Word: quang
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Quang Tri . . . The names stir bitter memories of battle sites drenched in blood, the blood of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans who fought so hard and suffered so much to defend or retake those contested pieces of land. Once these places were proclaimed essential to the survival of South Viet Nam and, in the view of successive U.S. Administrations, to the ultimate security of America. Now, in a stunning and unexpected move, the South Vietnamese were pulling...
Kontum, Pleiku and Darlac provinces in the Central Highlands-a rolling area of rain forest and coffee and tea plantations on the border of Laos and Cambodia-were the first to go (see map). Later, Quang Tri province in northernmost Military Region I was given up. Although not officially abandoned by Saigon, Thua Thien, containing the ancient imperial capital of Hue, was by week's end clearly in imminent danger of falling into North Vietnamese hands. In the South, only 50 miles north of Saigon and next to already fallen Phuoc Long, Binh Long province was relinquished. In addition...
...provinces was unutterable tragedy for the true victims of the war, the South Vietnamese people. Helped by retreating ARVN soldiers, upwards of half a million refugees trekked by military convoy, on motorcycle, buffalo cart, bicycle or foot toward areas still held by the government. Some 200,000 people fled Quang Tri and Hué for Danang (see box page 34). Hundreds of thousands from the Central Highlands streamed eastward toward the coast. In Military Region II, just south of fallen Darlac, the resort town of Dalat was rapidly being emptied, even though there seemed to be no imminent danger...
Most of the refugees and even a large majority of the withdrawing troops were not bothered by Communist forces. In Quang Tri province, Communist tanks even lit the way at night for both soldiers and civilians. The evacuation of some areas went so smoothly that there were rumors of a deal between the Communists and the Saigon government. Thieu, it was said, had given up the territory in exchange for the safety of the population-a story emphatically denied by Saigon. In any case, there were some reports of Communist efforts to harass the flow of refugees...
During the evacuation of the Central Highlands, Thieu made another crucial decision in his historic rearrangement of the Vietnamese political map. He flew to Danang for consultations with ARVN'S best field commander, Lieut. General Ngo Quang Truong, and decided to carry out plans that apparently had been drawn up months ago: to pull back the main line of defense from Quang Tri and probably Thua Thien provinces down to the coastal city of Danang. General Truong had already lost the backbone of his defense the week before when Thieu ordered 4,000 men of South Viet...