Word: ragtag
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Over the past two years, efforts to improve ARVN have produced steady, gradual progress, though no one claims any miracles. Reports TIME'S Saigon Bureau Chief Marsh Clark, "Certainly compared with a ragtag Cambodian army and a Communist enemy that has been for the most part desperately eluding and evading, ARVN has taken on a new and refreshing look. But ARVN has changed only by comparison. By any measure, it has not suddenly changed from a marginally efficient overall force to a superarmy...
Nine Dragons. In the Cambodian countryside, ARVN's 40,000 troops were the biggest armed force around−except for Phnom-Penh's own ragtag army of 150,000, most of whom undergo no more than a few days of training before being sent against seasoned Communist troops. Lancing deep into two previously untouched Communist areas, ARVN troops opened the twelfth and 13th fronts of the border campaign. Northwest of Saigon, 5,000 ARVN troops on Operation Pacify West III rode tanks and helicopters into a North Vietnamese base opposite the Central Highlands. Far to the south, another...
...onetime M.I.T. student whose heroes range from Bolivar and Lincoln to Don Quixote, Don Pepe has led his country twice before. In 1948, when the Costa Rican army and Communist-led commandos sought to prevent a newly elected government from assuming power, Don Pepe routed them with a ragtag 700-man army. He took control at the head of a junta, and in the next 18 months he dissolved the army, expanded social-welfare programs, gave women the vote and nationalized the banks. Then, by prior agreement, he stepped aside in favor of the man whose election...
...course, for lack of trying. A ragtag unit of the Mexican army, led by General Maximilian Rodrigues de Santos (Peter Ustinov) and Sergeant Valdez (John Astin), straggle across the U.S.-Mexican border, looking simultaneously tired and suspicious. General Max and a sadsack adjutant hijack a car full of gringo tourists and scout the territory. They return to the troops, and in a matter of seconds there is an irregular unit of the Mexican army charging through today's downtown San Antonio on its way to reclaim the Alamo...