Word: trailingly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rainy season around May 1. After the assault on Tchepone, it was expected that Lam Son's troops would exercise an "option" to drive to a key junction ten miles to the southeast. There they were to have sliced up Route 914, an important and still intact trail route; disrupted Base Area 611, a key enemy supply depot; and swept home via the A Shau Valley, a longtime Communist strongpoint. What happened...
...government had charged Calley with premeditated murder of not less than 30 Vietnamese along a trail in My Lai and of more than 70 villagers in a drainage ditch just east of the small hamlet. The jury found him guilty on both counts, but reduced the number of victims to not less than one in the first incident and not less than 20 in the second...
...blackboard-crisp terms favored by its Pentagon planners, the Laotian operation is deep into its third and final phase. Having slashed across some tendrils of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and choppered into Tchepone, South Viet Nam's troops are beginning to pull back to the border. As the withdrawal gathered speed last week, the question was increasingly asked: Was it worth it? The answer will not be known in full until the operation is over, but it can be partly determined by comparing the ARVN struggle in Laos with the invasion's original goals...
Spoiling the Communist infiltration routes was only one duty assigned to the ARVN troops sent into Laos. Another important, though unstated task was to draw much larger North Vietnamese forces into massing along the trail so that they could then be hammered by U.S. airpower. For obvious reasons, neither Washington nor Saigon has greatly stressed that a key feature of Lam Son was to use ARVN as bait in order to kill North Vietnamese troops...
...past, notably during Tet 1968. Even if Lam Son has slowed the Communist supply effort, it has done so only temporarily. If South Vietnamese forces do stay in Laos until mid-April, the Communists will still have several weeks to recoup before the monsoon completely closes the trail. To win this temporary advantage, the allies have paid dearly. Though the U.S. toll has been relatively light-69 dead or missing, 64 wounded, 73 helicopters destroyed-the South Vietnamese suffered considerable casualties. Saigon admits to 918 ARVN dead, but unofficial estimates put the toll closer to 2,000 crack troops dead...