Word: quang
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...ranging from light PT-76s to heavy T-54s of World War II vintage), artillery (up to modern 130-mm. guns with a 19-mile range) and even SA-2 missiles. By week's end, as the northern fighting settled down to a wary probing of defenses around Quang Tri city and Hué, the offensive boiled up in other areas...
...then, some 10,000 North Vietnamese regulars were driving straight through the DMZ into Quang Tri province to join another 20,000 troops already in the area. By Monday, said one awed CINCPAC officer, "it looked like the Rhine River campaign" of World War II. One column drove south along the beaches of the Tonkin Gulf, despite a heavy barrage laid down by U.S. destroyers offshore. Taking advantage of heavy rains and low clouds, which limited air strikes, other units rolled down French-built Highway 1 aboard Soviet-built tanks and trucks towing antiaircraft or artillery pieces...
...delinquents. Considering the ferocity of the initial North Vietnamese barrage, retreat made sense. But it was not sensibly executed. Some units quit the field so quickly that they failed to spike their guns. Many 3rd Division soldiers joined the 50,000 refugees who fled south for sanctuary in Quang...
Single Shot. Inept as the 3rd Division appeared to be, it was a model of discipline by comparison with some of the Regional and Popular Force irregulars in the area, who were little better than gun-happy mobs. South of Quang Tri city, one such mob fired away with giddy abandon for two hours at Communists holding a bridge on Highway 1. When the Communists finally broke and ran, reported TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch, "the South Vietnamese ran off after them, hooting in jubilation-until the Communists turned to fire a few sobering rounds at their pursuers. The troops stopped...
During the first stages of the North Vietnamese offensive, gunfire from the U.S. destroyers that patrol the Tonkin Gulf succeeded in turning back 300 Communist troops from an attempted crossing of the Dong Ha River. Shortly before the Navy became engaged in the battle for Quang Tri province, TIME's Saigon Bureau Chief, Stanley Cloud, was a guest aboard one of those destroyers. There he was able to observe a vital but underreported U.S. contribution...