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Al Chang ©Stars and StripesCu Chi, South Vietnam, 1962: A South Vietnamese soldier pauses while patrolling along the sharpened-bamboo fence surrounding the civil guard outpost at Cu Chi, one of the newest in the string of "strategic hamlets" extending from the Cambodian border to the South China Sea. A Vietnamese source told Stars and Stripes at the time that the object of Operation Sunshine (fortifying the strategic hamlets) was "to force the Viet Cong to abandon guerrilla-style warfare and come out in numbers in daylight where they will be an easier prey."