Word: mekong
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...make the view from Hanoi even bleaker, U.S. Marines began their long-anticipated offensive against the Mekong Delta, the Reds' last safe haven in South Viet Nam. Perhaps most disturbing of all to the enemy was the U.S. air war. During the week, the North Vietnamese lost nine supersonic MIG-21s, their most advanced fighter aircraft, as U.S. bombers continued to pound military targets. Seemingly desperate for relief from the devastating air offensive, Hanoi began emitting some subtle static aimed at convincing Washington that if only the U.S. would call off its planes, peace talks might-eventually-get under...
...heartland of South Viet Nam is not the barren highlands and bamboo valleys north of Saigon, where U.S. forces have fought the war's fiercest battles, but the swampy southern tip that is sluiced by the Mekong River. The Delta is the dwelling place of more than a third of the country's population, the rice basket for half of its food-and the Viet Cong's prime source of men, money and supplies. The Communists very nearly seized it all in the grim months of late 1964 and early 1965 before the U.S. buildup. District towns...
...American fighting man a set of challenges unique even in Viet Nam. The principal fact of the Delta is water, water everywhere: drowning the great, flat expanses of paddyfields that reach to the horizon, running in brown, lazy fingers through 2,500 miles of navigable canals, tributaries and the Mekong itself. Only long, lush tree lines and the populous villages they shelter break the landscape's monotony, and it is in the tree lines and villages that the Viet Cong are most often found...
Then Ky, for good measure, shifted some senior officers, notably flamboyant Lieut. General Dang Van Quang. Quang had headed the IV Corps area in the Mekong Delta, where the Viet Cong are still thriving and where no U.S. troops yet operate. Quang had resisted sharing the Delta war with the Allies, so his removal might prepare the way for the U.S..to make a major move into the Delta...
...room question: "Are you sterile?" Grinned Comedienne Martha Raye, 50: "At my age, you better believe it." Even the wounded G.I. managed to smile at that crack. It was the sort of thing Martha kept up all through the long night at the field hospital at Soctrang in the Mekong Delta as she gave her finest performance since arriving in South Viet Nam last month for her third visit to the troops. Heavy casualties had been airlifted into Soctrang from a withering battle several miles away, and Martha, who was at the base to do a show, immediately donated...