Word: 3rd
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week, though, ARVN did not quite live up to Defense Secretary Laird's measure of success: winning 75% of its battles. In the very first hours of the offensive, in fact, ARVN suffered only defeat. The big loser was the 3rd Division, whose troops abandoned 14 firebases below the DMZ in five days. The 3rd was a newly formed unit, raised largely by conscription, of local men, including a good many draft dodgers and delinquents. Considering the ferocity of the initial North Vietnamese barrage, retreat made sense. But it was not sensibly executed. Some units quit the field...
...Camp Carroll, a former U.S. Marine outpost ten miles south of the DMZ, 3rd Division troopers mutinied. After three days of brutal shelling, their commander ordered a gradual retreat; they wanted to surrender. Luckily for the U.S. adviser, Lieut. Colonel William Camper, a passing helicopter heard his radio call: "They're running up a white flag! I'm leaving!" Camper was picked up, along with a couple of the soldiers who wanted to retreat too. But the unlucky base commander was reportedly tied up by the remaining mutineers and turned over...
Single Shot. Inept as the 3rd Division appeared to be, it was a model of discipline by comparison with some of the Regional and Popular Force irregulars in the area, who were little better than gun-happy mobs. South of Quang Tri city, one such mob fired away with giddy abandon for two hours at Communists holding a bridge on Highway 1. When the Communists finally broke and ran, reported TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch, "the South Vietnamese ran off after them, hooting in jubilation-until the Communists turned to fire a few sobering rounds at their pursuers. The troops stopped...
...divisional commander and finally to the appropriate artillery battalion. Beyond this, ARVN's divisions are of sharply uneven quality, and its best units are apt to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Last week the crack 1st was resting in Hue while the bungling 3rd bore the brunt of the early fighting...
...Christian centuries that followed were more plainspoken. Tertullian reflected the mind of many early church fathers when he pronounced, in the 3rd century, that women were "the devil's gateway...