Word: hoas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Defeat for the West Three months ago, in a daring parachute swoop, General de Lattre de Tassigny hurled the Communist Viet Minh out of the strategic, battle-scarred city of Hoa Binh, rice-and salt-rich capital of the pro-French Mung tribesmen. It was a major French victory, and the French proudly announced: "We shall never give up Hoa Binh." Hoa Binh was important because it straddles Route Coloniale No. 12, along which Chinese coolies had sneaked loads of ammunition from Red China to Communist guerrillas in southern Indo-China...
Then De Lattre died (TIME, Jan. 21), and with him some of the audacity which had heartened the French Union forces in their mean and costly five-year-old war. To the west of Hoa Binh, Viet Minh hacked out new roads in the jungle. A human chain of 50,000 Chinese moved 4,000 tons of war material south to the Communist forces. Included, according to French reports: 10 million Chinese-made cartridges, 100,000 mortar shells, 100,000 hand grenades. Russian-built trucks hauled in heavy cannon; Chinese "military advisers" stiffened Viet Minh's 45,000 regulars...
...hold Hoa Binh against Communist counterattacks, General Raoul Salan, De Lattre's successor in Indo-China, increased the French garrison to 23,000 men, sent his shoestring air force to strafe Red convoys. But the Reds were too strong: using Russian antiaircraft guns, they shot down ten French planes in seven days' fighting. Viet Minh raiders slipped through the French defenses, infiltrated the delta...
...less than four days the French forces, under sad-eyed, three-star General Raoul Salan, literally leaped on Hoa Binh. The first wave of parachutists came down on a hill overlooking the town, but found that the Communists had already beaten them to the mountains. The second wave of parachutists landed in the tall elephant grass of the Black River valley, and quickly cleared a strip for the Morane-Saulniers (French liaison planes). Two hours later the third wave-half French, half Mung tribesmen-went down, taking with them a complete surgical hospital and staff...
...paratroopers cut the Viet Minh communications wire, captured a Viet Minh convoy on its way northward with salt. But they found Hoa Binh burned-out and deserted. The only local inhabitant to meet them was pretty 25-year-old Nguyen Thi Ky. Her arms loaded with silver bracelets, her teeth painted an artistic black, she nervously approached the paratroopers, holding out an old laissez passer bearing General de Lattre's picture. When Nguyen Thi Ky explained that she had known a French officer in Hoa Binh in the good old days and would like to renew the acquaintanceship...