Word: minh
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...attack may well be the signal for a new Red drive against South Viet Nam, part of an overall, constant movement to infiltrate and encircle the whole area (see map). The Viet Cong guerrillas get their seasoned cadres and supplies from Communist North Viet Nam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which parallels the borders of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. There is no interference from Laos, which may even be a supplier, since daily flights of Soviet Ilyushin planes land on the Communist-held Plaine des Jarres to disgorge arms for the 20,000-man Pathet Lao army. Neutral Cambodia...
Anger & Pride. Then came Indo-China. There, once questioning an intelligent, Paris-educated national who was now fighting for the Communist Viet Minh, Larsan heard a criticism of France that was hard to deny: it was "too generous with us and too hard . . . too intelligent and too stupid." France was perfectly willing to pass on its culture, but Frenchmen were never really willing to accept natives as equals, and so, as in all colonial rule, "a moment comes when there's too much accumulated anger on one side and too hard a carapace of pride on the other...
Diem's army could only prepare for greater dangers. Captured documents indicated that Ho Chi Minh's Red guerrillas had a major new campaign in the making. Massive new U.S. aid is already arriving (TIME cover, Aug. 4) to equip new battalions of South Vietnamese troops. To get the manpower it needs in uniform, Diem's government last week announced new draft laws extending the present term of military service from 18 to 24 months and ordering 20-year-olds to report for duty...
...Communist guerrillas, and often this was more voluntary than forced. The fact was that hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese, naive and illiterate, thought of the rebels not as Communists but as resistants continuing the nationalist battle first started against the French. To these peasants. "Uncle" Ho Chi Minh is still a hero, and under the influence of Viet Cong propaganda, they have become convinced that the U.S. has simply replaced the French as their overlords. All too often, local officials have been appointed by Diem or his brother because of their personal loyalty rather than their efficiency...
...troops in the new, mobile Ranger tactics designed to out-guerrilla the guerrillas. At Nhatrang eight new Ranger companies are learning the tricks: scaling cliffs, making wild leaps on cable pulleys, walking noiselessly in jungle undergrowth, learning how to kill swiftly. It is no secret that the Ho Chi Minh Trail is now a two-way street, for the South Vietnamese now use it to travel north, and Ranger patrols are probing into North Viet Nam to give Ho a taste of his own medicine...