Word: mekong
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Classical Charge. Down in the Mekong Delta, an equally savage battle was in progress. Moving into the "Twin-River Complex" of Chuong Thien province, a battalion of South Vietnamese infantrymen walked into a trap. One company was hit as its American-piloted helicopters put down in the paddy-and-palmetto plains between the Nuoc Trong and Cai Lon rivers. Four "slicks" (troop-carrying choppers) were shot out of the sky by Chinese-built 7.9-mm. antiaircraft cannons; another four "gunships" (helicopters carrying rockets and machine guns for close support) dropped like stones. Moments later, a Medevac chopper was downed...
Viet Cong terrorists enter Saigon al most at will and control scores of villages in the province of Gia Dinh, which completely surrounds the city. Enemy troops and equipment move freely into the Saigon area along infiltration trails from the Mekong Delta to the south and by motorized sampan along the Saigon River from the north. Eight Viet Cong battalions operate within a radius of 25 miles of the capital, extorting food, supplies and money from fright ened merchants and others among greater Saigon's 2,200,000 population...
...defense of Thailand." Thailand turned a deaf ear to Hanoi's raucous denunciation of this "new and odious act of treason by the reactionary Thailand government clique." After all, about a third of the guerrillas who are operating in its northeast are Vietnamese who have slipped across the Mekong River from Communist redoubts in Laos to join Chinese-trained Thais and some members of the Pathet Lao in spreading terror through the region...
...make the view from Hanoi even bleaker, U.S. Marines began their long-anticipated offensive against the Mekong Delta, the Reds' last safe haven in South Viet Nam. Perhaps most disturbing of all to the enemy was the U.S. air war. During the week, the North Vietnamese lost nine supersonic MIG-21s, their most advanced fighter aircraft, as U.S. bombers continued to pound military targets. Seemingly desperate for relief from the devastating air offensive, Hanoi began emitting some subtle static aimed at convincing Washington that if only the U.S. would call off its planes, peace talks might-eventually-get under...
...American fighting man a set of challenges unique even in Viet Nam. The principal fact of the Delta is water, water everywhere: drowning the great, flat expanses of paddyfields that reach to the horizon, running in brown, lazy fingers through 2,500 miles of navigable canals, tributaries and the Mekong itself. Only long, lush tree lines and the populous villages they shelter break the landscape's monotony, and it is in the tree lines and villages that the Viet Cong are most often found...