Word: arvn
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...Communists took crippling losses in the 40,000 of their soldiers killed during the Tet campaign and the 15,000 chewed up during their disastrous siege of the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh (see box). The Tet onslaughts failed to topple Thieu's government, failed to shatter ARVN, and, in fact, left it with more confidence than it had had before. The pacification program in the countryside turns out not to have been hit so hard as at first suspected: out of the 629 pre-Tet Revolutionary Development teams, 545 are back in the field, 449 of those...
...LEADERSHIP. ARVN officers traditionally represent the cream of Vietnamese society, a social caste preserved by stiff educational requirements for officer candidates. Thus, unlike the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies, ARVN offers little opportunity for skilled soldiers to rise up from the ranks. The result is that it suffers both in loss of potential talent and in its political image among the peasantry. Until recently, Abrams had made little dent at all in opening up the military establishment, but just last week he won a promise from the government to promote between 4,000 and 6,000 from the ranks...
...RELATIONS WITH THE PEOPLE. Because an army emulates its leadership, ARVN all too often runs roughshod over the people it is defending while in the field. The offenses range from chicken thievery to rape to the indiscriminate use of artillery. Corruption has long been a way of life, with tribute exacted all along the chain of command until the squeeze reaches the peasant at the bottom. Again, only since Tet can Abrams count much progress: 18 province chiefs and two corps commanders have been fired, several dozen officers arrested and tried for corruption...
...TACTICS. ARVN has tended to be defensive-minded, interested only in setting up a perimeter and then sitting back inside it and waiting. ARVN soldiers did little night patrolling, fought the war on a five-day week, with officers whipping off to Saigon for the weekend. In the populous Mekong Delta, local ARVN commanders were suspected of occasional "accommodations" with their Viet Cong counterparts, aimed at preserving the status quo and holding the fighting to a minimum. In this area Abrams sees notable improvement. Of ARVN's 149 maneuver battalions, he regards only nine as really unsatisfactory any longer...
...ARMAMENT. Unit by unit, ARVN, when Abrams arrived in Viet Nam, was hopelessly outgunned by the enemy-undoubtedly a factor in its lack of aggressiveness. Armed with World War II-vintage M-1 and .30-cal. Brownings, an ARVN company was no match for a Communist company fitted with AK-47 automatic-firing Chinese assault rifles. Long before the decision to move ARVN toward taking over the brunt of the fighting, Abrams fought to rearm the South Vietnamese with the best U.S. weaponry, and the first ARVN units received M-16 rifles late last year. Now the supply will...