Word: delta
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Sailors. Strangest of South Viet Nam's services is the navy, whose duty it is to patrol 1,000 miles of cove-pocked coastline and almost 3,500 miles of inland waterways-rivers, creeks, canals, irrigation ditches and tidal bayous. In the flat, checkered Mekong Delta, waterways have been the main routes of travel for centuries. The 9,000 officers and men of South Viet Nam's navy keep these arteries open with 600 curious vessels, ranging from sampans and junks to converted landing craft. Armed with 20-and 40-mm. cannon, heavy machine guns, even...
Throughout the Mekong Delta, trunk canals and irrigation ditches are filling, and Viet Cong units will soon be back to a favorite mode of transportation: elusive sampans. The riot of rain-fed foliage in the jungles and swamps provides better concealment for the Red guerrillas, while battle-weary government troops are compelled to slog through waist-deep mud. To both sides the monsoon brings misery: boots and web belts rot, weapons rust even under oilcloth, leeches drop from wet branches, and a thin green slime covers everything...
South Vietnam has 1000 miles of seacoast, most of it so indented that only local fisherman know it with any degree of intimacy. This 1000 miles does not include the inland waterway navigable by sampans, which in the case of the Mekong Delta alone in 4700 miles. The South Vietnamese Navy's Junk Patrol, primarily responsible for preventing infiltration by sea, has 500 boats. Since 40 per cent of any fleet is tied up in ports for repairs, re-provisioning, liberty, training, etc., the Junk Patrol would have about 300 boats to patrol more than 6000 miles of coast...
...regional and religious. Premier Phan Huy Quat precipitated a squabble with South Viet Nam's wispy Chief of State, Phan Khac Suu, by announcing his long-delayed Cabinet reshuffle. Quat replaced the Ministers of Interior and Economy with "northerners," and Suu, who was born in the southern Mekong Delta region, refused to accept the switch...
Meanwhile, up the Bay of Bengal into East Pakistan raged one of the huge cyclones that commonly rise at the start of the monsoon. Winds howling up to 100 m.p.h. washed 13-ft. tidal waves over the narrow channels of the Ganges delta, flooding the alluvial fields, smashing and flattening the green stalks of the vital jute crop, ripping apart banana, betel nut and coconut palm plantations, uprooting giant mango orchards and inundating thousands of acres of rice. In East Pakistan's capital of Dacca, 125 miles from the sea, millions spent four terrified hours in the dead...