Word: retreating
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...pilots to make positive identification, the MIGs almost certainly belonged to the Chinese Communists rather than the North Vietnamese. When the battle was over, one Phantom jet was missing, though the Pentagon refused to confirm the loss officially. As for the MIGs, they beat a hasty retreat in the direction of Hainan...
...last fall, Railroad Switchman Lyman Mintkenbaugh of Castro Valley, Calif., got a call from his brother James, 46, an Arlington, Va., real estate salesman who had recently come West and moved into a mountain retreat at Arnold, Calif...
These are Johnson's tactics for staying in Vietnam, but why stay at all? First, American public opinion is decidedly against U.S. defeat and retreat in Vietnam. (It is also against escalation, creating Johnson's dilemma. His reaction reflects American schizophrenia about Vietnam as well as sound Machiavellian politics: talking peace as he orders the bombing of more Vietnamese.) Second, Johnson can trace the policy back to Eisenhower, and as long as he continues it with what many Americans consider moderation, he is safe domestically. Third, he himself has already gone on record with many strong commitments to Saigon...
What was happening? Were the Viet Cong finally being hurt by the air strikes? Or were they merely regrouping for harder and deadlier actions in the weeks to come? No one could say, but the Viet Cong follow Mao Tse-tung's combat-tested guerrilla formula: retreat in the face of superior force, choose your own time and place for battle, and cultivate patience as if it were rice...
...minds of all, the castle is the symbol and focus for uneasy atavistic dreams of combat. Then the big guns begin to sound. Out of the falling snow, through a village straight out of a Breughel painting, comes the American army in headlong retreat, and the misfits of the 314th find themselves the only organized defense short of the Meuse. Bumbling and burlesquing the role of soldiers, they fight. For what? A confused dream, a bit of bread, a friend, a stone wall, a laugh...