Word: pakanbaru
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Colonel Simbolon, who marched off with one battalion to take command of the rebel forces in North Sumatra, last week was back in Bukittinggi without 1) his troops, 2) report of victory. In the eastern foothills of the Sumatra mountains, government troops from the oil center of Pakanbaru had pushed the rebels back within 70 miles of Bukittinggi. To the south, the government's hard-working paratroopers were inching through the jungle to cut the last rebel artery to the outside-the potholed road that leads to Palembang in South Sumatra...
...very sight of government airborne troops seems to be an unnerving thing for rebel commanders. When 200 paratroopers fluttered down into the Central Sumatran oil center of Pakanbaru, an 800-man rebel garrison took to the hills (TIME, March 24). Last week the hard-working paratroopers were shifted to Medan, the North Sumatran rubber metropolis of 520,000 people that had just been seized by some 1,500 rebels under Major Boyk Nangolan. As the grimy paratroopers in their red berets moved in, Major Nangolan hastily moved out, first scooping up 18 million rupiahs from a local bank and taking...
...first light of dawn, the sleepy Siak River town of Pakanbaru was wakened by the tumultuous honking and crying of thousands of disturbed jungle birds. Swarms of Sumatran fireflies, which travel in whirling galaxies resembling slowly moving fireballs, abruptly vanished. Then came the snarl of planes as a flight of old, U.S. -made F-51s swept in to strafe the shacks and hangars of Simpang Tiga airstrip, six miles southwest of town. After them came 16 lumbering transport planes; as they passed overhead, the sun-streaked sky blossomed with silken parachutes that brought 200 paratroopers to earth...
...Surrender. As easily as that, the Indonesian government last week regained control of Pakanbaru, the heart of the U.S.-owned Caltex oilfields. The rebel commander, Major Sjamsi Nurdin, and his 800 troops were taken completely by surprise. Even worse, the rebels had cleared the airstrip of oil drums only the day before, to enable trucks to pick up guns and ammunition dropped by a four-engined plane of unidentified nationality...
Last week Indonesia, racked by civil war, was in dire danger of splintering apart. Guns cracked in the jungles of West Java; government bombers winged over Pakanbaru in Sumatra and Menado in the Celebes, blasting radio transmitters and telephone exchanges; government patrol boats, cleared for action, blockaded rebel-held ports...
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