Word: ngo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Shortly after 1 p.m., the soldiers moved. Throwing roadblocks across the avenues leading from the city to Saigon Airport, army units quickly won over units of Ngo Dinh Nhu's crack "special forces" near the airfield, giving a free hand to air force pilots who were planning to support the coup d'état with rocket-equipped dive bombers...
...Fame. At 4:45 p.m., Saigon Radio, which abruptly ceased broadcasting at the start of the fighting, returned to the air. "Soldiers in the army, security service, civil defense force, and people's force," blared the radio. "The Ngo Dinh Diem government, abusing power, has thought only of personal ambition and slighted the fatherland's interests . . . The army has swung into action. The task of you all is to unite . . . The revolution will certainly be successful...
This declaration was signed by 14 generals, seven colonels and a major who have what for Americans are some of the most unpronounceable names on earth-such names as Brig. General Pham Xuan Chieu, Brig. General Nguyen Giac Ngo, and Brig. General Tran Tu Oai. At the top of the list was Big Minh and Lieut. General Tran Van Don. Like Minh, Don has been close to the Americans-so close that he went to a dinner for Admiral Felt the night before the coup, calmly saw Felt off at the airport shortly before the shooting started. "We have...
...ancient Greek stage. A national hero, who had fought long and courageously against great odds, had finally been brought down by fate-fate in this case being a combination of his avowed enemies, his former friends and, undoubtedly, his own flawed nature. When he took office nine years ago, Ngo Dinh Diem told his people, "Follow me if I advance! Kill me if I retreat! Revenge me if I die!" In whatever manner and for whatever reason Diem died, it was not because he retreated...
Into this seemingly doomed situation stepped a scholarly, introverted and humorless man of 53, whose major qualification for the job was that he was one of the few South Viet Nam leaders who had not already failed. A convinced nationalist and an intense Roman Catholic, Ngo Dinh Diem came from a mandarin family long accustomed to rule. Diem himself nearly became a priest but decided against it because, says his brother, Archbishop Thuc, "the church was too worldly...