Word: montagnard
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Loincloth & Bracelet. The Special Forces came to Viet Nam in 1961. Mov ing out into the jungled hinterland where Saigon exerted little or no control, they recruited irregular forces from minority groups-mostly Montagnard tribesmen-and established fortified base camps. From the beginning, the Americans, unlike the Vietnamese, got along well with the "Yards." It is not unusual to see a Special Forces man, decked out in loincloth and wearing the plain brass Montagnard bracelets that indicate blood brotherhood, attending a village party or a wedding as an honored guest. Though the Americans are a familiar sight in many villages...
...stab was made at Lang Vei, a hilltop U.S. Special Forces camp four miles southwest of Khe Sanh on Route 9. Basically a post for interdicting Communist movement into the South and for overseeing allied patrols into nearby Laos, Lang Vei was defended by some 400 South Vietnamese and Montagnard irregulars and 24 Green Berets, operating out of a deeply dug bunker made of three feet of rein forced concrete and two-inch steel plate, complete with its own ventilation system. As much as any place can be in Viet Nam, it seemed an ideal outpost, immune to artillery attack...
Fluttering north from Saigon in a privately chartered helicopter to inspect a Viet Nam resettlement camp, Illinois G.O.P. Senator Charles Percy, 48, decided on impulse to take a look at Dak Son, the Montagnard village recently destroyed by the Viet Cong in the war's worst atrocity. The Senator and a party of four hopped to the ground in Dak Son, leaving Loraine Percy in the chopper, and were met by a welcoming barrage of mortar and small-arms fire from surrounding V.C.s. "I can assure you I have never gotten closer to the ground," said Percy...
...reason for the Communists' in tense interest in Dak Son, a hamlet of 2,000 Montagnard people, was that it was the new home and sanctuary of some 800 Montagnard refugees who 14 months ago fled from life under the Viet Cong in the surrounding countryside, where they had been forced to work in virtual slavery as farmers and porters. The Montagnards are the innocents of Viet Nam: primitive, peaceful, sedentary hill tribesmen. The women go bare-breasted and the men, who scratch out a living by farming and hunting with crossbows and knives, wear loincloths. The Viet Cong...
...Viet Cong's aim was clearly to frighten the rest of the Montagnards from seeking haven in government towns like Dak Son. But in this case, Communist terrorism had clearly overshot its mark. Chanting and weeping as they buried their dead, the Montagnard survivors resolved to stay in Dak Son and rebuild the hamlet. More than 100 men immediately volunteered for irregular-force training and a chance to defend Dak Son should the men with "the guns that shoot fire" ever show up again...