Word: arvn
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...command post for the attack. Shortly after midnight, the raiders assembled in units ranging from small suicide squads to well-armed company-size teams, and were led to their targets by local Communist guides. Some were dressed in neat, white button-down shirts and khakis, others in parts of ARVN uniforms or ragtag sports clothes. Dark clouds hung over the city, and only an occasional Jeep moved quickly through the eerie silence. Warned to expect something through captured enemy documents, military police had donned flak jackets and guard duty had been doubled. Saigon was a city waiting for trouble...
...Westmoreland moved into his windowless command room in the center of MACV's first floor. Other Communist units raced through the city shooting at U.S. officers' and enlisted men's billets (BOQs and BEQs), Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker's home, Westmoreland's home, the radio and TV stations. Wearing ARVN clothes, raiders seized part of the Vietnamese Joint General Staff Headquarters, turned the defenders' machine guns against helicopters diving in to dislodge them...
...shouting: "This is the Liberation Force come to liberate the city! Please be compatriots! Help us liberate the city!" Two-and three-man teams with the same message went from door to door, like census takers, asking for the names of local police and government officials, the addresses of ARVN and government families. Those they got?or found?they killed on the spot...
...them and summarily shot them for the benefit of the gathered townspeople. Some of Saigon's worst fighting took place in Cholon, the Chinese sector and a traditional stronghold of anti-government feeling. As elsewhere in the city, where resistance was heavy in house-to-house fighting, the ARVN warned the civilians out of the area, then called in helicopters to strafe and Skyraiders to dive-bomb...
...Viet Cong retreated into Cambodia, firing as they went. In the melee, U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers penetrated some 75 yards into Cambodian territory. "It was not planned," said the State Department. "It occurred in the heat of battle and was due to an attempt of American and ARVN forces to protect themselves...