[Hermit]

Its January 1956, and our next assignment will take us to French Indochina. Thank heaven we won't be going back to Korea again. It's colder than billy-hell up in those mountains this time of year. And it won't be quite as miserable in the jungles of Vietnam in January either.

The Viet Cong have been active lately in the Mekong Delta region, and the French just don't have the transport and equipment necessary to move their present forces around in that semi-liquid landscape. We'll be out of the river area itself, but there's plenty of flooded areas, swamps, and rice-paddies to make any mosquitoes absolutely gleeful. I hope they send some bug-repellent along with us. Any spare Viet-Cong repellent could also come in handy.

There is a fair amount of tree-covered areas, which border on jungle, but it's not quite so dense. There are some obvious choke-points where the flooded areas will force passage in land bridges of only 200 or 300 meters across. There is one paved road running E-W which passes through two small villages, and farther south is a dirt road that will be of more tactical importance. It has a wooden bridge spanning the northern section of a flooded area about 200 meters across. Because there is densely wooded areas to the north and south of the road, but not too close, it will be an ideal route for us to drive into the enemy rear area. Therefore, we don't plan on destroying it, but we're sure the enemy will be making use of it as well. We expect that location to be the scene of heavy fighting.

The battle plan is to advance quickly and secure as many of the choke points as possible before they are taken by the enemy, then wait to see the enemy's force disposition. One or two points will then be chosen for a sustained push, and our forces will then be realigned to block the enemy at the others while driving throught the chosen gaps. Since speed will be key in this encounter, we've requested and received from division several platoons of amphibious APCs. The standard complement of Ammo 1/2-tracks is the only additional ground forces available. Two flights of A-26 Intruder fighter-bombers with the new cluster munitions have also been assigned to help disperse enemy infantry concentrations that are expected at the choke-points.