Word: arvn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Urgent Questions. Last week the army of South Viet Nam suffered its worst debacle of the five-week-old Communist offensive, and North Viet Nam's Defense Minister and chief military tactician, General Vo Nguyen Giap, gained his easiest victory of the long war. The 8,000-man ARVN 3rd Division, assigned to the defense of the northernmost provincial capital, Quang Tri, was known to be poorly trained and questionably led. But no one had expected the 3rd to give up as quickly as it did. Pounded by five days of shelling by Giap's troops and abandoned...
...Quang Tri cast a pall of gloom over Saigon and Washington, and raised urgent questions about Vietnamization, the hopeful policy through which the U.S. had built up the army of South Viet Nam, at immense cost in lives and treasure, to fight the Communists on its own. Could ARVN survive, much less defeat the North Vietnamese offensive? Could President Thieu-and even the U.S. presence and influence in South Viet Nam-outlast another similar defeat...
...sure, the 3rd had been the worst of South Viet Nam's 13 divisions, put together last June from stragglers and captured deserters, and there was no sign yet of the widespread unit defections that would signal the beginning of an overall collapse of ARVN. Still, the South Vietnamese badly needed to win the next battle if they were to stave off a national psychology of defeat that could intensify pressures to settle with the Communists at any price...
...seat of the 19th century Vietnamese empire. Hué is coveted by the Communists as the putative site for an insurgent government with national pretensions. For President Thieu, the loss of the city would have grim consequences both in Paris and at home. Coming on top of ARVN's other recent reverses, a major setback at Hué could precipitate a rapid collapse of army and civilian morale, and might even lead to the fall of his regime...
...best units. They included the 1st Division, a marine division and infantry units hastily brought up from the Mekong Delta and nearby Quang Ngai province. Thieu's biggest asset may be his new commander in the north, Lieut. General Ngo Quang Truong. Truong is regarded by Americans as ARVN's most effective field commander, and his first action was decisive enough. To stop the hemorrhage of ARVN troops through Hué, he ordered deserters shot on sight...