Word: rangers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sprinted out onto the oil-soaked pad. Zipped into his brown flame-resistant flight suit, he had already scrambled into the front seat of his Cobra by the time Copilot Ronald Lee Walters, 22, clambered into the rear. Within two minutes the Cobra was bound for Fire Base Ranger on a hilltop eight miles inside Laos, where South Vietnamese troops were trying to fight off a North Vietnamese attack...
...main South Vietnamese force of 10,000 troops and 100 tanks and armored personnel carriers sat immobile barely 15 miles inside Laos on jungle-bordered Route 9. Out on the flanks, where elite airborne and ranger units clung to rugged hilltop fire bases, Communist toops launched a series of furious assaults. First blood was drawn at an outpost about 14 miles inside Laos, where the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) 39th Ranger battalion held out valiantly against a North Vietnamese force of regimental strength for three days before abandoning its positions. By the time the survivors...
...report major South Vietnamese operations in Laos. Officially, their only source of information is briefings by U.S. and South Vietnamese officers. U.S. helicopter pilots have been forbidden to carry correspondents into Laos. And when some American flyers leaked word to newsmen last week about an embattled South Vietnamese Ranger battalion, they were promptly prevented from having further conversations with correspondents. The pilots' operations center at Khe Sanh is now ringed with barbed wire and guarded by gruff MPs, who are under strict orders to keep all civilians...
...need for firsthand reporting from Laos is pressing-especially in light of the longstanding unreliability of South Vietnamese military communiqués. Last week the Ranger battalion's losses were classified as "light," only to be revealed three days later as 100 killed, 145 wounded and 78 missing. South Viet Nam claimed a victory nonetheless, citing 623 North Vietnamese killed. U.S. reports were also suspect, and some information officers were openly scornful of what was being pumped out to the press. "There can't be a credibility gap," scoffed one, "when there's no credibility...
...base is five miles from a point where a South Vietnamese ranger base was overrun last weekend with severe losses to the defenders...