Word: diem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...area the size of Connecticut on the southern tip of free South Viet Nam. The Communists had ruled Camau since 1945, and when their 30,000 troops moved off north in Russian and Polish transports, they left a sharp test for South Viet Nam's Premier Ngo Dinh Diem. Premier Diem's 12,000 incoming Nationalist troops had to get effective control of a remote swampland, criss-crossed by bayous, devastated by war, undermined by Communist stay-behind agents, infiltrated by hostile troops of the Hoa Hao, a religious sect. Diem's Nationalists also had to start...
...history begins a new chapter," the Nationalist leaflets asserted. "Alt for People, All for Country, under Premier Diem!" TIME Correspondent John Mecklin asked one Camau villager, however, who Diem was. "Don't know." Had he heard of Communist Ho Chi Minh? "He's President." Had he heard of the U.S.? "The Viet Minh say you're all capitalists." What's a capitalist? "They make people poor." Wreath on the Monument. Gingerly Diem's young Nationalist army moved step by step more deeply into Camau-the towns first, then the villages, then out by powered boats...
...here to bring you something better than the oppression you have suffered," Diem kept repeating as he toured Camau in person at week's end. "You have many needs; I shall do my best." Gradually the indoctrinated and indifferent villagers grew more receptive. Premier Diem, however, did not underrate the ingrained tenacity of Viet Minh Communism. One day one of Diem's Nationalist soldiers accidentally kicked over a wreath the Viet Minh had left behind on a monument to their dead. A young Camau kid quietly stepped out from a group of passers-by and, unafraid, laid...
...tour through the rice belt south of the 17th parallel, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem last week got his second big ovation from his people. Rice growers thronged around him, beating gongs; soldiers competed to eat at his table; refugees chaired him around their hovels in informal marches of triumph. Diem took his reception spiritedly, with none of his celebrated reticence, enjoying crayfish that had been smuggled south to him from the Communist North, and a Confucian ballet performed by 32 silk-clad girls. Diem also impressed the villagers by his coolness when his ceremonial barge, overloaded with admirers who clambered...
...Diem intended his second tour to shame Communist President Ho Chi Minh, who has barely stirred from his Hanoi palace since last fall. Diem's second big ovation confirmed that his strength lies increasingly among nationalist-minded villagers who suffered Communist depredations during the war, rather than among the aperitif drinkers in French Saigon...