Word: shau
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...North Vietnamese attack aimed at overrunning the U.S. Marine supply base of Dong Ha and fought a series of major battles around the city of Hue. In western I Corps, an allied force slashed through the North Vietnamese army's longtime sanctuary and storehouse in the A Shau Valley...
Heart of Hué. Some 25 miles to the southwest of Hue lies the A Shau Valley, a lush, weird world of fogs and swirling mists during ten months of the year. Some 25 miles long, the valley floor is 2,000 ft. above sea level. The jagged, spiny peaks on either side rise 5,000 ft. to 6,000 ft. and are covered with a triple-canopy jungle 100 ft. tall. Ever since a U.S. Special Forces camp was overrun in the valley in March of 1966, only furtive U.S. reconnaissance patrols have set foot in it. The North...
...North Vietnamese had fortified the hills of A Shau with hidden antiaircraft guns, some of them radar-controlled and able to hit a plane at 20,000 ft. Using Russian-made bulldozers, they had widened the old French road running down the valley center, Route 548, to six lanes, and built a brand-new road called 547A that branched off from another road, Route 547, and emerged from the valley aimed straight at the heart of Hue. Such passable weather as A Shau ever knows comes in April and May, and three weeks ago, under the tightest secrecy...
...except for the continuing murderous antiaircraft fire, which continued to claim U.S. helicopters, A Shau proved to be lightly defended on the ground. The men of North Viet Nam's 559th Supply and Transportation Regiment did not put up much of a fight, retreating into the hills. Steady allied advance over the valley floor became a treasure hunt for the enormous caches of hardware that the Communists had to leave behind when they fled. It included Soviet tanks, trucks and bulldozers, vast quantities of rockets, mortars, artillery, small arms, flamethrowers, gas masks-and enough electronic equipment and tapes...
Whether the allied force of some 12,000 men would attempt to root out the North Vietnamese gunners dug into the hills above them remained to be seen. But, in any case, the allies are not likely to elect to stay in A Shau, given the weather and the number of men who would be tied down in de fending it. Instead, Operation Delaware aimed to even an old score for the men of the Special Forces who fell there in 1966-and to destroy all the equipment and tools of war the Communists have so painstakingly assembled...