Word: arvn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Going Nowhere. Still, the North Vietnamese pressed their attack on the ARVN troops-or at least some of them. The withdrawal from Laos was in fact divided into three fairly distinct parts, and Washington still maintained that it would not be completed until mid-April. According to the Pentagon, several thousand of the 20,000 South Vietnamese who went into Laos were sweeping southeastward toward home, hilltop hopping by helicopter and disrupting enemy supply routes. Some 10,000 more ARVN troops, whose armored column had been stalled for five weeks on Route 9, 15 miles inside Laos, began a slow...
...real battle-and the most precipitous retreat-involved the elite 1st ARVN Division. They had been assigned to man fire bases named Sophia, Lolo, Liz and A Luoi, and Landing Zone Brown, all overlooking the invasion route on Highway 9. All were abandoned after undergoing continued shelling and massed attacks by the North Vietnamese. The ARVN troops destroyed their own artillery and fought their way through the jungle until helicopters could reach them (see following story...
...nosed into the jungle and exploded. The second, a Huey troop carrier, managed to land and evacuate 17 men. The third was hit by machine-gun fire and crashed. Two hours later, two more helicopters landed and rescued the downed chopper's crew and the last ARVN troops...
...troops are beginning to pull back to the border. As the withdrawal gathered speed last week, the question was increasingly asked: Was it worth it? The answer will not be known in full until the operation is over, but it can be partly determined by comparing the ARVN struggle in Laos with the invasion's original goals...
Spoiling the Communist infiltration routes was only one duty assigned to the ARVN troops sent into Laos. Another important, though unstated task was to draw much larger North Vietnamese forces into massing along the trail so that they could then be hammered by U.S. airpower. For obvious reasons, neither Washington nor Saigon has greatly stressed that a key feature of Lam Son was to use ARVN as bait in order to kill North Vietnamese troops...