Word: mortar
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...major plants, hitting their oil storage tanks, pipeline complexes and coking and cracking units with every incoming shell. U.N. truce supervisors immediately appealed for a ceasefire, but the Israelis ignored them. A second appeal was referred to Jerusalem, where the government pleaded ''technical difficulties" in contacting the mortar units at the front...
...South. For the past six weeks, in one of the greatest artillery duels in history, North Vietnamese army gunners have rained as many as 900 rounds of big artillery and mortar shells a day on the Marine stronghold two miles south of the DMZ. Last week, as they poked their heads out of their muddy dugouts, the Marines at Con Thien noticed an unusual absence of the harsh hiss of incoming shells. U.S. aerial reconnaissance found out why: in groups of 10 and 15, North Vietnamese regulars were spotted making their way northward out of the DMZ, leaving behind some...
...something more akin to hell. Since Sept. 1, the outpost, less than two miles from the southern edge of the six-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Viet Nams, has been under relentless bombardment from Communist guns. In one barrage last week, the Communists sent 903 artillery, mortar, rocket and recoilless-rifle shells whistling into the perimeter around Con Thien's three barren, red clay hills-probably the greatest single Red bombardment of the war. In August, the leathernecks took 388 casualties along the northern defense line that stretches from the South China Sea to Khe Sanh...
...night the Communist artillery eases up, and the 5,000 North Vietnamese troops surrounding the Con Thien area become active. They probe the outpost's defenses, shove bamboo bangalore torpedoes under the barbed wire to breach the perimeter, and unleash mortar and recoilless-rifle
...exaggerated-partly because casualties from artillery and every other cause have been lumped together by the military and reported as though they were all inflicted by the big guns. Of 158 Marines killed around Con Thien during the first 24 days of September, 44 died in artillery, rocket and mortar attacks, the rest in firefights with North Vietnamese infiltrators. One captured Communist reported that Red casualties were so heavy in the DMZ area that aid stations were overflowing...