Word: redness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Red & Green. Everywhere the Communist assault came as a stunning surprise. Until last week the village of Xieng Kho, a huddle of thatch-roofed huts standing on spindly stilts deep in the Samneua jungle, had seemingly had little to fear. Xieng Kho's garrison, dug in on a hillside above the village, consisted of 70 regulars of the royal Laotian army, 100 home guards and 25 counter-guerrillas who are called maquis by French-educated Laotians. For 25 miles along the western bank of the Nam Ma river, there were similar garrisons under the control of battalion headquarters...
...first flicker of uneasiness was aroused in the defenders of Xieng Kho when a night reconnaissance patrol went out and did not return. Toward dawn the next day, a sentry spotted some shadowy figures and fired warning shots. As he did so, a red flare blossomed in the night, and from three sides mortar shells rained down on the village and its entrenchments. As the troops scrambled to their positions, they were raked by heavy fire from machine guns and 57 mm. recoilless rifles...
Finally, after a 15-minute pounding, a green flare lit the sky, and the barrage ceased. Communist infantrymen in force dashed 50 yds. closer to the beleaguered village, hit the dirt when a second red flare reopened the mortar barrage. With alternate barrages and infantry rushes, the attackers steadily closed in, got so near the entrenchments that the defenders could hear orders shouted in the Vietnamese, Thai and Kha dialects. Some of the enemy wore the olive drab uniforms of the North Viet Nam army; others the traditional ebony clothing that gives the name of Black Thai to the dissident...
...litchi nuts and staring morosely at the mildewed Roman Catholic church across the street. For French-trained General Amkha, who still holds the rank of captain in the French army, it was a nightmare war. What news of the front he could get came from runners, a handful of Red prisoners and an endless stream of refugees :women with babies, men burdened with mattresses and sewing machines, a ten-year-old boy toting a submachine gun that his father, an ex-home guard, had told him to return to the government. To reach the area of a reported fight only...
...Wire, No Trenches. At week's end thousands of Communist invaders were being ferried across the Nam Ma river on rafts and rubber boats powered by out board motors, and Red patrols pushed within seven miles of Samneua City, telling villagers that it was futile for them to flee to the provincial capital since it would be in Communist hands in a matter of days. General Amkha seemed to agree. To cheer up his downcast aides, he cracked: "I am more afraid of Tokyo taxicabs than of the Communists." But his seven battalions, numbering more than...