug their fox holes deeper while others stared impassively at the immobile grass. Over campfires fueled by empty ammunition boxes hung pots of homemade noodle-and-vegetable soup...
...these threats were not ominous enough, there remained a wild card in Britain's gamble for peace: the I.R.A. A relative lull in its bombing campaign ended violently last week when a gelignite-loaded van exploded in the town of Limavady, demolishing the police station and several other buildings and killing two men who were driving by at the time...