Word: mortars
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...mostly on the fringe of the big battlefields: quick, sharp clashes in the jungle along infiltration routes used by the Communists. Occasionally, one of their isolated redoubts is overrun (A Shau two years ago, Lang Vei this year) by an all-out attack. More oftenone is hit by rapid mortar and small-arms harassment probes, which are usually repulsed by the garrison. The camps are generally supplied by air, which provides the only link with the outside world...
...readily committed. There is considerable incentive for "Mike force" troopers. A private gets more monthly pay than a regular Vietnamese master sergeant ($58 v. $48). There is also the promise of booty money for captured Communist weapons: an AK-47 assault rifle brings $25, a 120-mm. mortar $200, a tank...
They broke the pattern only once, seemingly unable to resist a Fourth of July attack somewhere on U.S. troops. Early on the Fourth, they opened up with a 500-round mortar and rocket barrage on Dau Tieng, a U.S. fire base 38 miles northwest of Saigon. They followed up the barrage with a ground assault, but were repelled by a quickly assembled crew of U.S. infantrymen, cooks, clerks and drivers. For their part, allied forces probed the countryside around the capital in sweeps and ambushes, but turned up mostly arms and ammunition. They have found several important caches...
Beginning two weeks ago and lasting for several nights, allied counter-mortar radar along the eastern edge of the DMZ, where the zone is bordered by the South China Sea, had indeed showed blips that looked like slow-moving, low-flying aircraft-like helicopters. American artillerymen had also reported sighting a series of strange moving lights near the Ben Hai River, the dividing line between North and South Viet Nam. Artillery and aircraft promptly opened fire on the targets and the blips disappeared...
...maximum range of about seven miles, gunners are lucky if they hit within 400 yards of their target-but the lack of accuracy, if anything, enhances their terrorist effect. Despite allied ground and air patrols and radar-guided counterbattery fire, the Communists have thrown almost 400 rocket and mortar rounds at the capital since early May. The gunners have rarely been caught; last week, when 12,000 U.S. and Vietnamese troops fanned out to sterilize the rocket belt, they found little besides scarred firing positions and a few unlaunched missiles, some ingeniously cached in submerged sampans...