Hell in An Loc
Subtitle: the 1972 Easter Invasion and the battle that saved South Viet Nam
By: Lam Quang Thi ; foreword by Andrew Wiest
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Denton, Tex
Language: eng
Number of pages: 282
ISBN-13: 9781574412765
Description: "Three days before Easter last spring, the North Vietnamese struck South Vietnam with a fury unknown to the Vietnam war since the Tet offensive four years earlier. They poured south across the DMZ, smashed into the central highland from Laos, crossed the border from Cambodia and, with an army of 36,000 men and 100 Russian-made tanks, raced toward Saigon, boasting that they'd be in the city by May 19, Ho Chi Minh's birthday. From one end of the country to the other, bases and villages fell before the savagery of their onslaught. By April 5, all that blocked them from Saigon was a ragtag band of 6,800 South Vietnamese regulars and militiamen and a handful of American advisors holed up in An Loc, a once-prosperous rubber-plantation town of 15,000 astride Highway 13, which led to the capital, 60 miles to the south ... In Thi's opinion, reporting the victory of An Loc would contradict the U.S. media's basic premise that the war could not be won because ARVN was a corrupt and ineffective force. Subsequent published studies of the conflict provide a wealth of details about the use of U.S. airpower and the role of the U.S. advisors, but they fail to provide equal coverage to the activities and performance of ARVN units participating in the siege. Thi believes that it is time to set the record straight. Without denying the tremendous contribution of the U.S. advisors and pilots to the success of An Loc, this book is written primarily to tell the South Vietnamese side of the story and, more importantly, to render justice to the South Vietnamese soldier who withstood ninety-four days of horror and prevailed"--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 268-272) and index.
Table of contents: title: The sieges of the Indochina War; title: Setting the state; title: The opening salvos; title: Prelude to the battle of An Loc; title: The first attack on An Loc; title: The second attack on An Loc; title: Reinforcing An Loc; title: The third attack on An Loc; title: Securing Route nationale 13; title: End of the siege; title: The ARVN 18th Division in An Loc; title: Assessing the battle of An Loc; title: The aftermath.