Word: laokay
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...Minh's advancing Communists closed a siege ring around Laokay, last French outpost in northern Indo-China. By one of history's ironies, the Vichy French, with Japanese consent, had built up the fortress at Laokay during World War II. Then, in the postwar years; Nationalist Chinese occupation forces had destroyed it. Now, only partly rebuilt, and held by a thin garrison of Foreign Legionnaires, Moroccans and Vietnamese, Laokay looked untenable. It was under Communist mortar fire. Its abandonment and the retreat of its garrison 160 miles down the Red River valley to the Hanoi-Haiphong beachhead seemed...
...week's end, Ho's forces occupied a broad wedge of North Indo-China, with the base of the wedge resting in China, its edge pointing at Hanoi. The French still held important forts on the extreme flanks of the wedge: at Laokay on the upper Red River where the railway between Hanoi and Kunming cross into China; in the south at Langson where the railway between Hanoi and Ningming crosses the border. Laokay was cut off and dependent on supply by air. There were reports of Communist troops regrouping before Langson, from which civilians were being evacuated...
...Communists have a regular army of some 80,000 men, plus up to 100,000 guerrillas organized in small bands. Half the regular forces are concentrated in a triangle of mountainous country in upper Tonkin, the base of which lies between the French frontier posts of Caobang and Laokay, giving the Reds poor but uninterrupted lines of communication with Mao's forces in China...
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