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yjoftiirf fHnrtitiig 5fr 1110 Friday, December 29, 1967 - 3.6Monsoons, Enemy Slowing Down McNamara's Wall'CON THIEN, Vietnam (AP) — U.S. Marine engineers are battling monsoon rains and enemy gunners to build and strengtiien key outposts along the first link of “McNamara’s wall” between the warring Viet* nams.Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara announced plans for the wall last summer.Work is nearing completion on the last of four front-line forts. The forts, backed by a second line of combat support bases, will form the strongpoints of a barrier that eventually will cross the northern rime of South Vietnam with the aim of blocking infiltrating North Vietnamese troops.The wall itself, linking the front-line forts, will consist of razor-sharp barbed wire, mines, radar and seismic devices that record a footstep. Installation if the wire and electronic equipment for 13 miles awaits completion of A3, last of the four forts.. The bulk of 200 mortar and artillery rounds fired daily by North Vietnamese gunners along the demilitarized zone falls on the engineers struggling through the mud to completeA3.At Con Thien, now labeled A4, only five rounds fell during a four-lt;iay period last week, compared to thousands of rounds in September.“They (the enemy artillery-! men) are putting the pressure] on A3; they don’t want it there,” said Lt. Col. Marcus J. fcravel of San Diego, Calif., j Commander of the Marine bat-; talion at Con Thien.: A3, located about halRvay be-:tween Con Thien and the alied artillery position at Gio Linh, is centered in a clearing scraped out by Marine bulldozers lastspring. Workers are clear targets for enemy gunners but casualties generally have been light because of the engineers’own bunkers and rapid U.S. reaction fire.All four forts arc within two miles of the southern edge of the demilitarized zone and are within easy range of enerny artillery dug in along a ridge line in the northern half of the DMZ.The forts are Al, sitting on top of a sandy bluff three miles inland from the sea; A2, at GioLinh six miles inland; A3, half completed and nine miles inland, and A4, or Con Thien, 13 miles from the sea. Backing up the forts at present are three combat support bases-Cl south of Gio Linh and C2 and C3, south of Con Thien near Cam Lo.Washington has passed down orders that allied commanders are not to discuss any aspects of the wall, but there are indications htat it is planned to extend along the Cam Lo River valley and highway a west to Khe Sanh and the Laotian border. Combat support bases with massed artillery would be set up along the highway.The wall is to be about 40 miles long. It will dip into South Vietnamese territory below the DMZ from about Vh miles at Gio Linh to six or seven miles north of Khe Sanh. . ..“It would be virtually impossible to build and maintain the wall right along the DMZ because of the mountains in the northwest,” one officer said.Plans call for South Vietnamese army units to man the front-line forts.Soldiers of the government’s 1st Division already staff Al, They arc expected to replaceU.S. Marines and soldiers at A2within several weeks and to move into A3 as soon as it is completed.The Marines probably will! stay in Con Thien, A4, anchor-; ing the west end of the wall forj some time. •Once withdrawn, the Marines, would serve as a mobile reac-j tion force to meet any enemy ef- j fort to penetrate the barrier.To be fully effective, the wall utimalely would have to cut across Laos or be continued about 100 miles south along the South Vietnamese border to block routes of the Ho Chi Mini)NOT UNUSUALLY HIGH24 States, DC Hard Hit by OutbreaksOf Asian Flu, Other Respiratory Illstrail that enter South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia.The wall's probable effectiveness along the DMZ is a matter of debate among military men.“It’s the Maginot Line thinking all over again,” one Marine regimental officer said, referring lo the French defenses overrun bv the Germans in World War JI. 'The NVA fNorth Vietnamese) could pick their point, ful it and got through before we could mount a sufficient reaction.”Another Marine officer said the 600-jard strip of land cleared between Gio Linh and Cori Thien last spring has not j stopped infiltration by North Vietnamese units. “We’ve stopped them by pulling three battalions of Marines along the strip,” he added. None of the electronic devices planned for the wall has yet been installed in I he strip, however.A third Marine officer, a battalion commander, said “We have the technology, wc shouldn’t, knock it until we’ve| He added that the various | The I fa Thanh camp south of I electronic devices plus aerial | Gio Linh has 5,0(10.i reconnaissance and patrolling The war along the DMZ is the would alert allied forces if closest thing to conventional North Vietnamese gathered for war being toughl in Vietnam, an attack. . Bunkers are buill of 10 by-12-The barbed wire planned for j inch planking precut at the the. wall is called German Tape, i rear. Thyc arc connected by a mesh with flattened barbs.: trench lines that lead to fighting Seismic intrusion devices can be j emplacements on the outer peri-planted “like pop bottles” and;meter.arc so sensitive they’ll tell if a' Various military sources de-rock is thrown nearby, one offi ;cline to speculate on when in-cer said. Counlermortar radar stailalion of the wire, mines and in use at Con Thien and Gio sensors will begin along the first Linh can range up to 3.000 feet,!stretch of the wall, hut work hut improved ground radar syr'continues through Ihe monsoon, terns are expected to he used at! **11. isn'i ploosani lr work in the front-line forts. jimid up to your hips, but it'sCivilians already have been.also lough for Charlie (the ene-moved out of the area because*my) lo hump the artillery of heavy fighting. During Oper- [down” one engineering officer ;ation Hickory last May, U.S.! said.j Marines and government troops It’s certain that the allies moved in force into the domili-. would ike to have most of the tnrized zone for the first time ! first 13 miles of the wall operat-and evacuated more than ID.OftO!would like to have most of Ihe| civilians. The DMZ and the area; first l;l mites of the wall operat-ATLANTA, Ga. (AP) - Outr breaks of Asian flu and similar respiratory infections are spreading throughout much of the nation, according to reports reaching the National Communicable Disease Center.Outbreaks have been reported in 24 states and the District of Columbia.The NCDC reported that the mortality rate does not appear to be unusually high at this time, however.But New York City health officials said the death rate there is slightly higher than usual.The tolerance zone for deaths from influenza and pneumonia in New York is 88 for the weekThursday, the virus appears to be a relatively mild strain and health officials say this is a part of the problem.“Most of the eases are so mild that people simply won’t go to bed,” said Dr. John McCroan of the Georgia Health Department. “They are walking around, spreading the bug around.”An estimated 15.000 cases have occurred in north Georgia, most of them in metropolitan Atlanta.The NCDC said documentation of Asian flu has been made in Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, Alabama, New York, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa and Georgia.and other respiratory diseases. But national health officials say pneumonia deaths are compiled with influenza deaths.Most of the illnesses, however, are attributed to Asian flu,Rocky Mount Bank Is RobbedROCKY MOUNT, N.C. (AP) — A short, stocky man wearingsunglasses, a toboggan and a heavy moustache Wednesday robbed two women tellers of SI3.041 at a branch office of the Bank of Rocky Mount.which sweep the West Coast in February 1966 and the eastern parls of the nation in the winter of 1955.But even this strain of flu has [changed slightly and will be dif-• ferent in current epidemics. Die NCDC said.Florida officials report flu in epidemic proportions along the t east coast from Miami to Jacksonville, and 76 cases were reported at the U.S. Navy base in Pensacola.In Oklahoma City, hospitals 1 issued a plea for flue patient to stay out or doctors’ offices and ; hospital emergency rooms be-! cause of the contagious virus. Almost no hospital in Oklahoma! tried it.”In England They Haye Miniflu; between the zone and llio allies’ ing by April. The rains taper off “wall” are considered no man’s then ami. if the North Viet-land. namese generals perform asA refugee camp at Cam Lo they have the past two years, i holds some 10.500 displaced per- iliev’ll make another thrust i sons, most from the DMZ area, south.1 LONDON (AP) - Britain [gave the world miniskirts. Now i it’s got miniflu*.! The sudden outbreak of coughing, sneezing, sweating1% s. ^ -:? . : me * ' ■ ■ '' ' ' • ’and wheezing spread from Lon-Jam PMlfh At
Newspaper Details
Florence Morning News
Florence, South Carolina, US
Fri, Dec 29, 1967
Page 17
Full Page
Clipped by
Gerald F.
NA, 16 Apr 2018
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