Word: pleiku
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Like some ponderous snake, the long convoy labored up the steep switchbacks on Route 19. Guards nervously rode rifle atop every truck. Three hours out of coastal Qui Nhon, the vehicles pulled into Mang Yang pass-favorite ambush point for the Viet Cong on the 100-mile highway to Pleiku. Along the edge of the narrow road were massive craters. To clear the V.C. from the pass, high-flying B-52s from Guam had blasted Mang Yang with bombs the night before. Once past the pass, the guards relaxed, and the convoy-the first since the end of May-rolled...
...months the Viet Cong and troops from North Viet Nam have been massing on the plateau, and except for a handful of strongly fortified district villages, and the province towns of Pleiku, Kontum and Ban Me Thuot, they still range at will through the mountainous countryside. Since the Viet Cong blew out three of Route 19's bridges some six weeks ago, the highlands' vital western tier of towns was accessible only by air. Despite an airlift that brought hundreds of tons a week into Pleiku, supplies were growing critically short when Saigon decided that Route...
llyushins for Hanoi. Barely had the shock of the disaster worn off than the Viet Cong struck again-this time at Lethanh, a district capital in mountainous Pleiku province. In the initial assault, the Reds overran the town, held it for three hours while other Viet Cong units ambushed three relief convoys in succession at almost the same spot on the highway. The toll: 106 government soldiers dead, 20 wounded or missing. Other Viet Cong traps clanged shut near Kontum and Quin-hon, and a full battalion of Reds struck the town of Binhchanh, just ten miles west of Saigon...
When the news came after Pleiku, I can tell you that the whole mind and outlook of Southeast Asia changed overnight...
Earlier this year, the Viet Cong swept into Hoa Hoi hamlet in Binh Dinh province, burned 185 civilian homes, destroyed the inhabitants' personal belongings. In Long An, Viet Cong mines blew up three buses, killing eleven civilians. In Pleiku province, a Viet Cong company took over a hamlet and murdered ten members of the council...