Word: saigon
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...country that had fought the Communists to a stand-off since the Paris Accords of January 1973 now seemed to have lost the ability and will to resist; its defenses simply melted away before North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. The Communists had not yet penetrated the vital Saigon region, and there was still hope that the government would be able to defend the capital. But many Viet Nam experts, who two weeks ago were predicting only limited losses for Saigon during the current dry season, now could not entirely discount the chance that the Communist momentum would carry them...
Even if South Viet Nam survives, at best it will be in truncated form, having shrunk to the provinces around Saigon and the Mekong Delta. Even so, it was abundantly clear that Thieu's decision two weeks ago to abandon some outlying hard-to-defend provinces to the Communists had started a rout of his forces...
...rangers and the First Division - were defending the city against about 35,000 Communist troops. When the attack came early Sunday, a heavy artillery and rocket barrage apparently forced the defenders to flee, allowing the Communists to roll easily over the sprawling city. They captured thousands of Saigon's troops and an enormous amount of U.S.-provided equipment, including warplanes, tanks and artillery. At week's end Lam Dong, a sparsely populated tea-growing province 85 miles northeast of Saigon, also fell. There seemed little doubt that the Communists would soon engulf practically all of Military Region...
Most disastrous from Saigon's point of view was the unexpected weakness of its army's defense. In Tarn Ky and Quang Ngai City, government forces simply evaporated before the Communist advance, often dropping their arms and supplies in the process. In Ban Me Thuot, the provincial capital 160 miles northwest of Saigon, panicky troops fled a Communist offensive three weeks ago, abandoning 1 million gallons of gas, 3,200 tons of ammunition and 10,000 tons of rice. Three days before the city's collapse, 100 trucks arrived with supplies that were soon captured...
...still, the disorderly retreat of the troops helped create a psychology of panic that led tens of thousands of civilians to abandon their homes. Indeed, the dissolution of authority seemed as important in touching off the tidal flow of refugees as fear of the Communists or a preference for Saigon...