Reporters covering the bloody battles for Hills 881 near the Viet Nam Demilitarized Zone got little cooperation from the Marines. In some cases, Marine officers actually barred them from the battlefield. The reporters filed the usual protests, expected the usual excuses. Instead, last week, they received a remarkably candid apology from Marine Commander Lieut. General Lewis W. Walt. "It has been brought to my attention," he wrote, "that your efforts to report the recent battle near Khe Sanh were seriously hampered and even ignored by some of my ...

Waiting for the Thrust Khe Sanh, the imperiled northern position where some 6,000 U.S. Marines are surrounded by 40,000 NVA regulars, waited wearily through another week for what General Westmoreland still believes will be the largest battle of the war. Though the big enemy push failed to materialize on several predicted dates, the massed Communists were indeed closing in. "I see no reason to believe that they'll stop now," said Khe Sanh's commander, Colonel ...

THE WAR Wincing in the unaccustomed sun light, U.S. Marines of the 6,000-man Khe Sanh garrison tumbled out of their bunkers into the open air. Amid shell craters and the wreckage of destroyed Jeeps, helicopters and buildings, they washed grimy clothes and gamboled in makeshift showers. Three Marines dug out baseball gloves and began playing catch. Everywhere along the camp's perimeter, the roofs of bunkers blossomed with Marines, who were not, for a change, either running or ducking. In stead, ...

The Pentagon on Tuesday identified four U.S. Marines who died in one of two helicopter collisions Monday in Afghanistan.

Richard Strandlof said he survived the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon. He said he survived again when a roadside bomb went off in Iraq, killing four fellow Marines. He'd point to his head and tell people he had a metal plate, collateral damage from the explosion. None of it was true. On Friday, the FBI arrested him on the rare charge of "stolen valor." Strandlof, 32, was held "for false claims about receipt of military decorations or medals," an FBI ...

In the largest U.S. military operation since Falluja in Iraq, thousands of U.S. Marines recently poured into southern Afghanistan in a bid to turn the war around, win over the Afghan people and push out the Taliban. Operation Khanjar, or Strike of the Sword, began in the dark morning hours of July 2nd, with thousands of U.S. Marines leading an effort to clear and hold villages and districts that were under Taliban control in Helmand province. "We put about 4,000 ...

The headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul looks more like a college campus than the nerve center of a military operation involving more than 90,000 troops from 41 countries, its staff officers roaming the halls in each nation's distinct patterns of camouflage. On July 3, on a wooden deck at the back of his office in the compound, shaded by trees and a garden umbrella, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, who recently became ISAF's commander, ...

Four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday by a roadside bomb in the northern Afghanistan province of Kunduz, the U.S. military in Afghanistan said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on a U.S. military vehicle. It said five soldiers were killed and two were injured. Meanwhile, a U.S. military official told CNN that its forces are involved in a standoff with insurgents in the south of the country near the Helmand River. He said U.S. Marines began taking ...

A military helicopter crashed Friday in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 26 security personnel on board, the Pakistani military said. A Marine source described the fighting Thursday evening as "our most significant encounter." Sporadic fighting took place over several hours in the southeastern sector of Garmser district, said Pelletier, spokesman for the Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan. Helmand province, a poppy-growing region, is the focus of the military push called Operation Khanjar. Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium, ...

U.S. troops have launched a "major operation" against Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, U.S. military officials announced in Afghanistan early Thursday. About 4,000 Americans, mostly from the Marines, and 650 Afghan soldiers and police launched Operation Khanjar -- "strike of the sword" -- in the Helmand River valley, the U.S. command in Kabul announced. The push is the largest since the Pentagon began moving additional troops into the conflict this year, and it follows a British-led operation launched last ...