Word: arvn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...city's only escape to the sea. Sunday night there was heavy fighting at several points around the capital, including a murderous artillery assault against the airbase at Bien Hoa. Poised on the outskirts of the city, the Communist troops faced virtually no resistance. Most of the top ARVN military leaders had already fled or were making plans to do so; the regular troops were leaderless, demoralized and overpowered...
Though Thieu carefully described his resignation as voluntary, it was virtually his only choice, even without the push from Washington. In the days leading up to his announcement, Communist troops had made a mockery of any claim that Saigon could yet mobilize a vigorous defense. The badly battered ARVN 18th Division put up a heroic stand at the provincial capital of Xuan Loc, 40 miles northeast of Saigon, but a formidable force of three North Vietnamese divisions, after taking some severe casualties from government air strikes, simply wore them down. When the exhausted remnants of Xuan Loc's defenders straggled...
...early last week there were at least 130,000 Communist troops surrounding Saigon, squared off against just 60,000 ARVN troops. And while South Vietnamese forces were steadily depleted through desertions and encounters with the enemy, the North Vietnamese forces kept growing. General Nguyen Van Toan, commander of the military region around the capital, privately conceded that the battle had been lost; so did most of ARVN's top leadership. "Their morale and their leadership are just flowing away," said a senior military observer who only a week ago was still hopeful that Saigon could yet pull off "a small...
Portraits of Ho Chi Minh abound, as do Viet Cong flags. The ten rules of behavior for soldiers (be polite to people, respect their property, among others) are posted everywhere. Moviehouses show revolutionary films exclusively. Schoolteachers are being "re-educated" to teach the new Marxist credo. ARVN officers who did not manage to escape are being held in custody, but enlisted men so far have only to carry an identity card issued by the P.R.G...
...cheerfully displayed a photograph of her uncle, an ARVN colonel. The girl said that her uncle had shipped her and about 20 other nieces and nephews to the U.S. to join relatives; her mother is living in the U.S. and is now married to an American. About five days before the flight, the girl said, the colonel's brood was placed in a Catholic orphanage in Saigon. Good connections and an ample store of cash served other Vietnamese well too. At least two well-to-do Saigon families managed to put their children upon U.S.-bound planes as "orphans...