Word: hai
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...Tran Van Hai, 34, has been hiding out in Saigon's labyrinthine alleyways since 1965. Reason: he is trying to avoid military service. While his wife works as a vendor, Hai does odd jobs in the neighborhood; together they make enough to care for their six children. When the police come, as they do with increasing frequency these days, he ducks down the maze of passages in his ramshackle neighborhood or hides between the wall panels of his house...
...could not leave my wife and children," Hai explains when asked why he deserted from an army unit a few years ago. "I love them very much, and there is no one else to care for them." The irony is that because he has six children Hai is now legally entitled to a deferment. Since they were born while he was in hiding, he cannot get his draft status changed without being arrested as a deserter-which would mean up to twelve months in prison and then front-line duty in an army unit...
...carries any great stigma among most South Vietnamese, who are weary of a war that has gone on for 25 years. One reason is that family allegiance has traditionally been recognized as the highest loyalty, greater even than that due to one's country. Men like Tran Van Hai are protected by a closely knit community that admires their struggle to avoid military service. Another reason is the pervasive corruption that permits all but the poor to buy their way out of army duty...
Initially, the aim of Truong's thrust appeared to be the relatively conservative one of securing the districts of Trieu Phong and Hai Lang to the east and south of Quang Tri city. Thieu himself implied as much when he told reporters a week earlier that the recapture of the city was a matter of little concern at the moment. Last week, South Vietnamese troops moved closer and closer to the provincial capital. It is possible that Thieu was trying to throw the North
...increasingly uncomfortable in the military. Some times he amuses himself at parties by playing a truculent young Patton ("If we could just blow out those goddamn dikes up North"). Privately his conversation runs to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Browning. The night the B-52s started bombing Hanoi and Hai phong, Bunting said: "Can we react any more? I don't know. But this makes me physically sick." · Lance Morrow