Word: saigon
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...country was chaotic. Frances FitzGerald was in Saigon the same time that I was. The city was all confusion. Americans were everywhere and stuck together, meeting only other Americans and those Vietnamese who, for one reason or another, were compelled to deal with our self-sufficient and insulated enclaves...
...Saigon's population tripled in ten years. Refugees poured into the city, pushing its edges outward every year and straining the capacities of a pre-industrial urban center to the breaking point. The city had a huge, white presidential palace at its center and rows of homes made entirely of flattened Budweiser beer cans on its outskirts...
...wild, homeless kids called Cao Bois grew up who beat and rolled American soldiers. Thu Do street had the largest collection of bars and bordellos in Vietnam--less than a half mile from Nguyen Van Thieu's home. Monks burned themselves in the streets; soldiers bought bar girls Saigon Tea for two bucks a shot and got blown up by bicycles laden with explosives; NLF agents lived next door to petty government officials. Hundreds of crippled war veterans angrily confronted the state with demands for housing and health care, descending on the presidential palace, in wheelchairs and on crutches, like...
...Indochina the only certainty is the continued war. Fictions about a ceasefire become increasingly difficult to maintain as the Provisional Revolutionary Government and Saigon Government trade largely accurate accusations of thousands of daily violations. Reputable estimates place the fighting at about the same level as it was last October, including Saigon's division-sized assaults on PRG positions. With 200,000 people made refugees since the ceasefire, we would be hard-pressed to call this peace. The very temporary North Vietnamese threat to delay the second prisoner exchange now completed and the attacks on North Vietnamese truce delegations...
...careful "truce" supervision. Fighting continues in Laos, although Pathet Lao and government officials established a formal cease-fire on February 22. In Cambodia, American B52's have continued to bomb in support of that country's military dictatorship. And at the 13-nation peace conference in Paris, haggling over Saigon's refusal to release civilian political prisoners, over satisfactory funding for the reconstruction of Indochina, and over Hanoi's release of American POWs provide more diplomatic evidence that the struggle of Vietnam is far from over...