Word: mortars
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...Home. The fighting itself continued intensely and inconclusively. Sixty miles northwest of the capital, the Viet Cong poured a terrifying 150 rounds of mortar and recoillessrifle fire into the lonely outpost of Bauco, then overran two of its three blockhouses. Of the 60 defenders, 18 died, 21 were wounded and 21 captured. Also found sprawled dead within the post: 16 women and children. The government chased the attackers in an operation involving 3,000 men, but the guerrillas vanished. Five more Americans apparently lost their lives -a sergeant shot in an ambush and four airmen aboard an RB-26 that...
...Ducking under watchtowers bristling with machine guns and floodlights, the Reds knifed a sentry, forded a three-foot-deep moat, snipped three barbed-wire fences, and slipped into the compound-evidently in collusion with a spy inside, who unlocked the gate. Then, while guerrillas outside opened up with a mortar barrage, the infiltrators attacked to the blast of a bugle...
Abruptly, at 9:45 p.m., the barrage began-first against the palace guard barracks, where a mortar and artillery attack went on for hours. When it came time for the big push on the palace itself, there was a danger that Vietnamese and American families who lived in an adjacent residential neighborhood would be hit by shells. So, well after midnight, a force of 18 tanks supported by armored cars and 600 foot soldiers went through a complicated maneuver that brought them circuitously to the palace grounds...
Tight Smiles. Hemmed in by five sniffling children who always seem to be "passing the family cold sloppily among them" and a mother-in-law "with a voice like a trench mortar," Bert feels his boredom growing "wantonly, insanely; every week it flung another wet arm around him." As boredom grows, faith recedes, and guilt closes in on Bert like a summer fog. He sits before his typewriter starting sentences he never finishes ("Where pagans go wrong is that . . ."; "Christmas, as Chesterton once put it . . ."). The rejection slips pile up. Whenever Bert tries to explain his trial of faith...
Guarding the Strong Room. The crisis was triggered by Indonesia's puffy, demagogic President Sukarno, who has sworn to crush Malaysia at all costs. On the Sarawak frontier, an Indonesian mortar company lobbed shells across the border. Deepening Indonesia's quarrel with Britain, which is pledged to defend Malaysia, government troops in Djakarta barred British diplomats from entering their embassy, gutted fortnight ago by an unchecked mob. The guards even tried to break into the embassy's fireproof code room until they were stopped by tough, stocky Ambassador Andrew Gilchrist, who forced his way into the embassy...