Word: tet
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...impossible to single out, became the 30,000th American to be killed in action in Viet Nam since the grisly log was begun on Jan. 1, 1961. Almost half of the total (14,400) died this year, many in the three major offensives launched by the Communists since the Tet holiday...
...irregulars were started by Hayden two weeks after Tet as an early-warning network of civilians who, in their spare time, would help government forces defend Phu Vinh. Hayden, who once spent a summer in the U.S. work ing as a forest ranger, got local mer chants to contribute fire-fighting equipment and taught his men how to use it as well as the Bren guns he scrounged. Early in May, he led his 500 irregulars, smartly uniformed in black shirt and trousers, with a yellow scarf at the neck, on a 2½-hour parade through Phu Vinh. That...
...long night watches stretch from dusk till past dawn. The irregulars get no pay, and must provide their own uniforms, bedding and food. The reason they do it is clear enough. Says one, Le Chi, a middle-aged maker of mosquito nets: "I protect my city. If during Tet we had had a self-defense, the V.C. would not have come in. Now they can't burn our houses again...
Hayden served in the Marines before going to Viet Nam 20 months ago as a civilian with AID, the U.S. foreign-aid agency. He has been nominated for two Purple Hearts for wounds during and since Tet, for the Bronze Star with a V for valor when he rescued four wounded Vietnamese troops from an ambush late in March, and for the South Vietnamese Chuong My medal-the highest a civilian...
Political Commitment. Of the irregulars' effect on the people of Phu Vinh, Hayden says: "Before Tet, they were fat, dumb and happy. After Tet, we looked around and saw that the people were scared to death. Now they aren't complacent, but they are confident. They think the V.C. can't get in here again. They are our great hope for the future down here." On the spread of such commitment may well rest the success of the South Vietnamese government in the trying times of war-or truce-that lie ahead...