Word: arvn
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...Vietnamese officer saluted and put out his hand. "Captain Vo Cong Hieu, commanding 2nd Battalion," he said in passable English. Hieu was my Army of the Republic of Vietnam (arvn) counterpart, the man I would be advising. He was short, in his early 30s, with a broad face and an engaging smile. But for the uniform, I would have taken him for a genial schoolteacher...
...around in utter confusion. I repressed my own terror and started to make my way forward to find out what had happened. When I got to the head of the column, I saw a knot of Vietnamese huddled around a groaning soldier, a medic kneeling at his side. An ARVN noncom gestured toward the creek. Another small figure lay there in a fetal crouch. His head was turned sideways, and the creek flowed across his face. This man was dead. We had been ambushed. We had taken casualties from attackers who had vanished before we had ever seen them...
...first confirmed kill produced a boost in morale among the ARVN. The numbers game, later termed the "body count," had not yet come into use. But the Vietnamese had already figured out what the Americans wanted to hear. They were forever "proving" kills to me by a patch of blood leading from an abandoned weapon or other circumstantial evidence. Not good enough, I told them. I became the referee in a grisly game, and a V.C. kia required a V.C. body. No body, no credit...
...raid was carried out by five captured American F-5 and A-37 jets, flown by South Vietnamese pilots who had defected to the North. Such use of enemy personnel and equipment was not unusual, says NVA Lieut. General Hoan Phuong, who planned the attack. Not only were ARVN forces fleeing precipitously and abandoning much valuable equipment but also some changed sides and "wanted to show their new devotion to us. So many pilots and tank drivers from the other side helped out in the last days." In the case of the air raid, says Phuong, "the idea...
...ordered his columns to move into the city from five different directions.They had waited, says Tra, because "our main purpose was to seize Saigon, not to kill people. We didn't want to stop the evacuation." In fact, Nguyen Huu Hanh, who had come out of retirement as an ARVN brigadier general to join Big Minh's government, says "it was our troops" that fired at least some of the tracer bullets so prominent in accounts of the helicopter flights the previous night. "They were angry at the U.S. for leaving...