Word: arvn
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...ARVN, such victories are quite a change. It was not so many months ago that General William Westmoreland felt obliged to pass the word down the U.S. chain of command: if you can't say something good about the ARVN, don't say anything at all. The resulting silence was almost as damaging to the ARVN as the heavy shellfire of criticism it replaced. Of late, however, the ARVN has been doing some pretty effective firing of its own on the battlefields. Its performance has enabled U.S. officers to talk about the ARVN again, this time in terms...
...Forts. Whether fighting well or poorly, the ARVN has always borne the brunt of the war in casualties. Last week Saigon reported that in the previous week 234 South Vietnamese soldiers and 166 Americans had been killed. In 1966, the U.S. lost 5,000 dead, the ARVN 11,500. This past year, government forces suffered 12,000 killed, the U.S. 10,000. South Vietnamese in uniform have, of course, always outnumbered American servicemen in Viet Nam. Today there are ten ARVN regular divisions, totaling some 321,000 men. Manning the vulnerable mud forts and watchtowers across the country...
...bulk of government forces is now assigned to pacification: 54 of the regular ARVN's 154 battalions, nearly all the R.F.s and P.F.s. It is not a task that the ARVN has yet mastered; in 1967, the Viet Cong killed more pacification workers than in 1966. The ARVN regulars constitute South Viet Nam's military spine, and on them the U.S. has expended its greatest training efforts. Those efforts, too, need improvement. Of the ten regular divisions, only three are considered "good" by U.S. commanders: the 1st in northernmost I Corps, and the 7th and 21st...
...Phantom Soldiers." As in any army, morale is largely the result of the quality of leadership. Good junior officers are lacking in the ARVN, which has been fighting for years and was virtually beaten in mid-1965 when the U.S. buildup began. Though a tough new law cut the desertion rate in half in 1967, it is still disappointingly high: more than one in ten ARVN soldiers go permanently AWOL, accounting for 70% of the ARVN's personnel losses. Draft dodging remains a national sport; even if caught, an affluent youth...
Taking Over Con Thien. Still, the ARVN today is a lot better than it used to be. One measure: it is doing more operating at night, denying the Viet Cong their sanctuary of darkness. When a big fight looms, as at Dak To, Westmoreland no longer hesitates to have the ARVN participate in the action- and in the responsibility. The defense of Saigon is now largely in Vietnamese hands. Even more significantly, the U.S. Marines are beginning to turn over the task of manning the strongpoints along the Demilitarized Zone to the ARVN. Already the first units of the ARVN...