CARLATA BRADLEY

A Russian nuclear submarine sank to the bottom of the Barents
Sea on August 12, 2000; all 118 crew members are later found
dead. The exact cause of the disaster remains unknown.

Kursk left port on August 10 to take part in war games with the
Russian military. Russian ships, planes and submarines met
up in the Barents Sea, which is above the Arctic Circle, to
practice military maneuvers.

A battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division left Saigon in the
initial withdrawal of U.S. troops. The 814 soldiers were the
first of 25,000 troops that were withdrawn in the first stage
of the U.S. disengagement from the Vietnam War.

There would be 14 more increments in the withdrawal, but
the last U.S. troops did not leave until after the Paris Peace
Accords were signed in January 1973.

Maj. Dale R. Buis and Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand became
the first Americans killed in the American phase of the Vietnam 
War when guerrillas strike a Military Assistance Advisory Group
(MAAG) compound in Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon.

The group had arrived in South Vietnam on November 1, 1955,
to provide military assistance. The organization consisted of
U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps personnel  
who provided advice and assistance to the Ministry of
Defense, Joint General Staff, corps and  the division
commanders, training centers, and province and district
headquarters.

In the first major offensive ordered for U.S. forces in Vietnam,
3,000 troops of the 173rd Airborne Brigade—in conjunction
with 800 Australian soldiers and a Vietnamese airborne unit—
assault a jungle area known as Viet Cong Zone D, 20 miles
northeast of Saigon.

The operation was called off after three days when it failed to
make any major contact with the enemy. One American was
killed and nine Americans and four Australians were wounded.

The State Department assured the American public that the
operation was in accord with Johnson administration policy
on the role of U.S. troops.

On May 11, 1969, Hamburger Hill became the scene of an
intense  and controversial battle during the Vietnam War.

Known to military planners as Hill 937 (its height in meters),
the solitary peak is located in the dense jungles of the A
Shau Valley of Vietnam, about a mile from the border with
Laos.       

 Though the hill had no real tactical significance, taking the
hill was part of Operation Apache Snow, a U.S. military sweep
of the A Shau Valley. 

The purpose of the operation was to cut off North Vietnamese
infiltration from Laos and enemy threats to the cities of Hue
and Da Nang.    

Hamburger Hill the day after the battle, May 21, 1969.