Word: indo
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...talks matter-of-factly of the paratroop drop and of the wound he got only half an hour after landing; no heroism, no bravado, no whimpering, just acceptance of his fate and future. You are reminded of his face often when anger rises in you over the situation in Indo-China. You find yourself resisting the impulse to understand everyone and wishing only that you could stay angry and hortatory...
...Indo-China is a swamp war: fought literally in the paddy-fields of the Red River delta, but fought actually in minds that no longer are stirred and in hearts where resignation, suspicion, frustration and a dogged sense of duty are in confused conflict...
...line. In the dance halls, the local girls sit in a row, dressed in colored tunics slit high and trousers that look like silk pajamas. Their painted faces advertise that they exist for joyless pleasures. In Saigon officers and officials take siestas. All these things are true. But still, Indo-China is not a very pleasant place to be in, even in the soft and untouched places, for who can be completely indifferent...
...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...
Arriving in Indo-China, the stranger has one question on his lips-why don't the French fight through to victory?-and stays to ask himself a quite different one: What keeps the French here at all? If Indo-China goes, the French have no significant strategic considerations left in Asia. The war costs them more than any economic advantages they can get from it. They are fatigued and frustrated by eight years without victory. Yet Frenchmen continue to plant crops, build houses and, though it may seem whimsical, to make plans...