Word: quinhon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...mounted in fury last week, the Viet Cong were moving closer and closer to control of the whole top third of South Viet Nam. An atmosphere of siege prevailed in Hue, South Viet Nam's third largest city, where the population dared not leave the city limits. From Quinhon to the 17th parallel, the countryside swarmed with cocky Viet Cong units-some operating in battalion and regiment strength, many now openly wearing olive-drab uniforms and fatigue hats rather than the civilian-style black "pajamas" that once gave them military invisibility...
...Operating in battalion-strength units, the Communists hacked away at two important highways: Route 1, the embattled north-south road that the French called La Rue sans Joie (Street Without Joy), and Route 19, which links Pleiku in the central plateau with the seaport staging base of Quinhon. Controlling all of Route 19 from Pleiku to within 20 miles of Quinhon, the Viet Cong pinned down a company of South Vietnamese Rangers and U.S. Special Forces advisers at Mangyang Pass. The Rangers were rescued by helicopter only after two U.S. jet strikes had scraped the Communist attackers off the surrounding...
...White Paper convincingly demonstrates the tight control exercised by Hanoi over the war in South Viet Nam. It does not trace specific attacks like those at Pleiku and Quinhon directly back to Hanoi, but there is little doubt that Ho Chi Minh and his North Vietnamese aides approved them. As the report summarizes: "The government in Saigon and the Government of the United States both hoped that the danger could be met within South Viet Nam itself. The leaders in Hanoi chose to respond with greater violence. Clearly the restraint of the past was not providing adequately for the defense...
...security against future Viet Cong attacks. But it is doubtful whether anything approaching real security can be achieved in a guerrilla war. "I don't believe it will ever be possible to protect our forces against sneak attacks of that kind," said Defense Secretary McNamara after Pleiku. Quinhon occurred despite stringently tightened security, including U.S. sentries patrolling the hotel's roof...
...guard those installations adequately. By another reckoning, a big airfield like Danang would require a 17½-mile perimeter to keep it out of the range of 81-mm. mortars; a full U.S. division would be required for the job. Lacking such manpower, U.S. troops are improvising. At Quinhon's airstrip, officers and enlisted men alike have begun hiring rugged Mung tribesmen for $5 a month-paid out of their own pockets-for sentry duty. Such an arrangement is hardly S.O.P. for the Army, but in South Viet Nam, as one Defense Department official puts it, "there...