Word: thien
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...Marines' war along the "Demilitarized" Zone between North and South Viet Nam. The action there last week provided grim illustration of the war's bloody turn. Spotting a small force of North Vietnamese grouping for what looked like an attack on the Marine post of Con Thien, two Marine companies moved up Route 161 to do battle. They ran right into an ambush. Two battalions of Hanoi's 324B Division, supported massively by mortars and aided by Red artillery firing over the DMZ from North Viet Nam, hit the 300 Marines, killing 83 and wounding...
...which last week knocked out a Marine tank for the first time in the war. Last week, also for the first time, the North Vietnamese zeroed in on the Marines with Russia's family of massive 152-mm. howitzers and long guns: one round hit the Con Thien command post, killing nine Marines and wounding 21. Red shelling of the chief Marine forward base along the DMZ of Dong Ha has become, in fact, so heavy and accurate that the post may soon be abandoned...
...leathernecks streamed ashore 21 miles northeast of Hue in an amphibious and heliborne assault. Sporadic fighting also broke out along the Demilitarized Zone, where the Marines discovered and destroyed no fewer than 77 Communist bunkers, stacked with food and supplies, within a three-mile radius of their Con Thien base camp, just south of the DMZ. Near the Marine base of Dong Ha, a 5,000-man South Vietnamese task force killed 150 Communists of the Viet Cong's elite 708th Battalion...
Traditionally, the Vietnamese authority forms a structure in which the Emperor (Hoang De) sits on top. He was the Son of Heaven (Thien Tu) who carried with him the "mandate of heaven" (Thien Mang) and was the supreme agent of the emperor of Heaven and Earth (Thueng De). For this reason he declared himself responsible for all the misfortunes afflicting his nation, whether they be war, famine, or any other catastrophe, since these are "thien tai" (disasters from heaven). At such a time he had to pacify the "anger from the palace of heaven" (tran loi dinh) by confessing...
...remove the estimated 11,000 villagers living in the DMZ and resettle them farther south, thus creating a free bombing zone in the buffer strip; the South Vietnamese force that moved up Route 1 had part of the same mission. The Marine force that helicoptered in north of Con Thien faced little opposition, but it quickly uncovered proof of Hanoi's plans for a major offensive out of the DMZ: a vast depot of North Vietnamese equipment ranging from rockets, mortars and antitank mines to rice and medical equipment...