Word: trailingly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There was every indication that for the South Vietnamese, it was only a pause. At least one and perhaps two cross-border thrusts aimed at immobilizing the Ho Chi Minh Trail seemed imminent. One obvious target lay right down Route 9?Tchepone, a Communist staging area and a key control point for the Ho Chi Minh Trail 25 miles inside the Laotian panhandle. A second possibility was that ARVN troops would be helicoptered to the mountainous Bolovens Plateau, which forms the western flank of the trail. Their likely objective: Attopeu and Saravane, two Laotian river towns captured last spring...
Since the Cambodian port of Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville) was closed to them last spring, the Communists have had to rely solely on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move men and supplies down to South Viet Nam and Cambodia. With the advent of the dry season, they have made fuller use of the trail than ever before (see box. page 28). American commanders have longed to cut the trail ever since the U.S. entered the war. Contingency plans providing for everything from hit-and-run attacks to a permanent troop barrier across the route were drawn...
...Danang. But MACV asserted that it also posed a "serious threat" to U.S. troop withdrawals and that a "preemptive offensive" was planned with "limited objectives." Few reporters in Saigon doubted that the jargon was a verbal screen for a direct ARVN assault on the Ho Chi Minh Trail...
...weeks as many as 1,000 South Vietnamese rangers had been probing deep into the panhandle to size up the task of taking on the trail. Moreover, for some time, 3,500 mercenaries known as Jungle Tigers and trained in Laos by the CIA have been venturing occasionally into the trail area and Communist supply depots in northern Cambodia...
...present, Indochina's three main combat areas are in mixed condition: LAOS. As the struggle over the Ho Chi Minh Trail heated up, so did the "forgotten war" in Laos, where some 65,000 Royal Lao troops and Meo tribesmen have fought a seesaw seasonal struggle for almost a quarter of a century. Traditionally, the non-Communist forces have gained ground during the monsoons, when the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese regulars in Laos are unable to move supplies. With the arrival of the current dry season, it was the Communists' turn to advance, as usual. The 80,000 Communist...