Word: battalions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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ARVN morale probably reached its nadir in 1965, when the army was losing the equivalent of a battalion a week to the onrushing Communists. From 1965 until last year, most ARVN units were engaged largely in pacification work, while the Americans took over the major combat role. "Naturally," said a U.S. general, "we felt that we could do the job better and faster, and, of course, ARVN worked less and less. Unfortunately, once you imply that a fighting force is second-rate, and treat it that way, it becomes pretty hard to reverse the trend." To G.I.s, South Vietnamese soldiers...
...talked with jet pilots who took him along on their strike missions, with airborne troops who carried him into the A Shau Valley assault that led to Hamburger Hill, with Marines on patrol in the DMZ, with the first black Army general of this war and with a black battalion commander who choppered him into firefights...
...incident, which took place in rolling, heavily jungled country in the Song Chang river valley, 30 miles south of Danang, came to light accidentally. Associated Press Photographer Horst Faas happened to be sitting in Lieut. Colonel Robert C. Bacon's 3rd Battalion headquarters when it occurred. The brief episode spanned less than an hour, and it directly involved six of Company A's 60 men: five fatigued and panicky G.I.s and Lieut. Eugene Shurtz Jr., 26, a green company commander whose basic error, as another officer put it, was that "he tried to reason with the men when...
Early in the battle, Bacon's predecessor as battalion commander, Lieut. Colonel Eli P. Howard Jr., was killed when his helicopter was shot down; seven others died with him, including A.P. Photographer Oliver Noonan. The 3rd Battalion troops, including Alpha Company, set out to fight their way to the crash site. In temperatures that rose to well over 100° F. in the heavy, stale air trapped among the hills, Alpha Company experienced its first violent contact with the enemy, suffering three dead and two wounded in a fierce firefight at the foot of a low hill called...
...thus in closing the Suez Canal, the only practical Soviet naval route to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. The 1967 disaster did, however, produce one advantage for Moscow: the intensive retraining needed by the shattered Egyptian forces enabled the Soviets to penetrate them with instructors, down to battalion and squadron level...