Word: thies
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Ever since the ten-man military Directory of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky (pronounced key) took power in South Viet Nam nine months ago, the greatest threat to the fragile stability of the Saigon government has been mustached, mercurial Lieut. General Nguyen Chanh Thi (pronounced tea). Vain, ambitious, an inveterate intriguer, Thi carefully cultivated the political Buddhists, got his own man installed as head of the national police. As field commander of the northernmost I Corps, he ran it like a warlord of yore, obeying those edicts of the central government that suited him and blithely disregarding the rest...
Once when Ky came north to remonstrate with him, Thi turned to his staff and asked contemptuously: "Should we pay attention to this funny little man from Saigon or should we ignore him?" Most Saigon hands were convinced that Thi wanted Ky's job. But last week Premier Ky and his fellow generals relieved Thi of his I Corps command and expelled him from the Directory. Afterward, they blandly announced that they "had considered and accepted General Thi's application for a vacation." At week's end, though Buddhists demonstrated in Hue and Danang, the ousted soldier...
...most powerful of the corps commanders is Lieut. General Nguyen Chanh Thi, 40, tough boss of the I Corps. A sound tactician, charismatic speaker and careful planner, Thi is the one man in the Directory thought to covet Ky's job. Dapper and mustachioed, favoring fierce badges and gaudy scarves, he even resembles Ky. Thi, who was exiled by Diem after an abortive 1960 coup, could probably take the job any time he chose. Among his other assets, he can count his hand-picked head of the nation's 50,000-man police force...
Powder Puff. The French used to call Vietnamese women douces comme les mangues (sweet as mangoes). One sweetie surfaced from Viet Cong ranks last April when South Vietnamese police caught a "pretty, well-shaped and lovable" 17-year-old girl named Nguyen Thi Nga, which means "Moon Fairy." She and two friends had been making themselves lovable around the U.S. officers' mess at Soctrang Airbase, which they planned to blow up with plastic bombs fitted into talcum powder cans. The Viet Cong run a sweeping intelligence network by means of Saigon's myriad bar girls, also have agents...
...Communist press of late has been proudly recounting the life story of 45-year-old Nguyen Thi Dinh, who has been a guerrilla since 1940, now has risen to the rank of deputy commander as well as member of the National Liberation Front presidium. Nguyen Thi Dinh got her Communist apprenticeship in the V.C.'s Women's Liberation Association, which functions in thousands of South Vietnamese villages. The W.L.A. is a kind of Viet Cong ladies' aid: besides nagging government officials, the ladies write letters to boys drafted into the South Vietnamese army urging them to defect...