Word: mortaring
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Operation Hickory's sweep into the DMZ has proved a success by any measure. The Allies killed an estimated 1,500 North Vietnamese and seized a rich cache of enemy supplies, from gas masks and mortar shells to a new So viet 82-mm. recoilless rifle. The thrust also served to isolate enemy forces operating to the south in Quang Tri province, cutting them off from their supply routes and their ammunition caches. But Hickory's cost was high: it contributed heavily to a new record of 337 U.S. deaths for the week ending May 20, plus...
...Swarms. Those totals are bound to rise. In the western part of the Central Highlands, a 150-man company of the U.S. 4th Division was slogging up a hill commanding a Communist infiltration route from Cambodia last week when its men stopped to rest. Suddenly, the jungle erupted in mortar explosions and gunfire as the company ran into an ambush set by a North Vietnamese battalion. Rising to a half-crouch to direct the defense, the company commander took a bullet under his left eye and fell dead. Within minutes, all the company's officers had been either killed...
...side of the Ben Hai River frontier. Hanoi has long regarded the DMZ as a convenient, protected freeway for infiltrating its soldiers into the South. Flagrant though that violation was, in recent months Hanoi has done far more: it has turned the DMZ into a giant staging area and mortar and artillery base for its buildup against the U.S. Marines facing the zone. In almost a month of continuous fighting just south of the DMZ, the Marines have been repeatedly attacked in force and increasingly hit by round-the-clock, all-too-accurate mortar, rocket and recoil-less-rifle fire...
...Formidable Fleet. Operation Hickory began with the Marine drive from Cam Lo to relieve Con Thien, which has been under almost constant mortar attack since May 8. The terrain favored the dug-in enemy: a dense jungle tangle of banana trees, bamboo, betel-nut and breadfruit trees in which visibility was seldom more than 15 ft., and fields separated by 10-ft.-high hedgerows. One company was within a mile of Con Thien when it was pinned down by fire from the seemingly deserted village of Trung An. The North Vietnamese had built of logs, trees and dirt an astonishing...
...fire was so heavy that rescue and supply choppers were driven off, and soon the Marines were without food or water, sucking bamboo for moisture. A third company finally broke through and managed to pull its casualties back into a nearby church. All that day mortars crashed around it, but none hit the roof. Even so, it was more than 40 hours before enough helicopters could get in to evacuate all the wounded. The next morning, the Marines blew up all the gear and extra ammunition that they could not carry and fought their way clear, carrying their dead...