Word: kontum
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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...
...North Vietnamese force that included the 320th Division, a veteran outfit that had fought at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. One by one, the ARVN bases fell to the North Vietnamese; the losses included a string of seven artillery positions on aptly named Rocket Ridge, which looks down on Kontum 25 miles away. None of the terror-stricken ARVN units put up much of a struggle, but few faded as ignobly as the 1,200-man garrison at Tan Canh, the forward headquarters of the troubled 22nd. As one of the U.S. advisers who survived the debacle told TIME...
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...