Word: militiamen
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...could not have come at a worse time or place. The Indian protectorate of Sikkim is a tiny mountain state ruled by King Palden Thondup Nameyal and his American Queen Hope. It has only 162,000 inhabitants, an area smaller than Yellowstone Park, and a preposterous army of 280 militiamen plus 60 palace guards...
...democracy works: it gives rifles to farmers, to students, to women, to Negroes, to the poor, and to every citizen who is ready to defend a just cause." Weapons ranging from Czech submachine guns to Belgian FN automatic rifles were handed out to 50,000 soldiers, 400,000 militiamen, 100,000 members of the factory-guarding popular defense force, and to many men, women and children in Cuba's 1,000,000-strong "neighborhood vigilance committees." Now Castro no longer wants all those guns in the hands of the people. For three weeks, Radio Havana has been warning...
Behind Giap's regulars stand fully half a million militiamen, trained and armed (though often with ancient fowling pieces), bolstered by the "Three Readys Movement"-1,500,000 volunteers who are supposedly "ready to fight, join the army, and go whereever needed." Last week Hanoi took further steps toward full mobilization by ordering 2,500,000 young men and women into the "Brigade of Young Volunteers to Fight U.S. Aggression for National Salvation." As bulky in numbers as it is in name, the brigade will work in fields and factories vacated by militiamen...
Evidence of war readiness abounds: barbed wire festoons the pink and yellow fronts of government office buildings; militiamen stalk the streets with fixed bayonets and grenades at their belts; as part of the effort to deceive U.S. pilots, bicycle handlebars and wheel rims are painted camouflage green, and farmers wear banana branches in their hats. Even pigs on the way to market are artfully shrouded in leaf-bedecked nets. Reportedly, more than 300,000 women and children have been evacuated from Hanoi in preparation for aerial attack, but after seeing the bombed-out bridges downcountry, many have filtered back into...
...Chief's Children. Beyond the outright murders and kidnapings is the evidence of acts even more grisly. Two years ago, a government force came upon 35 weeping women and children-and the bodies of 30 Vietnamese militiamen, throats cut, bodies disemboweled, and in many cases, emasculated. In Binh Dinh province, the Viet Cong beheaded a village chief and hacked off the arm of the chief's twelve-year-old daughter. They also took the chief's six-year-old son, laid a rifle across his bare back and fired it several times, leaving a twelve-inch scar...