Word: mortar
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...dirt: at the southern end of the airport compound, snipers are as close as 150 yds., and incoming grenades and light rockets occasionally fall near by. At night it is cool and damp. The lush sound of the Mediterranean surf is punctuated by the regular whump of outgoing mortar rounds aimed into the Chouf foothills and, every ten minutes or so, the clatter of a Lebanese Army .50-cal. machine gun firing at Druze militiamen and their allies. Each morning before 8 a.m. the troops finish breakfast (eggs to order, French toast and, as ever, Spam). The volleyball games...
...supporting V.C. troops positioned around the embassy began lobbing mortar fire onto the grounds...
...first day of battle in response to a plea from Nasser, Jordan opened a second front. Mortar and artillery shells rumbled down from the heights of Arab Jerusalem to splatter the Israeli sector. No part of the city was spared. Shells hit near Premier Eshkol's home and in the garden of The King David Hotel...
...ground combat and the artillery fire persisted as the fledgling Lebanese Army fought Syrian-backed Druze forces for control of the strategic hill town of Suq al Gharb. The Marines, after savoring a brief lull in artillery fire directed at the airport, were forced back into their bunkers when mortar rounds began falling near them. And as they hunkered down, a political battle erupted in Washington between Congress and the President over the thorny issue of who has final authority to keep U.S. forces deployed in a foreign combat zone...
...hours, the mortars, shells and rockets crashed down on the lightly reinforced encampment around the runways at Beirut International Airport. Crouched in their bunkers, the 1,200 U.S. Marines who form part of a four-nation, 5,400-man peace-keeping force could do little more than keep their heads low and occasionally fire back. "We could hear bullets whizzing above us, and others were impacting on our sand bags," Sergeant Donald Williams, 28, later recalled. Whenever they saw a muzzle flash or some other indication of where the large rounds were coming from, the Marines retaliated with their rifles...