Word: arvn
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...immobile barely 15 miles inside Laos on jungle-bordered Route 9. Out on the flanks, where elite airborne and ranger units clung to rugged hilltop fire bases, Communist toops launched a series of furious assaults. First blood was drawn at an outpost about 14 miles inside Laos, where the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) 39th Ranger battalion held out valiantly against a North Vietnamese force of regimental strength for three days before abandoning its positions. By the time the survivors had hacked their way through to another base two miles away, no fewer than...
Deeper inside Laos, at an outpost known as Hill 31, an ARVN airborne battalion was locked in a ferocious seesaw struggle with a Communist force of up to 2,000 men, backed by Soviet-made PT-76 light tanks. As the fighting raged, the smoking hulks of broken Communist tanks and shattered U.S. helicopters littered the battlefield; B-52 strikes thundered so close, said a downed chopper crewman, that the dust "made our eyes water." Though the outcome of the battle remained in doubt at week's end, the Lam Son toll was already substantial: in three weeks...
Cocky young ARVN troops who had enjoyed easy triumphs on the plains of Cambodia grew fearful in the dark jungles of Laos. "The first week everybody was happy and confident, writing letters and trading souvenirs," reported a Japanese photographer with the lead tankers. "Now they are homesick and worried...
Mounting Skepticism. In Saigon, the popular mood was sullen, even acrimonious. Vietnamese complained that Lam Son was a U.S. concoction designed to accomplish U.S. goals and the ARVN was paying a dear price. Every hour, truckloads of fresh corpses rolled into the Bien Hoa military cemetery, where gravediggers had been ordered to double their normal 100-graves-a-week pace...
...minute press conference at the Pentagon, Laird and Lieut. General John W. Vogt Jr., a ranking member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that ARVN was racking up impressive kill ratios in Southern Laos and in Cambodia. Overall, the casualty totals for the first three weeks of the operation were, if ARVN figures are to be believed, 19,715 Communist dead v. 2,208 ARVN dead. U.S. casualties have been 40 killed and 34 wounded. Casualty rates aside, was ARVN stalled? No, said Vogt. The weeklong halt on Route 9 was a deliberate "pause" to give commanders a chance...