Word: doaithan
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...simple matter: Communist guerrillas had often worked so closely around the forts that full-scale offensive operations were needed to withdraw a two-platoon garrison. The day after the fanon ceremony, Cogny had to send 2,000 men, 200 vehicles and 15 tanks to rescue 110 Vietnamese infantrymen from Doaithan and Thanhne, a couple of surrounded forts less than 20 miles from Namdinh. Cabled TIME Correspondent John Mecklin, who rode with the French column...
...when the French planes knock out their supply routes. At midday the column got moving again, past a sign that read: DON'T KILL. DON'T RAPE. DON'T BURN. DON'T ARREST YOUNG PEOPLE. At 1 p.m. our advance elements reached the first objective, Doaithan...
...Like Doaithan, the fort was decayed and rotting. The signs of siege and uselessness were everywhere: overgrown paths, cracked-mud earthworks and rusting barbed wire. The two-platoon Vietnamese garrisons had long been immobilized, their mission-protecting the countryside from Communists and collecting rice-a bitter joke. The Communists-barefoot guerrillas, not even regulars-had even burrowed deep into the outer fort defenses...
...theme was "consolidation for offensive action elsewhere." So the men of the column hauled down the French and Vietnamese flags; they planted explosives; they withdrew the garrisons (with their furniture and pots and pans) for more useful work in the coming Battle of the Delta. Then the French blew Doaithan and Thanhne to bits...
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