Word: battalions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...rained on their parade, but for the 814 men of the 9th Division's 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry, it was Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July combined. Each man had served at least ten months in Viet Nam, and theirs was the first unit to be shipped home since President Nixon's June 8 announcement at Midway that 25,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn this summer. Last week they flew in nine C-141 StarLifter transports to McChord Air Force Base in Washington. As bystanders clapped and called out "Thank you! Thank you!" they paraded proudly...
Plastic Leis. Just before leaving Viet Nam, the 3rd Battalion stood through an elaborate three-hour send-off ceremony on the baking tarmac at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airbase. A gaggle of aodai-clad Vietnamese girls pranced out to drape them with plastic leis and give each of the departing troops the country's yellow and red flag with a two-foot pedestal. Defense Minister Nguyen Van Vy spoke his gratitude at length-in Vietnamese, later translated. The U.S. commander, General Creighton Abrams, offered his congratulations: "You have fought well under some of the most arduous...
...ensuing siege strained relations between the South Vietnamese and the American battalion at Dak To. As support troops, the U.S. engineers and artillerymen were counting on the South Vietnamese to provide the security force for their base. But Lien refused. As a result, the Americans had to do double duty guarding their own perimeter, leaving the gun crews and work teams overworked and exhausted...
...Gray Area. President Nixon moved to counter such criticism, sending one of his top advisers to brief the press. There had been, said the adviser in a background session, no significant (meaning not more than 10%) increase in battalion-size operations. Continuing high U.S. casualty totals in Viet Nam were the result, rather, of continued Communist offensives. Though admitting that figures on U.S. military operations in Viet Nam have always been of an "illusionary nature," he nonetheless cited some. In a typical week, when 35 to 40 enemy attacks are launched, some 150 to 200 Americans are likely...
True enough, say the military, the number of battalion-and brigade-size sweeps against the enemy has not increased since the peace talks started. But they insist with pride that overall pressure on the Communists has increased-in the form of many more smaller-scale actions. Abrams has found that forays by sub-battalion-size units -companies, platoons, even squads -can be mounted more quickly, more often and in more places. Such surprise sweeps also achieve better results. Thus the general's sting-ray tactics, designed to interdict the movement of North Vietnamese units and supplies, involve the same...