Word: tuong
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...intricate collecting and disbursement system runs right up the organization ladder to COSVN, and vouchers are required for all expenditures, adding to the snowstorm of paper circulating inside the V.C. administration. Corruption is dealt with severely, but it is persistently present. At least one tax collector in Dinh Tuong told the Allies that he was chosen "because my family was rich and the Front did not have to worry about whether I would flee with the cash...
...patrolling and night ambushes, Corson's 1,500-man battalion set up what he likes to call "my laboratory for capitalism." The first step was to engage the interest of the villagers, which Corson achieved by the un-Clausewitzean technique of teaching his men the local game: co tuong, a variant of chess that uses "elephants, cannon and 14th century infantry tactics." Corson himself took on the village champion, managed to achieve a tie. "The game gave us our breakthrough in overcoming the reserve of the people," he says. "Next step was how to help them make a buck...
...Quang Nam's mayor was something special too. Slight, gaunt of face behind a thick mustache, Ngo Tuong, 49, was a Popular Forces soldier who had come back home to serve as mayor only last month. Tuong liked to wear a black beret and a camouflage suit in making the rounds of his constituency, was both efficient and remarkably honest. Though he carried a pistol, he disdained a regular Marine guard detail, rightly judging that it would not sit well with his villagers. Anyway, there seemed little danger. Ap Quang Nam had been so thoroughly pacified after the marines...
Suddenly two Viet Cong, who had slipped into the village the night before and hidden in a nearby house, burst in on the 40 worshipers. One fired a Czech burp gun, instantly killing the two officiating priests and Tuong's aunt, and hitting Tuong in the shoulder. Unable to draw his pistol, Tuong ran. A second burst cut him down in mid-courtyard. As so often happens in the terrorist war, the two assassins escaped in the confusion. In angry frustration, Tuong's nephew seized a long knife, raced next door and stabbed to death...
...Tuong's death was another grim example of the Communists' use of terrorism and atrocity against South Viet Nam's 37,000 local officials, more than 1,400 of whom were killed or kidnaped last year alone. Nor are officials the only targets. Two weeks ago in Phu Yen province, where Korean and Vietnamese forces are guarding peasants bringing in the rice harvest, two mine explosions killed 54 farm workers riding in a civilian bus. And in Saigon last week, two claymore mines set off near the back gate of the South Vietnamese Armed Forces Headquarters failed...