Word: pagoda
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...young Vietnamese with his head swathed in bandages, it carried a Buddhist monk and a young girl with a bandaged arm. They had a message: the press was invited to Tinh Hoi at once for an announcement. Grabbing cameras and note pads, some 35 newsmen set out for the pagoda, passing first through government lines, then the firing pits of the Tinh Hoi compound filled with rebel soldiers. Among them were TIME Correspondents Karsten Prager and William McWhirter...
...announcement would come. A Buddhist Boy Scout told us in broken English to wait another five minutes. A man in a green uniform blandly assured us that it would deal with the reasons for the rebel fight against the Ky government. That hardly seemed worth summoning us to the pagoda, and it suddenly occurred to us that it might very well be a trap. If the rebels feared a government attack on Tinh Hoi, what better way to forestall it than by arranging the presence of three dozen foreign reporters inside the pagoda...
...shook his head. We offered him 500 piastres. Still no. With that Van Meter brushed the man aside, took the netting. The firefight was over with the big blast. Twenty minutes later, the Tinh Hoi loudspeaker announced that the rest of the newsmen were coming out of the pagoda and that this time there would be no shooting. We joined them and walked the last four blocks home...
Hastening the End? The government forces did not attack the pagoda that night. There was no need to. Hopelessly surrounded and outgunned, its besieged defenders surrendered the next day, led by a paratroop captain who laid his carbine down at the foot of a tough young government colonel and saluted. That ceremonial gesture signaled an end to the city's nightmare of hysteria...
Danang's peace was probably hastened by the newsmen's harrowing experience the night before. If the Buddhist-inspired rebels had been planning a last-ditch stand in the pagoda, they would have done so only if they could have been certain that the press -and world opinion-would blame the Ky forces, and not themselves. When the reporters departed, so did the Buddhists' will to fight...