Word: conge
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...typical operation in the intermediate war, an Air Cav company quietly surrounds a village in the predawn hours, throwing a cordon around its sleeping inhabitants. At dawn, they tighten the noose, moving into the village and taking watchful control. They do nothing else unless, as often happens, a Viet Cong among the villagers foolishly tries to escape the net. Next, in flutters a giant Chinook helicopter carrying a contingent of Vietnamese National Police armed with burp guns and long metal rods. The policemen question and search the villagers, poke the ground with their rods in search of holes hiding Viet...
...Some hard-core villages have received the Air Cav's cordon-and-search treatment no fewer than eleven times. In one three-month stretch recently, the Air Cav conducted 276 such operations-screening 48,470 people, searching 16,111 houses, capturing 789 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong and killing 70. In the process, the Air Cav is denying food, taxes, recruits and intelligence to the main-force Communist units hiding in the hills above Binh Dinh, and destroying an infrastructure that the Communists have painstakingly built up among the peasants for 20 years...
...quick reflexes are still always ready to respond to major ground action when heliborne muscle is needed, or to tangle with any main-force units that dare come out and fight in Binh Dinh. Since few any longer do, the division is using its airpower to harass the Viet Cong in other novel ways. One is Operation Snatch, which is employed whenever a roving Air Cav chopper spots a suspiciously large group of people in the countryside. The Cavalrymen immediately dive down to pick up a few suspects for questioning, a tactic that discourages the Viet Cong from moving around...
...switch in roles is only part of a gradual change in the use of U.S. Army units throughout Viet Nam. The U.S. 199th Brigade has been circling Saigon since December in an exclusively security operation named "Fairfax," which is designed to keep the Viet Cong from building up strength too near the capital. The brigade's search partners are not police but Vietnamese Rangers, working in completely integrated "supercompanies" made up of one U.S. and one Vietnamese com pany. The U.S. 9th Division is also involved in intermediate warfare, working closely with the ARVN's 25th Division...
...letter of protest was much milder than most of the antiwar mail that enters the White House each week, but it had its own special kick. "Viet Cong terrorism is real," it said. "So are the innocent victims of U.S. bombing, strafing and shelling." It went on to describe the war in Viet Nam as "an overwhelming atrocity." What made the letter unusual was that it was signed by 49 members of the International Voluntary Service, a private Peace Corps-like organization whose 170 staffers in Viet Nam exemplify the best of the U.S.'s outgoing altruism (TIME, April...