Word: arvn
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When handed a plan to increase the South Vietnamese army's (ARVN) handout by $42 million a year, above the $225 million already slated for the ARVN, Kennedy wrote "Why so little?" in the margins. Bundy told the State Department that his President was "really very eager that [Vietnam] should have the highest priority for rapid and energetic action...
...Kennedy authorized the use of U.S. helicopters in Vietnam, which began to use their superior mobility, devastating firepower and napalm to help the flagging ARVN. Enormous American armored personnel carriers called M-113s, impenetrable to Vietcong weapons and armed with terrifyingly powerful machine guns, began hauling ARVN troops around. There were no American ground troops, and Kennedy steadfastly refused to commit any, but Americans were piloting helicopters, fighter bombers and APCs, and serving in that most ambiguous of roles, as military advisors. Beyond hardware, the Kennedy Administration never came to grips with the true politics...
Before them the Northerners drove long, miserable columns of refugees, civilians, ARVN soldiers, the old and young, all terrified, struggling numbly south toward Saigon. The Communists shelled and machine-gunned some columns. The refugees stumbled on across the corpses and the dying. From the Danang airfield, the last plane took off with men clinging to the landing gear and stairs. Some who went aloft crouched in the wheel housings were crushed as the landing gear cranked up. Along the coast, ARVN soldiers deserted their families and in some cases shot civilians for a place on a boat...
...killers, or basically honorable men doing their duty when the nation called? Were the soldiers of the peace movement representatives of a uniquely virtuous generation, the most idealistic in history? (The antiwar protests died away when the draft ended in 1973.) Was the South Vietnamese army corrupt and cowardly? (ARVN units did not desert to the other side, and some 240,000 men gave their lives in the fight...
...anger and despair, some South Vietnamese turned upon the Americans who were now clearly going to abandon them. ARVN soldiers menaced Westerners in the streets. Terrified crowds of Vietnamese surrounded the U.S. embassy on Thong Nhut Street, begging their old protectors to get them out. Some tried to hand their babies over the wall into the embassy compound. Marines used tear gas and rifle butts to hold off what had become a mob of America's allies. Relays of helicopters began ferrying people out of the compound, evacuating the Americans and many of the Vietnamese who had worked for them...