ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the US-GVN efforts to win the hearts and minds of My Thos rural population, and the Communist Parties response to this challenge, and the revolutions own approach toward building a sympathetic and politically responsive constituency. The bombing and shelling of the countryside continued to intensify, and large numbers of refugees left their homes in revolutionary-controlled areas. The epic independence struggle of the revolution and the concrete benefits of ending the worst excesses of landlordism and the petty tyranny of local officials had attracted the peasants to the revolution and provided political capital for the long struggle. The much-derided Hamlet Evaluation Surveys or HES ratings were monthly assessments of the security situation in each of Vietnam's hamlets, the component neighbourhoods of the villages and the lowest administrative unit in Vietnam. The popular associations in Vinh Kim began to fall apart, depriving the Party of an essential instrument of revolutionary mobilization and recruitment.
