LAOS: Spreading the Word

Now and then a rifle crack broke the stillness of the hills, but the Communist insurgents were finding the simpler weapons of rumor, exaggeration and bluff sufficient to keep their campaign going. Operating in little bands of 5 to 25 men, they sent heralds ahead to frighten villages with stories of Communist hordes about to descend, of real or imaginary atrocities committed near by, of the fall of a government fort. Sometimes they rowed back and forth across a river to give the impression of large numbers. Sometimes they herded villages of...