Word: kontum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hoang Quoc Bao, 28, was the leader of an 82-mm mortar squad in the North Vietnamese army that marched with Hanoi's victorious troops from Kontum all the way to Saigon. Last year Vietnamese security police burst into his home in the middle of the night, seized him and his two brothers and beat them, warning that they had to leave Viet Nam or be killed. Now he is a refugee, working sugar-cane fields in China and owning nothing but the clothes he wears...
Then, with stunning suddenness, the war burst upon the U.S. all over again. Hué, Danang, Pleiku, Kontum-hearing the names once more is like suffering a relapse of some virulent disease. It is impossible for Americans to regard the flow of refugees and the anguish of the orphans without pangs of sorrow and even outrage. Every image of a bewildered child, of a weeping mother, makes a claim on the conscience. However disastrous the final results, most Americans once sincerely felt that they were aiding these people. Now one cannot escape the obvious question: If the long American presence...
...decimation of the 23rd Division robbed Pleiku of its defenses. At the same time, the Saigon government realized that it was badly outgunned in Kontum as well. There are now four North Vietnamese divisions in the Central Highlands. Thieu met secretly in the coastal city of Nha Trang on March 14 with Lieut. General Pham Van Phu, commander of Military Region II. The President decided to take the most drastic of steps-strategic retreat. The four ranger groups defending Kontum were shifted southeast to the coastal province of Phu Yen, to be followed a few days later...
General Phu also began moving the Military Region II headquarters from Pleiku farther south to Nha Trang. In Kontum, 68 aircraft, grounded because of a lack of spare parts, were destroyed to keep them from falling into enemy hands. As the ARVN forces moved southward, the South Vietnamese air force flew in and bombed every bridge after the ground troops crossed it. It was a last retreat. No one is planning to go back for a long time...
Richard C. Williams, 32, an assistant dean at Princeton University, is a West Point graduate and a retired Army colonel. He saw action in both Pleiku and Kontum provinces. Williams regards last week's developments as "the logical, albeit tragic conclusion to the whole mess. My bitterness started halfway through my tour there. This week doesn't generate any new feeling. I'd long since given up the thought that I'd ever done anything over there that had real significance. One of the best people I ever knew died in Viet...