Word: starlighters
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...Robert Resseguie, 25, a native of Madison, N.J., and a former Peace Corps worker in Thailand. He is now an assistant AID representative in Quang Ngai province, 300 miles northeast of Saigon. After the U.S. Marines had cleared an area of Viet Cong in last summer's Operation Starlight, Resseguie led nearly 20,000 refugees back to their deserted homes, helped provide them with food and building material. Unfortunately, as soon as Starlight winked out, the V.C. winked back inan evidence of ineffective follow-through that has plagued pacification efforts all along...
...they were sent into their first major battle. On a peninsula below Chu Lai, 5,000 marines, aided by rocket-firing Cobra helicopters, jet fighters and naval guns from Task Force 77, killed close to 700 guerrillas. But this, they soon learned, was Viet Nam. No sooner did Operation Starlight end, said an exasperated officer, than the surviving Viet Cong "seeped back in like water through...
...until the Communists began concentrating troops in the Central Highlands was there another battle of Starlight's scope. Worried that their supply routes might be in danger, 6,000 Viet Minh and Viet Cong on Oct. 19 pounced on a Special Forces camp manned by 400 montagnard tribesmen and twelve U.S. advisers at Plei Me, near where the Ho Chi Minh trail snakes out of Laos and Cambodia into South Viet Nam. But for 600 sorties that littered...
...once was a rare day when more than a handful of Viet Cong weapons was left on a battlefield, but of late the V.C. have become quite untidy: Operation Starlight netted 614 dead V.C. and 109 weapons. More recently, Vietnamese troops killed 34 of the enemy-and captured 34 weapons-on an operation. Government figures showing a 300% increase in the number of Viet Cong defecting under the "open arms" amnesty program may be exaggerated, but the curve is definitely...
...battle left the Americans with much to be encouraged about. In the past two weeks, the V.C. had suffered the most staggering casualty toll since they started the war: more than 2,100 dead, another 200 captured and an estimated 3,600 wounded. Moreover, Operation Starlight proved that by combining accurate intelligence reports, fast planning and careful selection of where and when to fight, the U.S. can more than hold its own in Viet...