Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Jumping from U.S. helicopters in a clearing, 1,000 troops of South Viet Nam's crack "Red Lightning" division moved out against a battalion of 300 Communist Viet Cong guerrillas holed up in the village of Loc Ninh, deep in the Mekong Delta. Slogging through flooded paddyfields and reed swamps, rifles held high, the government soldiers advanced toward the tree line that marked the Viet Cong position. A pasting by napalm, rockets, bombs and machine-gun fire from T-28 fighter-bombers had failed to budge the guerrillas from their camouflaged foxholes. Guns cocked, the ragged Communists calmly held...
...last time U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara visited South Viet Nam, the Viet Cong Communists posted a crude wooden sign in the Mekong Delta: "That Man McNamara Stay Out of Viet Nam." Last week, as McNamara headed back to Viet...
...goats, pigs, chickens and barebreasted women, the Defense Secretary observed the villagers voting in the national election being held that day, which was carefully arranged to sweep back into office a new Diem-ruled National Assembly. Then the Secretary, Taylor and Ambassador Lodge headed south into the Communistinfested Mekong Delta, where the war has always been an uphill struggle, and where the Reds have recently increased activity. As they were being briefed at Camau, gunfire was audible on the village outskirts-normal "background music" in the area, they were told...
...weeks after Diem was installed in Saigon as Premier, the weary and discouraged French sliced Viet Nam in half at the Geneva bargaining table; the Viet Minh took the north with its coal and iron, and Diem was left with the south, including Saigon and the rice-rich Mekong River delta...
...officials fear that the hamlet program, headed by Mme. Nhu's husband, is spreading too fast and too thin, and that too many of the strongholds are not really defensible against determined Red attack. In the strategically important Mekong River delta, moreover, the well-armed Viet Cong operates with near impunity. For the first time in months, the Reds are consistently raising attacks in battalion-size strength, are showing an increasing tendency to stand and fight against government forces instead of fading away into the paddies...