Word: tuong
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...Quang Nam's mayor was something special too. Slight, gaunt of face behind a thick mustache, Ngo Tuong, 49, was a Popular Forces soldier who had come back home to serve as mayor only last month. Tuong liked to wear a black beret and a camouflage suit in making the rounds of his constituency, was both efficient and remarkably honest. Though he carried a pistol, he disdained a regular Marine guard detail, rightly judging that it would not sit well with his villagers. Anyway, there seemed little danger. Ap Quang Nam had been so thoroughly pacified after the marines...
Suddenly two Viet Cong, who had slipped into the village the night before and hidden in a nearby house, burst in on the 40 worshipers. One fired a Czech burp gun, instantly killing the two officiating priests and Tuong's aunt, and hitting Tuong in the shoulder. Unable to draw his pistol, Tuong ran. A second burst cut him down in mid-courtyard. As so often happens in the terrorist war, the two assassins escaped in the confusion. In angry frustration, Tuong's nephew seized a long knife, raced next door and stabbed to death...
...marines' death toll, although the heaviest yet suffered by any U.S. unit in Viet Nam, was less than 1% of the attacking forces. In all, some 50 marines were killed in the battle for Van Tuong, and another 150 wounded. And, reported one marine commander, "nearly 75% of them were shot in the back" from hidden V.C. positions they had passed without seeing...
Walking Bushes. But the worst was still to come. Less than a mile ahead, directly in the path of Hotel Company, lay the Viet Cong regimental headquarters, just outside the Van Tuong village complex. As the Americans most of them under 20−advanced, they ran into an almost endless tangle of V.C. entrenchments: blockhouses, concrete bunkers, fortified hedgerows and tunnels. "They were all over the place," said one squad leader, "but we couldn't see them due to their camouflage. They had full-sized bushes tied to their backs...
...bitter, bright light of flares fired from the U.S. warships offshore, the battle for Van Tuong continued all through the night. One V.C. company tried to scramble down the cliffs and escape by sea, only to be blown to pieces by the Galveston's guns. Another company tried to break through to the west and was burned to ash by napalm. Finally, shortly after dawn, the leathernecks smashed the Van Tuong stronghold and slogged ahead toward their final goal, the beaches at the eastern end of the peninsula...