Word: bamboos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...plight of the P.O.W.s-President Nixon, the wives of the P.O.W.s, Congress and the media. Embarrassed by world pressure, the politburo in Hanoi may have passed the word to go easier. At any rate, prisoners were allowed for the first time to exercise outdoors for 30 minutes, but behind bamboo screens so that they could not see each other; they got a third daily meal of bread and water, and a third blanket. They began to pass their days in boredom rather than fear. Milligan began to raise a family of spiders in his cell, and watched geckos "mate with each...
...steady diet of beatings-as well as sand and pebbles in the rice-dysentery, tuberculosis and chronic stomach disorders were common. Water was limited to three swallows a day, forcing prisoners to drink urine. Those who pleaded-for more food were splashed with lye or poked with long bamboo poles...
Things have been especially bad since the ceasefire. When told of the Paris settlement, the prisoners cheered, only to be stopped by doses of lye and bamboo. "We had hoped to begin the New Year with happiness," said one. "But my New Year began when I was doused with excrement...
...Captain George Wanat was more bitter than most about his captivity with the Viet Cong. He told his father in Waterford, Conn., "I'd kill those bastards if I ever saw them again." He reported that he had been kept in solitary confinement for five months "in a bamboo cage full of ants and poisonous snakes." His diet, he said, was rice and pork fat, rationed at one bowl a day, plus some water...
...market, as well as an occasional cockfight, provide other sights rarely seen by Americans. The marketplace is sometimes enlivened by a "ra-ra," a spontaneous celebration that frequently occurs in the spring when people don colorful costumes and engage in impromptu jam sessions with "vaccins"-flutelike instruments made from bamboo. One other side trip-to Cap Haitien on the northern coast-is almost worth traversing the particularly bad roads or risking the frequently canceled air trip. Once there, tourists can take a two-hour horseback ride up La Ferriere mountain to visit the ruins of the Citadelle, a huge stone...