Word: mekong
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There was nothing secret last week about the arrival of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Core. Belching clouds of black smoke from its single stack, Core moved 45 miles up a tributary of the Mekong River to President Ngo Dinh Diem's capital city of Saigon, docked at a wharf directly in front of the Hotel Majestic and the Café Terrasse...
...wide delta of the Mekong River last week, the swirling brown floodwaters stretched for miles. Bridges had been swept away, cattle drowned, the rice crop destroyed, villages inundated and their surviving inhabitants left starving...
Still the civil war went on. Three hundred Communist Viet Cong guerrillas escaping the flooded south clashed in a bloody fight with government troops and civil guards. In the Mekong Delta region, a Communist band stormed the military outpost of Minh Duc, inflicting "heavy" losses on the defenders. Only 18 miles from President Ngo Dinh Diem's capital of Saigon, a U.S. military adviser on a training patrol with Vietnamese Rangers was wounded by a Viet Cong sniper. In the jungle north of the capital, a 500-man paratroop battalion was ambushed at the end of a three-hour...
...meaning Western retreat-is necessary in Laos because, should hostilities start again. Red China would enter the fray to ensure a Communist victory. For the West, it represents a Hobson's choice: surrender Laos by default, or be prepared to send in troops to hold at least the Mekong River line as a bulwark for what is left of free Southeast Asia...
...north are tiers of flat plains leading back to the highlands where 300,000 Moi hut dwellers search the thick forests for white elephants as good-luck charms. In the south are the hard-working Annamese peasants, squatting under conical hats of palm leaves in the brimming Mekong Delta marshes to plant the rice that is South Viet Nam's chief source of sustenance and a major export. The delta's deep black soil is some of the world's richest, could produce still more food if developed with roads, modern farming techniques. It is this great food potential that...