Word: outposts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...city, there was cloying uncertainty beneath a merciless summer sun. The familiar guns booming at twilight, the usual outpost skirmishes conveyed new menace to Hanoi's 300,000 people and the 100,000 refugees who poured in around them. About 20,000 Vietnamese have already left for Saigon, and 120 fly out every day (Air Viet Nam space is filled up for all July). Refugees from fallen Namdinh crowded aboard buses for Haiphong in the second phase of their exodus...
...show that man has ever sailed over it, but sometimes an encrusted object looks somehow suspicious to Diolé's well-educated eye. Diolé investigates. He finds a chunk of Carrara marble or a graceful jar that was intended to carry syrupy wine to some homesick outpost near the Pillars of Hercules. Or he finds a forgotten concrete jetty built by Roman engineers to protect the harbor of a busy city that is now a fishing village...
...guerrillas in the delta had been strong enough to dig trenches and lay mines across vital Route Coloniale 5-Hanoi's only main road link with its supply port, Haiphong. Last week some 2,000 Communists stormed a French battalion position 36 miles from Hanoi and a Vietnamese outpost less than seven miles from the city...
...three desperate counterattacks. But Giap mostly held his gains, then sent in his Red reserves to clinch the battle. De Castries had only one remaining 105-mm. howitzer, one 155-mm. field gun. His tanks were wrecked or embedded in the mud. His ammunition was all but gone. One outpost commander phoned De Castries: "We can keep on fighting for only ten more minutes. Should we surrender?" De Castries snapped back: "Keep on fighting for ten more minutes...
Only from Isabelle came bright news. As the Reds swarmed across one outpost, some Foreign Legionnaires went underground. From their dugouts they fought up towards the flarelight; it was hand-to-hand work with knives, grenades, the bayonet. At 0400, two Legion battalions counterattacked. It took them twelve hours to drive Giap's men out of Isabelle...