Word: helpful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hard-hit by mounting battle losses and a dwindling supply of young men to conscript, the Viet Cong are finding it difficult to keep their ranks well filled. As a result, they are turning more and more to women to help the war effort. Backing up Victor Charlie-the G.I.s' name for the Viet Cong-are the female Victoria Charlenes, some of whom actually fight. The V.C.'s attractive, much-advertised heroine, Ta Thi Kieu, packs four rifles at a time and boasts that she has participated in 33 battles. The vast majority of the Victoria Charlenes perform...
...stitch uniforms for the Viet Cong in jungle-hidden factories replete with Singer sewing machines. They assemble rifle grenades and Claymore mines and devise booby traps. Carrying double baskets, they act as the Viet Cong's trucks, toting rice and ammunition to the front lines. Once there, they help dig trenches and fortify bunkers, nurse and evacuate the wounded, bury the dead. They operate radios and typewriters, handle the blizzard of paper work required by the meticulous V.C. bureaucracy. Allied troops have recently captured several of the sullen, sloe-eyed Victoria Charlenes...
...part of the enemy's recruitment program. In a fetching ceremony of farewell to village life, V.C. maidens drape departing youths with flowers. Women are also entrusted with keeping in line those villagers who remain behind. Song-and-dance teams ride the circuit of V.C.-held territory to help in the task, crooning the latest political messages. The enemy has not overlooked the immemorial value of women in espionage. In smaller towns, nearly every market has a sharp-eyed little-old-lady vendor who is not what she seems. In Saigon the seamstresses in tailor shops often provide convenient...
...younger set, a chance for action is provided through the Viet Cong's "assault youth companies," composed of teen-age girls and boys. The companies carry supplies and help police battle fields. They earn 30? a month. If the girls, who are 17 and up, become pregnant while on active duty, they get two months' leave and a maternity benefit of $2.25. Eventually they are expected to graduate into the ranks of the Viet Cong proper, an estimated 10% of whom are women. Last week U.S. Marine Lieut. General Lewis W. Walt reported that in some parts...
India's government usually holds capitalistic impulses tightly in check. There is another impulse, however, that it has failed to curb, and so it is asking free enterprise for help in the most private of all sectors: birth control. Still far from its goal of keeping the growth of a highly fecund population (more than 500 million now) within the nation's food-producing capability, the Health and Family Planning Ministry has decided to enlist some of India's largest companies to distribute government-subsidized rubber condoms...