Word: montagnard
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With his eleven-man team, Cordell lived right in a village of the Rhade tribe, ate rice as a staple, wore neither rank nor insignia on his U.S. Army camouflage fatigues. In his pockets was always a supply of sourball candies, which he passed out to montagnard children-if they took a bath. Often youngsters would bathe three times a day just to get extra sourballs...
...that Terry D. Cordell fought in the central highlands of South Viet Nam was far different from any taught at The Citadel, from which he graduated in 1957. His troops were primitive montagnard tribesmen who dressed in loincloths, hunted with crossbows and poisoned arrows, and worshiped animist spirits who lived in trees. Yet Captain Cordell, 27, was so successful in training, arming and protecting some 100,000 montagnards that the complex of fortified villages under his command became a showplace for visiting VIPs. Often Cordell would complain that he had to spend more time squiring dignitaries than fighting the Communist...
Deep in South Viet Nam's highland forests live more than 500,000 primitive natives whom the French called montagnards-people of the mountains. The aboriginal montagnards hunt with crossbows and poisoned arrows, practice animal sacrifice to the spirits of the sky and water; montagnard women go barebreasted, and men wear only loincloths. Though they inhabit more than half the land of South Viet Nam, the montagnards consider the Vietnamese to be carpetbaggers who came into the hills only to exploit them and steal their land. Taking advantage of this loathing, Communist Viet Cong guerrilla cadres from the north...
...expert hunter and a crack shot with the crossbow, whom tribesmen have dubbed Y-Dio-King of the Rhade. Nuttie first arrived in Viet Nam in 1959 with the International Voluntary Services, a U.S. welfare organization, picked up the Rhade tongue on his extensive motorcycle travels through montagnard territory. An agriculture graduate of Kansas State University, he helped the Rhade develop better methods of cultivation, learned their customs, wrote two studies on Rhade culture. This year he became a U.S. Army civilian employee, was given the formidable task of wooing the Rhade away from the Viet Cong...
...bruising drinking bouts with kpie wine that are a standard form of Rhade entertainment. After two weeks of military instruction, the volunteers head back for the hills to defend their villages. To date, not one of the 5,000 tribesmen trained has defected to the Viet Cong. Many montagnard hamlets have become almost fortresses, surrounded by bamboo fences, spikes and poisonous bushes called kpung, whose tiny thorns enter the skin and cause temporary paralysis...