Word: outpost
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Vietnamese displayed fresh aggressiveness of their own. They once again attacked the Special Forces camp of Bu Dop, three miles from the Cambodian border, but were beaten off by 1st Infantry Division soldiers. North Vietnamese artillery and mortar units poured the heaviest fire on the U.S. Marine Demilitarized Zone outpost of Con Thien in more than a month-276 rounds in a single day. The U.S. also was monitoring a heavy buildup in Communist traffic coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos toward South Viet...
...U.S.S. Benewah, flagship of River Flotilla 1 anchored off the Delta, to pass out Purple Hearts and news from home. "Who won the Minne sota-Michigan game?" asked a Minnesota sailor. "We took them 20 to 15," grinned Old Gopher Humphrey. Jetting up to Phu Bai, a small Marine outpost near the embattled DMZ, he boarded a transport plane for a look at Con Thien and Dong Ha. Circling at 1,500 feet, he Watched Marine artillery fire slam the Communist positions hidden among the craters ("Just like Minnesota," he said, pointing to the thousands of rain-filled shell holes...
...Vietnamese, the name means approximately "place of angels." To the 1,200 U.S. Marines guarding it and to Americans watching their ordeal, Con Thien has come to mean something more akin to hell. Since Sept. 1, the outpost, less than two miles from the southern edge of the six-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Viet Nams, has been under relentless bombardment from Communist guns. In one barrage last week, the Communists sent 903 artillery, mortar, rocket and recoilless-rifle shells whistling into the perimeter around Con Thien's three barren, red clay hills-probably the greatest...
...night the Communist artillery eases up, and the 5,000 North Vietnamese troops surrounding the Con Thien area become active. They probe the outpost's defenses, shove bamboo bangalore torpedoes under the barbed wire to breach the perimeter, and unleash mortar and recoilless-rifle
...artillery bombardments have left the three red hills of Con Thien a crater-pocked moonscape. Monsoon rains, a month ahead of their normal mid-October arrival, have churned the outpost into a quagmire reminiscent of Ypres in World War I. Everything must be brought into the outpost by helicopter to a landing zone grimly known as "Death Valley," or over the unpaved road from Cam Lo. Everything rots or mildews. The Marines at Con Thien live on C rations. Because water is scarce, they shave only every other day and can seldom wash...