Word: riflemen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Scornfully nominated last week for its worst Busters were the unknown riflemen who last summer slaughtered more than 100 sea lions on California's Santa Barbara Island, then bravely blew up the unattended ranger station. Second award went to the unidentified vandals who, late last fall in the Cascades, demolished George Tanner's parked Volkswagen while he lay dying of cold and exposure a few hundred yards away...
...their own revised version of the guerrilla-warfare manual that Communists from Havana to Hanoi had long regarded as holy writ. With stupendous firepower and mobility undreamed of even a decade ago, U.S. strike forces swooped into guerrilla redoubts long considered impenetrable. Like clouds of giant dragonflies, helicopters hauled riflemen and heavy artillery from base to battlefield in minutes, giving them the advantages of surprise and flexibility. Tactical air strikes scraped guerrillas off jungled ridges, buried them in mazelike tunnels, or kept them forever on the run. Unheard from the ground, giant B-52s of the Strategic Air Command pattern...
Among the riflemen were lots of would-be Wyatt Earps, backed up by 300 impatient gunners of a U.S. artillery battalion. But so far, there was not a sign that the Viet Cong would test their perimeter, and through the long, hot days the troops were getting bored. As a precaution they were digging their foxholes a little bit deeper. As one paratrooper put it: "The longer we stay here, the more of a target we become...
Mortar and howitzer shells crunched into military compounds, while Viet Cong riflemen, clad only in khaki shorts, swept into the heart of the village. Setting up machine guns and 57-mm. recoilless rifles on an open helicopter pad, they slashed at the barracks, mess halls and headquarters of the Songbe garrison. Said one American survivor: "It looked like the Fourth of July." Five Communists slipped through the perimeter beyond the U.S. compound, but four were gunned down. One managed to reach the mess hall and flip in a hand grenade. Special Forces Sergeant Horace Young, 34, who was already wounded...
...that riflemen's foxholes were dug and mortar positions neatly sand bagged, the 800 U.S. Marines on Hill 327 overlooking Danang airbase were chafing under guard duty and itching for action. Thus it was with considerable relief that the Marines got word that one company could move out to probe the nearby ridges and ravines. Cautiously the company fanned out in separate platoons to begin a 2½ day search for nesting Viet Cong. The first flush was not long in coming: that night one platoon startled some seven V.C.s, who took off running as the Marines fired after...