Word: kontum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...General Giap, Neff concentrated on reporting an overview of the fighting and its ramifications as seen from Saigon. David DeVoss, meanwhile, journeyed north to Hué to provide an account of that city's mass evacuation. Rudolph Rauch traveled to the threatened Central Highlands town of Kontum, then spent a night on ambush patrol outside Phu Bai with a group of G.I.s...
...bringing to 1,000 the number of U.S. planes poised to strike North Viet Nam. The gathering force had been ordered into place by a U.S. President who seemed determined either to blunt the Communist offensive that threatened to overpower such key South Vietnamese cities as Hué and Kontum, or to punish the North Vietnamese for succeeding...
Actually, any likelihood of Communist concessions was dimmed by the very success of the massive new attacks and the resulting panic among some South Vietnamese units (see THE WORLD). Hanoi doubtless was stalling until it could perceive the outcome at Hué and Kontum, where Communist victories could demoralize the South's military and civil authority and perhaps achieve the goal of toppling the Saigon government of President Nguyen Van Thieu. Thus Hanoi stuck to its past bargaining positions in Paris. The U.S., while proclaiming flexibility on its negotiating points, remained firmly behind Thieu. Said Kissinger: "The only thing...
...marshaled his forces. In the Saigon area, Communist pressure eased on the long-besieged city of An Loc, 60 miles north of the capital. In the Central Highlands, the Communists made no move to follow up their rout of the ARVN 22nd Division with a direct assault on Kontum, which has been surrounded by Communist troops and is highly vulnerable to capture. Would the Communists strike Kontum first? Or were they getting their artillery and supplies in place in preparation for a move...
Sensing that fact, Kontum's civilian population (30,000 in normal times) had prepared for the worst. The rich had padlocked homes and negotiated trips out on planes sent into Kontum to pick up "priority dependents." The poor merely waited behind closed doors for whatever was to come. They had no place to go. There were already 4,000 refugees in camps around the city, and another 1,500 had sought safety with relatives in Kontum itself...