Word: hoas
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...hands. By the end of the week four more provinces had fallen to Communist control for a total of 17, fully three-fourths of South Viet Nam's territory. Six full South Vietnamese divisions had disintegrated. The Communists occupied such refugee-swollen coastal cities as Qui Nhon and Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang and Cam Ranh. Although they slowed their advance toward week's end, presumably to consolidate the huge areas that had unexpectedly fallen into their hands, they were also infiltrating men into the south at the rate of about 1,000 a day in preparation for what most analysts...
...regiments and eight of twelve artillery battalions; 100 air force planes were also lost. In all, roughly half of Saigon's 179,000 troops in the area were out of action. Of 8,000 regional and popular forces in Pleiku, only 55 men were able to reassemble in Tuy Hoa. "The headquarters are full of officers," said one Vietnamese journalist, "but all their soldiers have gone...
...awash with homeless people fleeing desperately from the Communist advance. Hundreds of thousands, exhausted and dispirited, arrived in areas where they hoped to get refuge only to find that North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops were about to take over. Communist forces in such coastal cities as Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang and Cam Ranh abruptly cut off escape routes. In international waters just offshore, U.S. cargo ships waited, unable to move in any closer to pick up the fleeing people. About 60,000, mostly defeated soldiers, made it to Ham Tan and Vung Tau, a coastal resort 50 miles southeast...
...swiftness of the retreat was not the only problem. Discipline among retreating troops in some cases collapsed completely as officers left their men leaderless or troops simply refused to obey orders. In the coastal city of Tuy Hoa - the destination of tens of thousands of refugees - unruly rangers roved around aimlessly, shooting into homes and further terrifying the people. By midweek the police had gone, the banks were closed, and it was impossible to buy bread or rice...
...heaviest main-force fighting took place in the provinces of Thua Thien and Binh Dinh, several hundred miles northeast of Saigon, where government troops tried to block Communist efforts to push into rice-rich coastal regions. Viet Cong shells fell intermittently on several towns like Bien Hoa near Saigon while south of the capital, in the economically crucial Mekong Delta, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in small-unit action disrupted river and road communications and raided small government outposts in an effort to push Saigon's men back into provincial capitals and district towns. Saigon's response...