Word: arvn
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AROUND SAIGON. As Communist artillery continued to pound the besieged city of An Loc north of Saigon, other enemy forces edged closer to the capital itself. Fighting broke out near Cu Chi, an ARVN headquarters astride the "Saigon corridor" between Cambodia and the capital, and enemy troops briefly occupied the nearby village of Trung Lap, only 20 miles from Saigon. At week's end, rocket teams were reported to have slipped into positions north and south of the tense capital...
...Demilitarized Zone, where South Vietnamese troops had stopped the initial invasion four weeks ago. Charging at night and under clouds that held U.S. and South Vietnamese air attacks to a minimum last week, enemy armor and infantry overran Dong Ha and encircled Quang Tri city. Farther south, battered ARVN troops were driven from long-besieged Firebase Bastogne, opening the way for an enemy drive on Hue, the ancient imperial capital. A drive on Hue, in turn, could pose a direct threat to U.S. troops guarding an American base...
...MIDDLE. A drive in the Central Highlands had been forecast as long ago as last December. But when North Vietnamese troops and upwards of 50 tanks finally struck in force last week, they met shockingly weak resistance from the poorly led ARVN troops, who abandoned a string of 14 firebases northwest of Kontum in what Saigon euphemistically called a "tactical withdrawal." At week's end U.S. advisers remaining with the slender garrison at Kontum were ordering supplies for a two-day siege -two days because, as one adviser said, "You're never going to get enough ammunition into...
...Many ARVN units have fought well, as have the surprisingly spirited militia. But after four weeks of fighting on just two fronts, the South Vietnamese force had been badly bloodied. Last week Saigon announced that its army had suffered 1,148 dead in the previous week-the highest weekly South Vietnamese casualties since the beginning of the offensive. Of South Viet Nam's 34 infantry regiments, 12 were temporarily out of action at week's end, meaning that more than half of their troops were dead, wounded or missing...
...ARVN casualties were certain to increase still more with the opening of a third front in the Central Highlands. There, the Communists had waited until Saigon pulled a seasoned airborne brigade out of the Kontum area and dispatched it to the hard-pressed provinces near the capital. That left a U-shaped string of firebases on the ridges overlooking the eerily quiet approaches to Kontum and along the Poko River Valley largely in the hands of one of ARVN'S weaker divisions, the 22nd...