Word: tonkin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Viet Nam, as the Indo-Chinese call their country, is shaped like the load which millions of her barefooted peasants carry over their shoulders: two bulging baskets at either end of a thin pole. One bulge is northern Viet Nam (Tonkin), and the other southern Viet Nam (Cochin China). In the slender central region (An-nam), the mountains ripple almost down to the coast. Ho Chi Minh's Communist forces terrorize the coastal plains. In the south, terrorists make life unpleasant in the crowded Saigon region, and the Communist Vietminh haunts the marshes between the numberless arms...
...Communists have a regular army of some 80,000 men, plus up to 100,000 guerrillas organized in small bands. Half the regular forces are concentrated in a triangle of mountainous country in upper Tonkin, the base of which lies between the French frontier posts of Caobang and Laokay, giving the Reds poor but uninterrupted lines of communication with Mao's forces in China...
...Korea, the people in the street and across Indo-China have been getting a new kind of treatment from the Communists. The party's propaganda, once heavily camouflaged with nationalism, is now based on the most blatant Stalinism. French intelligence recently reported from the mountains of northern Tonkin, where 40,000 armed Reds are hiding, that the Communists are holding anti-Soviet nationalists more by force and fear, less by ideology and persuasion...
...Americans recognized the Emperor, I was not convinced that Viet Nam was really going to be independent. Many others would like to escape. But even important functionaries may not travel without a special permit. Only my ministerial rank allowed me to make a wide tour of inspection in northern Tonkin. I managed to get to the village where I was born, hid out there, and surrendered when a French patrol came along...