Word: guerrilla
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...lump in the world's throat not because the quality of courage displayed there was unique but because Dienbienphu was set apart, catching the eye and the heart by contrast. It was geographically isolated. It was a pitched battle, one of the few in a shapeless, sceneless guerrilla war. Tactically, the defense was conducted with a coherent resolution of command; from inside Dienbienphu there came from first to last not a sign of hesitation or doubt about what had to be done...
...child, who has been taught to spy on him, or in front of a friend, who may be an informer. He can display his disapproval only by sullen compliance or by loafing on the job. The opposition is real but unorganized: a silent resistance that shows up not in guerrilla successes but in production failures...
...commander in chief of the army, once the brilliant strategist of the guerrilla days, now,pretty much a figurehead, but a useful one. One version of his life makes him of the landed gentry; another says he was one of a large family of poor peasants who pooled resources to educate one-Chu Teh. First a gym teacher, then a war lord's lieutenant, he learned to command troops, eventually fought himself to high fortune, a houseful of concubines and opium. About 1922 he suddenly abandoned the high life, went to Berlin to study, met Chou...
...When the Nazis invaded Russia, he volunteered for frontline duty, but was rejected because of bad eyes. As the Nazis drew near to Moscow, however, Khokhlov was recruited, along with many other young actors and artists, by the NKVD (the MVD of the time) to fight a rear-guard guerrilla action in case the city fell. From then on, he was in the secret police to stay...
Indo-China is a war of gallantry and despair. It is an ideological war like Korea, where the great issues of the day are fought with means that are often pathetically small. It is a guerrilla war like Kenya, where no one knows who the enemy is. The man who serves your food and drives your car may be in one country a Mau Mau and in the other a Viet Minh. It is a colonial war, not so much in reality any more, but still so in the minds of some Frenchmen who have not unlearned the past...