Word: drang
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...just a year ago that the Communist command resolved to test the newly landed U.S. troops. The result was the siege of Plei Me and the ensuing battle of la Drang Valley, which were resounding defeats for the Reds. Historian Bernard Fall suggested recently that these defeats may well be considered by future historians "the First Battle of the Marne of the Vietnamese War," recollecting that "the Battle of the Marne in September 1914 halted the seemingly irresistible onslaught of the Kaiser and thus foreclosed the possibility of an immediate end of the war through the collapse of the French...
...tactic of leap and smash was perfected in 53 major operations-more than one a week-that ranged from the la Drang Valley ("the Valley of Death," as the division remembers it) to the Bong Son Plains, hard by the South China Sea. Its 430 choppers, flying from a carefully cropped launch pad outside An Khe, have carried men and whole batteries of snub-nosed 105s and 155s into places no one would have imagined. The Air Cav's noisy "gunships" have developed to a fine art the use of their rocket artillery in close support of the heliborne...
...afternoon the 26-man platoon was airlifted to a tiny landing zone in the northern Ia Drang Valley near the Cambodian border, where a North Vietnamese regiment had been spotted. No sooner had four of the six choppers unloaded than an enemy ambush opened up from the surrounding jungle. Most of the men were cut down in their tracks. Three overran one enemy machine-gun nest, only to be chopped up by another. "Sergeant Shockey," the platoon's first sergeant called out, "the commander's dead, and I'm dying. Take over the platoon." Moments later, Sergeant...
...open arms) amnesty program are running at a record 1,000 a month-and some 25% of them are officers. Above all, the massive infusion of U.S. troops, now some 275,000 strong, has taken the initiative away from the enemy. Not since the bloody battle of la Drang last November, when the U.S. 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) destroyed 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, have Communist troops ventured out in regimental strength to do battle of their own choosing...
...losses were far higher, owing in large part to the 1st Air Cav's helicoptered artillery, rocket-firing choppers and tactical air support. Giap's men finally broke and ran, and the 1st Air Cav relentlessly pursued them in a campaign culminating in the battle of la Drang Valley, where the slaughter of 2,262 of his men was a hideous revelation to Giap of the new kind of war and enemy that he faced...