Word: mortars
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...dueled across the Suez Canal. Israelis last week directed their fire for the first time at now-evacuated Port Said. The Egyptians in turn killed seven Israeli soldiers and two civilian bulldozer drivers. On Israel's eastern front, the guns of Suez are faithfully echoed in daily artillery, tank, mortar, machine-gun and rifle fire across the Jordan River...
...astronauts who make the second, third and fourth landings will carry a far more sophisticated payload called ALSEP, for "Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package." It features a magnetometer to measure the moon's magnetic field, an ion detector to study charged particles reaching the lunar surface, a mortar to fire grenades to determine the elastic properties of lunar rock, and a device to measure any heat flowing out of the moon's interior...
Militarily, there was no doubt about Communist intransigence. During the week, there were about 130 rocket and mortar attacks against cities and bases. The headquarters bivouac of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division at Dong Tarn, 35 miles southwest of Saigon, was torn up so severely by hostile fire that U.S. newsmen were barred from the scene. Two ARVN Special Forces battalions were also savaged by enemy attacks 35 miles northeast of Saigon: their casualties were reported as "moderate," a euphemism for fairly substantial losses. The continued enemy pressure around Saigon was underscored by the U.S. sweep in the V.C.-infested...
Birds chattered and giggled overhead. A long-tailed black lizard bobbed its head in the heat. Then the first line of the 55th went in, and the lizard was suddenly gone. The bush erupted with sharp bursts of automatic fire. An incoming mortar round decapitated a palm tree and left three men writhing and mangled. The periodic silences between bursts were broken by frightened screaming birds. Wounded men straggled back. Their black faces shaded gray by shock, they handed weapons and ammunition to their replacements. There was the unmistakable whistle of a 105-mm. howitzer. "Don't worry," said...
Nevertheless, Nigerian mortar bombs and small-arms fire continued to splash about aimlessly, killing here, falling sterile there. A soldier crawling through the bush was hit between the eyes. He stumbled to his feet when he must have been already dead and jerked about in a reflexive dance of death. Then he collapsed, the puppet strings finally cut. A group of wounded who should rightly have been in catatonic shock stumbled down a path under a squall of incoming fire, their intestines peeking pinkly between their fingers. The colonel walked through it all with quiet confidence. He questioned a second...