Word: monsoonal
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...They are swinging wildly," said President Johnson last week in an apt description of the latest, desperate meat-ax assaults by the Communist Viet Cong. With the monsoon season well under way, the Reds were gambling on the combined effects of weather and surprise to nullify the superior power of the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies...
That's the kind of war it continues to be in Viet Nam. Since the monsoon began, the Viet Cong have lost some 4,500 dead to about 1,900 on the government side. Last week 8,000 more marines landed at Danang, raising the total of Americans in South Viet Nam to 63,000, and President Johnson told a press conference that another 10,000 U.S. troops will soon arrive. Experts in Saigon foresaw 150,000 men by year's end. While last week's frenetic activity may have reflected a certain Communist desperation, the President...
...Kontum province in the monsoon-drenched central highlands, where a major Red offensive may be shaping up, the Communists took over the district capital of Tou Morong; heeding the advice of U.S. officers, who feared that rescue troops might fall into an ambush, the South Vietnamese government temporarily abandoned any attempt to recapture the town...
Relief troops arriving to press the retreating Viet Cong looked around, vomited, then ate their rice and moved out. Marching through the monsoon rain past giant anthills and through a sepulchral rubber plantation, they came on the rolling field where the first relief force had been surrounded and wiped out. Sixty bodies lay beneath the bright green trees, while wounded flapped like broken butterflies...
...Army desertions rose to more than 5,000 and paramilitary absenteeism jumped four times that high. The reason: South Vietnamese believed that U.S. airpower alone would win the war; hence, they were no longer needed. But when the Viet Cong stepped up their attacks at the beginning of the monsoon season, many of the deserters returned. The army's AWOL level alone has dropped...