Word: arvn
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...when ARVN was good, it was very, very good. At Dong Ha, a town of rude wooden shacks and prosperous brick houses ten miles south of the DMZ on the banks of the Cua Viet River, one vital North Vietnamese objective was spiked by the tanks of the tough 20th Armored Squadron. As the Communist spearhead rolled south on Highway 1, the 34-ton M-48s of the 20th sped north. They met-and stopped-the Communist armor a scant 300 yards north of the Cua Viet bridge. The tankers and two companies of South Vietnamese marines held the bridge...
Last week, though, ARVN did not quite live up to Defense Secretary Laird's measure of success: winning 75% of its battles. In the very first hours of the offensive, in fact, ARVN suffered only defeat. The big loser was the 3rd Division, whose troops abandoned 14 firebases below the DMZ in five days. The 3rd was a newly formed unit, raised largely by conscription, of local men, including a good many draft dodgers and delinquents. Considering the ferocity of the initial North Vietnamese barrage, retreat made sense. But it was not sensibly executed. Some units quit the field...
...ancient Vietnamese imperial capital, is presumed to be a prime target of the Communist invasion. So far, the North Vietnamese have been unable to slip past Bastogne and Birmingham, the ARVN 1st Division bases that guard the approaches to the city. Last week, Hué had a besieged look, nonetheless. No effort had been made to repair the walls and shrines that had been reduced to ruins four years earlier-the traditional period of mourning in Viet Nam-in the Tet offensive of 1968. At the university, faded signs on walls urged: SMASH THE ATTEMPT TO VIET-NAMIZE...
...Clues. "They came by bus, by put-putting Rototillers, aboard army trucks borrowed for an afternoon from ARVN," wrote TIME's Rauch. "Those who had time to pack chose peculiar things to salvage: one family had a refrigerator in a wheelbarrow, nothing else. A lieutenant carried an enormous Sanyo sound system, still in its carton and minus the speakers, strapped to the back of his motorbike. Nearly everyone seems to have a pig. Pigs are strapped onto Honda seats, pigs are tied onto front bumpers, pigs hang in wire cages from tail gates and are slung from poles that...
...opening a multifront offensive, as they seemed to be doing last week, the Communists could whiplash the ARVN command by reducing the pressure in one region, only to step it up suddenly in another. The idea would be to force reserve units to move and thus to weaken vital areas. Saigon last week was all but stripped of its reserves; even the presidential palace guard was sent north to the action...