Word: tribesmen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They listened tensely for the sound of gunfire behind them, which would mean that the pursuing Red Chinese had clashed with the rearguard of Khamba tribesmen. Up front, scouts probed carefully to make sure Communist paratroops had not been dropped in the pass to bar their way. All of them-the 35 Khambas of the rearguard, the 75 officials, soldiers and muleteers-were charged with a solemn responsibility: to make good the escape from Tibet of the God-King in their midst-the 23-year-old 14th Dalai Lama...
...test came. When a Red Chinese "liberation" army was poised on the Tibetan frontier, the nomad Khamba tribesmen asked Lhasa if it intended to fight. The Dalai Lama's advisers could not make up their minds. The fortress of Chamdo surrendered with scarcely a shot fired, and the Khambas decided that Lhasa had lost its nerve, and made no move to stop the Reds...
...words were proved true in the border province of Kham, where the Reds had been longer in control. The lamaseries of Kham were looted of their treasure and their land collectivized. Nomad Khamba tribesmen were driven from the pastureland they had used for centuries. Tribal chiefs resented their loss of power te the commissars. The Khambas, great shaggy men often 6 ft. tall, with leather boots, 3-ft. swords and rifles they are born and die with, fought back. Snipers bushwhacked lone Red couriers on the new road to Lhasa. Khamba bands ambushed military convoys. The embittered monks drove...
...four years the guerrilla war raged along the border. More and more dispossessed Khambas crossed over into Tibet proper and roused their fellow tribesmen in the Tsangpo valley to join the revolt. In Lhasa, monks grumbled at the religion-destroying teachings of the Red Chinese; Tibetans complained at soaring prices and the confiscation of grain and wool. The Reds applied pressure on the Dalai Lama to quiet his people. To an anxious crowd assembled in the Norbulingka gardens, the God-King said blandly: "If the Chinese Communists have come to Tibet to help us, it is most important that they...
...trap the Dalai Lama. Proceeding mostly at night to avoid Red spotter planes, the royal fugitive dispensed with all ritual. (Normally, any place where the Dalai Lama stays automatically becomes sacred and may not be used again as a dwelling.) Once across the Tsangpo and protected by jubilant Khamba tribesmen, he took a course unanticipated by the Chinese, headed for the Indian border town of Towang in the wild and wooded plateau region of Assam province...