Word: minh
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Christmas time, the Viet Minh radio announced that 300 prisoners would be released as a token of the Communists' devotion to world peace. Last week the first batch of 109, wearing safe-conduct insignia reading Hochiminh Muon Nam" (One thousand years for Ho Chi Minh), arrived at a French strong point on the Red River delta perimeter. Among them was 24-year-old Jean Leriche, a civilian cameraman attached to the French army, who was captured by the Communists in November...
...Saigon hospital where he was being treated for malnutrition (he lost 55 Ibs. in captivity), Leriche was interviewed by an old acquaintance, TIME Correspondent null Sully, who cabled his story - a rare view of life with the Viet Minh enemy...
Peril from Tigers. During the first weeks of his life with the Reds, they made Leriche do chores such as carrying supplies for combat troops, but he had time (and was permitted) to watch the Viet Minh preparations for an assault on Moc-chau. The commanders built crude sand tables, then made their men practice the attack again and again. "Each soldier rehearsed his job 50 times, maybe 100 times. C'est formidable. When they attack they move like machines...
...March, Leriche was put to work on a road that was under daily attack by French bombers. "It was fascinating. One day the B-26s made a series of direct hits on the road, converting hundreds of meters to a mass of rubble. When a Viet Minh officer said it must be repaired for use that very night, we thought he was joking. But before long, thousands and thousands of people began converging on the road. The Communists evidently collared the whole population for miles around, peasants, coolies, children, women with babies, old people, everyone who could walk...
Tears for a Song. For eight months, Prisoner Leriche was quartered in a cluster of straw huts called Camp No. 113, in a valley 50 miles from the China border. It was so remote that the Viet Minh did not bother with barbed wire or close guarding. Of 350 French, Senegalese and North Africans in the camp when Leriche arrived, some 200 died of starvation, beriberi, malaria, dysentery. Yet, grotesquely, Camp 113 was proudly regarded by the Reds as a special operation. It was run by a pair of polished, French-speaking Vietnamese who addressed the prisoners as "Mes chers...