Word: mekong
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...abject surrender to the Communists. The country cannot be divided, like Korea, for the Viet Minh forces cannot be shut off by a tourniquet: they are in the blood stream. Moreover, the French hold the two important rice deltas, but the Hanoi delta is in the north and the Mekong delta is in the south, and the French could not give up Hanoi, as they must in any north-south division...
...groping guerrilla war, looked suddenly as bright and hopeful as the generals. The French moved slowly north from Seno in the blistering jungle sun; they recaptured Thakhek (pop. 10,000) and knocked out the Communist corridor across southern Laos; they probed north for some 20 miles, and reported the Mekong Valley more or less clear. Then the French put commandos, paratroops and foreign legionnaires ashore at Tuyhoa (see map), thereby breaking into a rich, rice-bearing region that the Communists had occupied, unchallenged, since...
...months ago Viet Nam authorities, strongly backed by public opinion, decided the time had come to revive the sport on its grand old scale. Under the sponsorship of a leading Saigon newspaper and local businessmen, a seven-day race from Saigon through the Mekong Delta and back was planned. Communist leaders in the south damned the race as a capitalist attempt "to induce the youth of the nation to debauchery," and ordered their followers to sabotage it. The sponsors forehandedly asked the protection of the Vietnamese army along the route...
Savannakhet is a handsome, quiet, palm-shaded town on the banks of the broad Mekong, on the border between south-central Laos and Siam. Nearby is the big Seno airfield, which can handle B-26 bombers and C-47 transports. Last week, while the B-26s roared out with bombs and napalm, the transports unloaded supplies. Gangs of French Union troops, stripped to the waist, toiled feverishly to build log bunkers and put out mines and barbed wire...
After last fortnight's quick thrust by the Communists east from the Vietnamese coast to the Mekong River, General Henri Navarre, the French commander in Indo-China, guessed that the Reds might turn south and attack Savannakhet and Seno. But last week Communist General Vo Nguyen Giap, who directed the Communist thrust to the Mekong, was biding his time. Meanwhile, various spokesmen pointed out that the military value of the enemy operation was almost nil. Secretary Dulles pooh-poohed it in Washington; so did the Ministry of the Associated States in Paris. The fact indeed was that headlines...