Word: conge
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Before Tet, CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support) estimated that 82% of the population of 5.3 million lived in secure hamlets, some 13% in contested hamlets and only a scant 5% under hardcore Viet Cong hegemony. "We're still in a state of flux concerning recent losses or gains," says CORDS Deputy John P. Vann. "We're not sure what resulted from drawing in over 6,000 R.D. cadre and some of the regional and popular forces to province and district towns." But the estimates are that Communist real estate and population gains will be small...
...capital now wears the air of "nervous normalcy" to which more isolated province capitals have grown accustomed. Most businesses have reopened, but stocks are low. The western one-third of the Chinese quarter of Cholon is still insecure at night, the work of several hundred Viet Cong who are still holed up around the race track. Saigon lost, it is now estimated, 6,300 civilians during the fighting; another 11,000 were wounded...
Estimates of damage and casualties in the Delta are spottier than elsewhere, because even pre-Tet the government's control was a sometime thing. Of the 5,274 hamlets in IV Corps, 2,000 were under Saigon's rule, 2,000 under that of the Viet Cong and the rest neither quite one nor the other. But 1,300 civilians are believed dead, 3,700 wounded. Before Tet, the Delta had 14,000 refugees; now there are 170,000, the product of 19,000 houses destroyed and 5,000 heavily damaged. Road traffic is a fifth or less...
...nearly 75% of normal traffic loads, however. There is little shortage of food in the rice-rich Delta, and thus little inflation. The attacks closed the Delta's schools, pulled most of the 10,000 pacification workers into the towns. There is no doubt that the Viet Cong have added to their extensive Delta holdings, and will...
...organize commercial convoys-fleets of trucks guarded by military vehicles-over the enemy-interdicted roads. Some 70% of the R.D. workers have returned to their posts but, in some provinces, such as Kien Giang, Phong Dinh and Kien Phong, there is no chance of a return. The Viet Cong pressure is just too heavy...