Word: arvn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...battle to get out. Whether Operation Lam Son 719, as the Laotian invasion is officially called, could be judged a success or a setback was still a matter of considerable debate (see box next page). Beyond debate, however, was the fact that some units of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) had been badly cut up in the fighting, and that North Viet Nam seemed ready and willing to sacrifice casualties by the thousands in order to deal the South a physical and psychological mauling...
...That the ARVN withdrawal was not yet a rout was due very largely to U.S. airpower. Day after day, B-52s, F-4 Phantoms and F-100s, flying as many strike sorties for the Lam Son operation alone as they ordinarily stage in all of Indochina, kept the battlefield under incessant barrage. Giant B-52s, used like Phantom jets for close ground support, pursued North Vietnamese soldiers through jungle and elephant grass, dropping their 30,000-lb. bomb loads as close as 600 yards to allied positions. Everywhere ARVN soldiers went, they stumbled upon phalanxes of enemy bodies, or survivors...
...Command also revealed that it believes Saigon's estimates of North Vietnamese troops killed by U. S. air action in Laos to be nearly four times higher than the actual figure. Saigon officials had been claiming that U. S. planes and helicopter gunships flying in support of ARVN troops had killed some 14,000 rebel troops in Laos. President Nixon had been emphasizing the importance of these North Vietnamese "losses" in recent statements, and Joseph Alsop, the ever-obliging hawk columnist, went so far as to treat his readers of two days ago to a lurid description of how some...
...fraction of the water buffalo, cattle and other animals could be brought with the people, because of the hurried moves by truck and U. S. Chinook helicopters. Virtually all the hardwood furniture found in Montagnard long-houses had to be left behind. Cattle and ceremonial gongs were stolen by ARVN troops and later sold in a nearby Vietnamese market town...
...ARVN: They might hear...