page_title: Easter Offensive
section_title: I Corps – Quảng Trị
hierarchical_section_title: Easter Offensive / Offensive / I Corps – Quảng Trị
caption_attribution_description: English: From Joel D. Meyerson, Images of a Lengthy War. Washington DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1986.
context_page_description: The Easter Offensive, officially known as The 1972 Spring - Summer Offensive by North Vietnam, or Red fiery summer as romanticized in South Vietnamese literature, was a military campaign conducted by the People's Army of Vietnam against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the United States military between 30 March and 22 October 1972, during the Vietnam War. This conventional invasion was a radical departure from previous North Vietnamese offensives. The offensive was not designed to win the war outright but to gain as much territory and destroy as many units of the ARVN as possible, to improve the North's negotiating position as the Paris Peace Accords drew towards a conclusion.
  The U.S. high command had been expecting an attack in 1972 but the size and ferocity of the assault caught the defenders off balance, because the attackers struck on three fronts simultaneously, with the bulk of the North Vietnamese army.
context_section_description: The offensive began at noon on 30 March 1972, when an intense artillery barrage rained down on the northernmost ARVN outposts in Quảng Trị Province.
  Two PAVN divisions (the 304th and 308th – approximately 30,000 troops) supported by more than 100 tanks (in 2 Regiments) then rolled over the Demilitarized Zone to attack I Corps, the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese 308th Division and two independent regiments assaulted the "ring of steel", the arc of ARVN firebases just south of the DMZ.
  From the west, the 312th, including an armoured regiment, moved out of Laos along Route 9, past Khe Sanh, and into the Quảng Trị River Valley. Significantly, allied intelligence had failed to predict both the scale of the offensive and the method of attack, giving PAVN "the inestimable benefit of shock effect, a crucial psychological edge over defenders who had expected something quite different."
  On 1 April, South Vietnamese General Giai, ordered a withdrawal of the 3rd Division south of the Cửa Việt River in order for his troops to reorganize. The following morning, ARVN armoured elements held off a PAVN offensive briefly when the crucial Highway QL-1 bridge over the Cửa Việt River at Đông Hà was blown up by Capt. John Ripley, adviser to the 3rd Vietnamese Marine Battalion. The initial PAVN units were then joined by the 320B and 325C Divisions.
  Simultaneously, the 324B Division moved out of the A Sầu Valley and advanced directly eastward toward Fire Bases Bastogne and Checkmate, which protected the old imperial capital of Huế from the west.
  The North Vietnamese advance had been timed to coincide with the seasonal monsoon, whose 500 feet (152 m) cloud ceilings negated many U.S. airstrikes. PAVN advance elements were soon followed by anti-aircraft units armed with new ZSU-57-2 tracked weapon platforms and man-portable, shoulder-fired Grail missiles, which made low-level bombing attacks hazardous.
  Camp Carroll, an artillery firebase halfway between the Laotian border and the coast, was the linchpin of the South Vietnamese northern and western defense line and was the strongest obstacle to the North Vietnamese before Quảng Trị City. On 2 April, Colonel Pham Van Dinh, commander of the 56th ARVN Regiment, surrendered the camp and his 1,500 troops with barely a shot being fired. Later in the day, ARVN troops abandoned Mai Loc, the last western base. This allowed North Vietnamese forces to cross the Cam Lộ bridge, 11 kilometers to the west of Đông Hà. PAVN then had almost unrestricted access to western Quảng Trị Province north of the Thạch Hãn River.
  
  On 21 April, Abrams notified the U.S. Secretary of Defense that 
  In summary...the pressure is mounting and the battle has become brutal...the senior military leadership has begun to bend and in some cases to break. In adversity, it is losing its will and cannot be depended upon to take the measures necessary to stand and fight.
  The PAVN advance was slowed by delaying actions for three weeks, and the South Vietnamese launched several counterattacks, but on the morning of 27 April, the North Vietnamese came on again, launching multi-pronged attacks against Đông Hà (which fell on the following day) and advancing to within 1.5 kilometers of Quảng Trị City. General Giai had planned a staged withdrawal from the city to consolidate south of the Thạch Hãn, but bewildered by conflicting orders from Lãm and Giai, most ARVN formations splintered and then collapsed, conceding most of the province north of the city.
  On 29 April, Giai ordered a general retreat to the My Chanh River, thirteen kilometers to the south. U.S. military advisors in Quảng Trị called for emergency helicopter extraction and, on 1 May 132 survivors were evacuated from Quảng Trị, including 80 U.S. soldiers.
  The exodus of ARVN forces was joined by tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians fleeing from the fighting. As the mass of humanity jostled and shoved its way south on Highway 1, it presented an inviting target for North Vietnamese artillerists. They were soon joined by PAVN infantry, who moved by
caption: PAVN 122mm artillery battery goes into action on the Kon Tum front
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