Word: minh
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...down to south IndoChina this year have gone 3,000 Chinese military instructors, 3,000 tons of military equipment and quantities of salable opium. Up from south Indo-China have gone 35,000 tons of rice, 5,000 tons of salt and 30,000 trained replacements for the Viet Minh Communist army. The artery for this traffic was Route Coloniale No. 12, which passes through Hoa Binh, 32 miles southwest of Hanoi...
...paratroopers cut the Viet Minh communications wire, captured a Viet Minh convoy on its way northward with salt. But they found Hoa Binh burned-out and deserted. The only local inhabitant to meet them was pretty 25-year-old Nguyen Thi Ky. Her arms loaded with silver bracelets, her teeth painted an artistic black, she nervously approached the paratroopers, holding out an old laissez passer bearing General de Lattre's picture. When Nguyen Thi Ky explained that she had known a French officer in Hoa Binh in the good old days and would like to renew the acquaintanceship...
Pinned down in the Red River delta, General de Lattre de Tassigny dreamed of the day when he would launch a smash-out offensive against Viet Minh Communists. Last Saturday...
...tiny village of Tri Thon, a company of Communist soldiers, sleepily cooking their breakfast rice, suddenly found themselves surrounded by French commandos. In hand-to-hand fighting, knives flashing, 60 Communists were killed, the rest routed. In 80 other Viet Minh villages along a 14-mile front, the French surprise attack was equally effective...
...over in 6½ hours. De Lattre had 1) cut the main Communist north-south communication line; 2) added 80 square miles to French Union control, including 30,000 acres of rice land; 3) plugged a hole through which rice had been leaking out of the delta into Viet Minh country. More important than the strategic gain was the fillip to Vietnamese morale and French pride in showing what they could do with the right weapons. There were still vast areas to be retaken from the well-organized Communist guerrillas, but De Lattre could exult: "From now on, the initiative...