Word: mortars
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Danang's 25-mile perimeter is patrolled by the so-called "Special Sector," made up of Vietnamese Rangers and U.S. Special Forces, which on two occasions in the past month has surprised Viet Cong units within mortar range of the airstrip. Last week one flustered patrol reported "enemy" activity, and Danang's artillery opened up-on a herd of 15 wild elephants...
...rate of at least 1,000 men a month, Johnson did nothing. Twice the Viet Cong struck directly at U.S. personnel, and twice they got away with it. Two days before the U.S. presidential election, guerrillas killed five Americans, wounded 76, and destroyed six B57 bombers with a savage mortar barrage against South Viet Nam's Bienhoa Airfield. Last Christmas Eve, a plastic charge demolished Saigon's Brink Hotel, a big officers' billet, killing two Americans and wounding 98 others. Both times U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor pleaded for a retaliatory strike at the North. Both times...
...week-long lull in the war while Vietnamese celebrated the lunar New Year. As the Year of the Dragon went out and the Year of the Snake came in, the Viet Cong had unilaterally proclaimed a seven-day ceasefire. They spent that period busily caching explosives and setting up mortar positions near the central highlands town of Pleiku, 240 miles northeast of Saigon. As headquarters of South Viet Nam's II Army Corps and site of a U.S.-run airstrip at nearby Camp Holloway, Pleiku was a tempting target...
...airstrip, cut through a double apron of barbed wire without being seen by guards, began blowing up parked helicopters and light reconnaissance planes with satchel charges. At the same time, guerrillas hiding in a hamlet 1,000 yds. from the camp poured 55 rounds from 81-mm. mortars smack into the compound where 400 U.S. advisers lived. They were right on target. Fifty-two billets were damaged, including some totally destroyed. In one, Cartoonist Bill Mauldin, who happened to be in Pleiku visiting his son Bruce, a 21-year-old U.S. Army warrant officer, leaped up at the first mortar...
...reinforce Bounleut. His troops were scattered by "yellow" artillery fire with a loss of three dead. Phoumi Nosavan then appeared in the capital in full battle dress, announced that unless Kouprasith ended his siege of Bounleut, he would unleash Siho's police. Kouprasith answered with an artillery and mortar barrage, whereupon Bounleut and his men switched sides, exchanging their blue kerchiefs for yellow...