Word: mortaring
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...their bodies told of an impending Viet Cong attack on the Happy Valley Special Forces camp. From its nearby headquarters at An Khe, Air Cav choppers quickly dispatched a company of Flying Horsemen to the valley. The company was not long in finding the enemy: it drew withering mortar and machine-gun fire from a Red outpost hidden by shoulder-high, saw-edged elephant grass...
...Deadly Accuracy. The Viet Cong, for their part, showed that they have not lost their sting. In their most successful attack of the war on an American installation, they launched a daring nighttime hit-and-run mortar barrage against crowded Tan Son Nhut airbase three miles north of Saigon, which serves both commercial and military traffic and is the world's busiest airport (1,512 landings and takeoffs a day). Firing with deadly accuracy, they lobbed 200 shells into the base in 20 minutes, ignited a 420,000-gallon fuel tank, smashed the enlisted men's transient billets...
...combat boots with thick rubber soles and steel plates to protect soldiers from both jungle and booby trap. The Koreans are tailoring 750,000 uniforms for the Vietnamese army, and the Japanese are providing nylon sandbags, barbed wire and prefabricated buildings. Taiwan is negotiating with the U.S. to supply mortar shells and machine-gun bullets, and enterprising Filipinos are making money selling the U.S. Army venomless snakes to be used in training G.I.s about how to avoid panic when they encounter the really poisonous serpents in Viet...
...concern was shared by Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana, who observed that "murder by motor at home is just as deadly as murder by mortar in Viet Nam." New Hampshire's Norris Cotton objected that the Government "now spends almost as much on the safety of ducks as it does on the traffic safety needs of 190 million people." To prove its resolve, the Senate Commerce Committee approved a measure establishing federal standards for tires...
First warning of trouble to come was the muffled clomp of steel biting into earth as entrenching tools signaled the fact that the enemy was digging in near the camp's wire. Then a white phosphorus mortar shell exploded inside A Shau, and the valley night erupted in recoilless cannon and machine-gun fire, the flash of shells and burning buildings. All night long the enemy poured fire into the compound. Daylight brought dive bombers to the aid of the besieged defenders, though the clouds hung so low that enemy antiaircraft guns were often firing down on allied planes...