Word: delta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...bloody skirmishes. In the Central Highlands province of Quang Due, bordering on Cambodia, outnumbered and outgunned Saigon troops are currently locked in a bitter struggle to retake key outposts lost to North Vietnamese units earlier this month. A deadly war of attrition continues in the soggy green Mekong Delta, where the rice is ready for harvest. TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott visited both combat zones last week and filed this report...
Some 225 miles to the south, the Delta presents a vivid contrast. Driving down Highway 4, which links Saigon with its rice bowl, buses and military convoys vie irritably for space on the narrow asphalt road, amidst foul-smelling cyclones of black exhaust. There is a dull thud or two of mortar and a burst of machine-gun fire in palm trees half a mile to the south. Women stooping in the paddyfields don't even bother to look up. "Just a couple of guerrillas," sighs the driver...
...apparent lack of fighting is deceptive. While ARVN and enemy clashes elsewhere are short-lived but fairly easily defined, the war in the Delta is like a slow hemorrhage. Casualties on both sides are vastly higher than anywhere else: an average of ten ARVN troops and 30 enemy killed daily since the cease-fire went into effect...
...Enemy strategy is to keep us pinned down protecting our hamlets," says Major General Nguyen Vinh Nghi, the commander of Military Region IV (the Delta area), who is rated as one ofARVN'S top generals. One typical fire-coordination center at Trung Ngan resembles a medieval fortress, with its thick walls towering over watery rice fields. Operating from such outposts, Nghi hopes to drive the enemy completely out of the region...
...Saigon's air force has been flying up to 100 sorties daily, many of them against targets in those parts of Tay Ninh and Pleiku provinces that were accorded to the Communists by the cease-fire agreement. In sections of Chuong Thien province, deep in the Mekong River Delta, the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) has systematically nibbled away at Viet Cong positions...