Word: arvn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...outnumbered and outgunned government forces finally appeared to be crumbling at week's end. Only 15 miles north of Saigon, Communist artillerymen launched first assaults on the huge South Vietnamese airbase at Bien Hoa. Using 130-mm. artillery with a range of 15 miles, they momentarily disrupted ARVN'S fighter-bomber traffic...
...extraordinarily rapid change in the fortunes of war in South Viet Nam has caught the world-not to mention the participants-unawares. Scarcely a month ago the ARVN was one of the largest and best-equipped armies in the world; today it is shattered. Three-quarters of the country and at least 40% of its 19 million people are under Communist rule...
...prolonged fighting at Xuan Loc was interpreted, in the beginning, as a test of the ARVN's remaining will to fight. "I vow to hold Xuan Loc," declared the 18th Division commander, Brigadier General Le Minh Dao. "I don't care how many divisions the other side sends against me, I will knock them down...
...left to fight over. "Virtually every building was in ruins," Halstead reported later. "Blackened bodies of North Vietnamese soldiers littered the streets, where heavy house-to-house fighting had obviously taken place not long before. Except for the troops, the town was empty of its 38,000 people." The ARVN fought hard and well at Xuan Loc. But by the time Halstead and other journalists got back to their helicopter they found it surrounded and overrun, not only by frightened civilians but by soldiers who were understandably trying...
Perhaps the major dilemma facing Hanoi is whether to go for a quick, immediate strike at the capital-or whether to proceed step-by-step, which would allow ARVN more time to regroup and rebuild some of its shattered divisions. Actually, Hanoi has a third option: hoping that Saigon will fall without a fight anyway. "We do not want our compatriots to die if we can obtain our objectives by other means," declared Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh, the Provisional Revolutionary Government's Foreign Minister...