Word: saigon
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...essence, the South Vietnamese were being asked to give up without further fight. In a week of desperate political scrambling, Saigon sought a way to do just that?but a way that would preserve the appearances of legality and mask the fact that the Communists were haughtily dictating terms. President Nguyen Van Thieu, who had survived a decade of intense but disorganized political opposition while fighting a devastating war, tearfully announced his resignation. Soon afterward he departed for Taipei aboard a U.S. military transport; from there he was expected to fly into exile?possibly in England or Switzerland. Thieu...
Should Huong remain President, in defiance of the Communists, ready to fight if necessary but trying to open negotiations with the enemy? Should he step aside and make way for a new chief of state more acceptable to the conquerors at the gates? Would the Communists spare Saigon in any case? At week's end Huong still clung stubbornly to the presidency. But it seemed clear that Saigon would have to replace him or risk destruction. The almost certain successor: General Duong Van ("Big") Minh, the neutralist Buddhist who, in a still-remembered moment of glory, helped overthrow the dictatorial...
Though Thieu carefully described his resignation as voluntary, it was virtually his only choice, even without the push from Washington. In the days leading up to his announcement, Communist troops had made a mockery of any claim that Saigon could yet mobilize a vigorous defense. The badly battered ARVN 18th Division put up a heroic stand at the provincial capital of Xuan Loc, 40 miles northeast of Saigon, but a formidable force of three North Vietnamese divisions, after taking some severe casualties from government air strikes, simply wore them down. When the exhausted remnants of Xuan Loc's defenders straggled...
Deadly accurate Communist 130-mm. guns had already neutralized Saigon's huge airbase at Bien Hoa, and SA-2 and SA-7 missiles were trained on Tan Son Nhut airport. A single regiment could easily cut off Saigon's sole escape route to the sea by severing Route 15, leading to the port of Vung Tau. "Every time we blink, the map changes," said one military analyst...
...early last week there were at least 130,000 Communist troops surrounding Saigon, squared off against just 60,000 ARVN troops. And while South Vietnamese forces were steadily depleted through desertions and encounters with the enemy, the North Vietnamese forces kept growing. General Nguyen Van Toan, commander of the military region around the capital, privately conceded that the battle had been lost; so did most of ARVN's top leadership. "Their morale and their leadership are just flowing away," said a senior military observer who only a week ago was still hopeful that Saigon could yet pull off "a small...