Word: hoi
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...uncontrollable rudeness or total indifference." Thus he was spared the heckling of student militants, but he was also spared exposure to crowds of voters. He expended two valuable hours at Leisure World, a housing complex for the elderly in Seal Beach, where Comedian Jimmy Durante introduced him as "Hoi-but Humphrey." The residents were undoubtedly pleased when he advocated a 50% across-the-board increase in social security payments, but that gratification soon evaporated as he rambled garrulously on for nearly an hour under a broiling...
...border to the west of Saigon, where the equivalent of a Viet Cong division moved on the provincial capital of Tay Ninh. Hints of a major buildup there had been drifting in for about a month. Confirmation came when a South Vietnamese armor specialist showed up at a Chieu Hoi center for defectors. He reported that the Communists had tried to recruit him to drive one of the armored personnel carriers that they expected to capture in an attack on the town...
...hoi chanh, or "rallier to the true national cause," spends his first six to eight weeks in a Chieu Hoi center. He is given two sets of clothing, entertained with tours, television and basic educational films, and granted $1.60 a month pocket money. The defector is also rewarded according to a fixed bounty scale for whatever he brings with him. A pistol is worth $10, an automatic rifle $62, and an 82-mm. mortar $500. One happy ex-Communist became an instant capitalist when he collected $16,000 for pointing the way to a sizable arms cache...
Operation Kit Carson. After re-indoctrination, most hoi chanh go home or to a Chieu Hoi hamlet, and about 40% are drafted after a six-month grace period. Thus the defector can soon find himself back in the jungle, fighting on the allied side. One in five signs up as a scout for the U.S. Marines' Operation Kit Carson or joins an armed propaganda team, touring the countryside as living proof of the benefits of the Open Arms program. For an elite few, there are government jobs. Two former lieutenant colonels in the Viet Cong, Le Xuan Chuyen...
...life on the government side frequently turns out to be far less rosy than pictured. Tagged forever by a tiny asterisk on their ID cards, they often cannot get the jobs that the government has promised. "It's a little like hiring an ex-convict," says one Chieu Hoi official. Even if an able hoi chanh lands a job, he must contend with the jealousy of fellow workers and the hatred engendered by more than 20 years of fighting. A typical reaction is that of one South Vietnamese: "Why should we take the risk of making friends with...