Word: quangngai
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...establishment cannot be rated as anything better than middling. After all, it has neither won nor approached victory in eleven years of existence. Many units break and run in battle, as did the 39th Ranger Battalion earlier this year. The 39th became known as "the roadrunners." But during the Quangngai fight "the roadrunners" stood their ground on a conical hill called Nuitran. There 108 of them were wiped out, erasing in the process the slur on their battalion's name...
...their failings, the South Vietnamese are still killing nearly three Viet Cong for every loss of their own (see chart). And despite the grim headlines about Quangngai and Dongxoai, the Reds have yet to capture and hold a district or provincial capital for more than a few hours. What South Viet Nam's fighting men need is relief, however momentary, to shed the fatigue and despair of too much combat. Only the U.S. and its allies can provide that respite. When they do, the leadership and combativeness exemplified by Corporal Tu and Laughing Larry Luong, Major Cuong and Lieut...
...sound and fury, the military problem stood foremost. The air support that saved the day at Quangngai and Binhchanh cannot be counted on in the rainy weeks ahead, when monsoonal cloud ceilings will touch the roof of the highland jungles. For much of each day during the next few months it will be a ground war, with the weather favoring the hit-and-run tactics of the lightly equipped Communists. With the rains beginning in South Viet Nam, small streams are already swelling into muddy torrents that will soon wash out bridges and roads...
...Viet Cong - numbering nearly 1,000 - started slowly, by ambushing a single battalion engaged in a routine roadclearing operation. Then, as relief convoys dashed out of Quangngai, the Reds snapped ever-fiercer traps on the would-be rescuers. It was the same trick-in the same place-that had destroyed several French regiments in 1953, just a year before Dienbienphu. Some of the ambushed government soldiers panicked, ripping off their uniforms and throwing away their weapons to hide out in hamlets and paddyfields. Those who surrendered received no mercy: many were found shot through the head and disemboweled...
...Communist intent was clearly to capture Quangngai, the provisional capital. And well they might have-except for a hot dose of U.S. airpower. The handful of government reserves held tight in Quangngai as a Red barrage from mortars, recoilless rifles and howitzers thundered against the Bagia redoubt. Reports from a detachment of montagnard mercenaries, who bravely scouted the area on bicycles, showed that the Viet Cong were less than a mile from the town. In the dark before dawn, monsoon clouds hung wet and heavy over Quangngai, but there was just enough room for a flight of C-123 "flareships...