Word: mekong
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...That the refugees have survived at all seems to many a personal miracle. For example, while Saigon was being shelled, one Vietnamese army colonel picked up his wife and daughter, pirated a small speedboat still in the racks at the city's Club Nautique, took them down the Mekong River and out to sea, where they were rescued. His daughter's husband, Pham Van Tinh, a Vietnamese air force pilot, escaped separately from Tan Son Nhut airbase. Under heavy fire, he made a dash for a twin-engine cargo plane, shot the lock off the door with...
Though as many as eight provinces in the Mekong Delta (of a total of 44 provinces in South Viet Nam) had still not surrendered and there was scattered resistance in Cholon, the predominantly Chinese quarter of Saigon, the P.R.G. announced that its conquest was now complete...
...bombing ceased, the Communists claimed 90% of Cambodia's territory and were on the outskirts of the capital. Only the stubborn and unexpected resistance of the government's poorly paid troops kept Phnom-Penh from falling in 1973 or 1974. This year, when the insurgents blockaded the Mekong River and cut off all land access to the capital, the government had to rely on a U.S. airlift for food, fuel and ammunition...
Soon after the U.S. evacuation, the insurgents, as if waiting for a signal that Washington had finally, irrevocably given up on Cambodia, began what proved to be the final assault of the war. Reinforced by units brought in from the provinces and from blockade stations along the Mekong River, about 40,000 Khmer Rouge troops attacked the capital from all sides...
...road between Phnom-Penh and Pochentong Airport was severed; suburbs to the northwest of the city fell; in the south, in the southwest, on the Mekong riverbank across from the capital's east side, insurgents rolled easily over government defenders. Highly accurate U.S.-made 105-mm. howitzers, captured from government forces, were brought within range of the airport to support a punishing rebel ground assault. After a three-day-long seesaw battle, first the control tower and then the airfield fell...