Word: 101st
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...until eventually it required 24,000 men. But it was not until last March, when the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade of 3,500 men swarmed ashore at Danang, that the first U.S. combat troops entered the fray. Like the 7,500 men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and the 101st Airborne's Danang 1st Brigade that soon followed, the marines' first assignment was defensive: creating a protective enclosure around bustling Danang airbase and harbor. The 173rd was thrown around Bien Hoa airbase, together with the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division-the Big Red One-which arrived...
...Viet Cong in fire fights from Chu Lai to An Khe. The 34,000 marines in Viet Nam boast a 5-1 kill ratio over the enemy, have spread their original beachhead until now they control 400 sq. mi. of territory. When a bad bit of intelligence unloaded the 101st Screaming Eagles from their helicopters right into a battalion of Viet Cong near An Khe, the Eagles fought hand-to-mortar until the field was theirs. Soon the increasing aggressiveness of American ground troops everywhere was adding yet another dimension of fear and uncertainty for the V.C., already long harassed...
...Near An Khe, a patrol from the U.S. 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles" nabbed a Viet Cong, who fingered his home base in a nearby, boxlike valley. The 101st promptly ringed the Viet Cong on three sides of the valley, while 2nd Battalion Commander Colonel Wilfred Smith flew his three companies into the valley's portal by helicopter to close the trap. Trouble was, the dried-up quilt of rice paddies chosen for landing was hard by the V.C. camp. So the Screaming Eagles got the hot welcome of a Viet Cong battalion. "I've hit a buzz...
...First Team had barely arrived last week when it got its chance to do just that. Eleven miles north of An Khe, the U.S. 101st Airborne was clearing an area when it came upon an unusually stubborn-and large-band of guerrillas. Out went a radio call for help. In response, nearly 100 rocket-firing choppers from the First Team raced to the scene in the best cavalry tradition, and six of the division's 105-mm. howitzers were airlifted into firing range...
...sheer ebullience of that cry, tinged as it was with eagerness and naivete, was both sad and stirring. As the 101st's former commander-Ambassador Maxwell Taylor-was quick to point out, it will take far more than fighting spirit for the U.S. to succeed in Viet Nam. Hovering over the bay in a helicopter prior to his final departure for Washington, Taylor watched his old outfit land, then issued a soldierly warning. The Communist Viet Cong, he said, is "an enemy who is shrewd, well-trained, and with the guile of the American Indian during his best days...