Word: arvn
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...Viet Nam might be attempted if Lam Son were to turn sour. But some U.S. officers, fearful that it foreshadowed a period of relentless Communist shelling and possibly a fullblown invasion, rushed 7,000 additional American troops to the area. At week's end there were 20,000 ARVN and 15,000 U.S. troops just below...
...Laos was ARVN's first major test without American advisers and against seasoned North Vietnamese regulars. But was it a "milestone" for Vietnamization, as President Nixon described it, or a sharp setback...
...results were both encouraging and dismaying. The U.S. command's assessment that 18 of the 22 ARVN battalions "fought well" is slightly suspect, if only because a great many of the 22,000 troops were employed in occupying static positions and counting enemy bodies after U.S. air strikes. But in general, discipline was high, and there was reason to believe that the South Vietnamese were at last beginning to solve their chronic leadership problems on the squad, platoon and company level. "They had to have damn good small-unit leadership," an Army general argues, "or they wouldn...
Jealous Generals. On the negative side is the fact that some of Saigon's elite units were badly bloodied-the Airborne, Rangers, Marines, and what many Americans consider ARVN's top infantry division, the 1st. Moreover, the operation underscored continuing deficiencies in crucial areas like communications. American pilots had problems with Vietnamese ground controllers, who have a tough time pronouncing words like "coordinate"-or speaking English at all while ducking rocket and mortar fire...
...real weaknesses Lam Son revealed were at the top. The Saigon strategists figured that air power would give the small but mobile ARVN invasion force an edge, even when outnumbered 3 to 1; too often it did not. Moreover, though the Laotian panhandle was known to be execrable country for armor, South Vietnamese planners sent in a column of 150 tanks. It stopped dead, only 17 miles in, during the first week...