Word: quang
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...visit to the refugee camps, and we visited them around Saigon, in Hue, most intensively in the city of Quang Ngai, a visit to these camps brought out one thing which I had not quite been prepared for. As you walked through the camp, looking around, smiling at people, greeting people, children run around your legs as children will anyplace in the world, having great fun. Even the women might smile back when you greet them. However, from the men, regardless what their age was, we got a very sullen stare in response...
What was interesting to recognize, though, is that these free fire zones started just a few kilometers down the road from the major cities. The free fire zone outside Quang Ngai was just eight or ten kilometers from the city center. What this meant is that peasants working out in the field were regularly subjected to firing, to bombing, to harrassment. All night long as we lay in our beds at Quang Ngai, we could hear the mortars and artillery and the helicopters raining down their terror on different parts of the countryside. And in the morning the results were...
Whether the NVA masses will ever at tack Khe Sanh became a matter of growing doubt and deepening divisions. Some ranking officers wondered if the enemy buildup there was only a diversion for the urban offensive further south or for a bypass thrust at Quang Tri or Danang. There was also a dawning realization that, for all President Johnson's warning against another Dienbienphu, Khe Sanh could be overrun by overwhelming human-wave attacks. A top U.S. general in Saigon reckoned that the base could be taken by 25,000 men in concerted assaults, "but a hell...
...defense line, the barrier that U.S. forces have sought to string from the sea below the DMZ to the Laotian border. It now blocks off the easiest supply line that Giap has into South Viet Nam. By taking Khe Sanh, the Communists would outflank all the allied forces in Quang Tri province and part of Thua Thien province as well, probably forcing a fallback to a new defense line?perhaps as far back at Hué. As Giap well knows, Khe Sanh has become almost as vital symbolically as it is militarily; a Communist victory there would have immense propaganda...
Guerrilla Guides. In the An Quang Buddhist pagoda, the Communists set up a fully equipped command post for the attack. Shortly after midnight, the raiders assembled in units ranging from small suicide squads to well-armed company-size teams, and were led to their targets by local Communist guides. Some were dressed in neat, white button-down shirts and khakis, others in parts of ARVN uniforms or ragtag sports clothes. Dark clouds hung over the city, and only an occasional Jeep moved quickly through the eerie silence. Warned to expect something through captured enemy documents, military police had donned flak...