Word: mortar
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Stop the Music. Saigon's suburban battle seldom makes the headlines. It is still largely the sentry's war of short, sharp encounters: the bark of a close rifle, the sudden cough of automatic weapons, the crump of a single mortar, occasionally a scream as a knife finds its way through a rib cage. An "incident" may be anything from the skirmish of a dozen men to the blare of a propaganda bullhorn; whatever their nature, incidents are on the increase along the Gia Dinh perimeter. From February to April they averaged 37 a month. Through July...
When Hotel Company called up tanks, the V.C. knocked them out with .75-mm. recoilless rifles. An armored supply column got lost, found itself deep in enemy territory. Suddenly, from all sides of the column came mortar and heavy-artillery fire. Three shells hit the leading tank, and when its driver tried to squeeze out an escape hatch, he was riddled with bullets. Three amtraks backed into a deep paddy and bogged down, a fourth was knocked out when a V.C. dropped a grenade down its hatch. "O.K., men, we're marines, let's do the job," shouted...
This was the start of a Viet Cong raid against Danang last week. Under heavy-mortar-fire cover, the raiders stole out of a graveyard toward a sector of the base perimeter patrolled by South Vietnamese troops. The guerrillas snipped one barbed-wire fence, stepped through a dozen holes cut in another fence by defensive troops to facilitate their own movements, and let go with a barrage of grenades, satchel charges and recoilless rifle fire. The Reds ran into no outer guards, were on Danang's runway before they met their first challenger. Carrying coffee to a guard...
Before they fled under a hail of Marine mortar and small-arms fire within minutes after they had come, the raiders destroyed one Delta Dagger jet and two four-engine C-130 Hercules transports and damaged two Delta Daggers and one Hercules. Estimated total cost: $5,000,000. The Viet Cong left behind them trails of blood indicating that several had been wounded. One was captured, turned out to be a North Vietnamese soldier named Do Xuan Hien, 29, who under questioning said that he had infiltrated into South Viet Nam three months ago with his entire battalion...
...Soctrang, 100 miles south of Saigon, Communists lobbed 17 mortar shells onto a U.S. helicopter base, damaging seven choppers...