Word: search-and-destroy
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Dates: during 1965-1965
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...breakfast time on a jungle road in Viet Nam last week, Dwight Owen killed a Communist and saw dozens of Americans die. On patrol with a 1st Infantry Division search-and-destroy unit in the Iron Triangle 35 miles northwest of Saigon, the gangling (6 ft. 4½ in.) 19-year-old was walking down a path munching his B rations when a Viet Cong .50-cal. machine gun opened fire. Then, from all four sides and above, more machine guns, grenade launchers and snipers' rifles poured lead into the detachment, felling two G.I.s instantly. From a thicket where...
...power merely saved the day at Songbe, it turned the tide completely in the Mekong Delta province of Bac Lieu, 100 miles to the southwest. In a sharply executed "search-and-destroy" operation, U.S. and South Vietnamese planes spotted a concentration of some 600 Viet Cong in a dried-out paddyfield, then pinned them down while government troops were heli-lifted in. Surrounded on three sides, lashed by rockets and napalm, the Communists finally broke and ran. "It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. adviser...