Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Military Region Two, which encompasses the central part of South Viet Nam, the key cities of Pleiku and Kontum are fortress outposts in an area controlled by highly mobile North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units. In the rice-rich Mekong Delta south of Saigon, where more than one-third of South Viet Nam's population lives, Communist attacks have driven government troops out of many outposts. At the same time, a blocking maneuver aimed toward Route 4 by North Vietnamese troops threatens Saigon's vital connection with the Delta...
...Thua Thien and Binh Dinh, several hundred miles northeast of Saigon, where government troops tried to block Communist efforts to push into rice-rich coastal regions. Viet Cong shells fell intermittently on several towns like Bien Hoa near Saigon while south of the capital, in the economically crucial Mekong Delta, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in small-unit action disrupted river and road communications and raided small government outposts in an effort to push Saigon's men back into provincial capitals and district towns. Saigon's response was to take to the air with more than...
Unlike the scattered fighting in South Viet Nam, the war in neighboring Cambodia was concentrated in one area: the key Mekong River city of Neak Luong, the last major government-held area on the river from a point 15 miles south of Phnom-Penh all the way to the Vietnamese border 71 miles distant. While 1,000 government troops were being helicoptered into the city-joining some 20,000 civilian refugees from the surrounding countryside-Communist forces on the opposite bank of the river kept up a terrifyingly random shelling that killed or maimed hundreds of civilians as well...
While the battle for Neak Luong went on, the Cambodian capital of Phnom-Penh, which normally gets 80% of its supplies from the Mekong, was cut off from its thrice-weekly convoys from South Viet Nam. Yet, even with fighting taking place on the city's outskirts, most people seemed almost unconcerned. TIME Correspondent Peter Range reported last week from Phnom-Penh...
...Daytime tennis at the Cercle Sportif Cambodge is accompanied by the very audible chatter of 20-mm. machine guns. Bars serving Westerners function well beyond the 9 o'clock curfew when the streets become completely empty. It is hard to believe that just 15 miles down the Mekong, the war in Cambodia smolders on, an ever more bloody stalemate with no end yet in sight...