....an excellent summation of an averted disaster....[The]collection
of images ranks among the best I have seen in a Vietnam War book. -- The
VVA Veteran
By the end of 1971, in what Hanoi called the American War and at the
height of the Cold War, the fighting had dragged on for eight years with
neither side gaining a decisive advantage on the battlefield and talks
in Paris to the end the war were going nowhere. While the United States
was steadily drawing down its ground forces in South Vietnam, Washington
was also engaging in a grand effort to build up and strengthen Saigon's
armed forces to the point of self-sufficiency. Not only had the ranks of
Saigon's forces swelled in recent years, but they were now being
equipped and trained to use the latest American military equipment.
Perhaps now was the time for Hanoi to take one last gamble before it was
too late.
With the rumble of men and mechanized equipment breaking the early
morning silence, some 40,000 North Vietnamese troops advanced across the
demilitarized zone into South Vietnam on March 30, 1972 in what would
become the largest conventional attack of the war. Ill-prepared and
poorly led, South Vietnamese troops in the far north were quickly routed
in the face of the ensuing onslaught. Likewise, coordinated attacks
across the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon and into the central
highlands in the coming weeks gained steam and in due course as many as
200,000 men along with T-54/55 main battle tanks, 130mm towed artillery,
ZSU-57 self-propelled ant-aircraft guns, and hundreds of trucks and
armored personnel carriers were engaged across three battlefronts. Soon
Saigon's beleaguered forces were being pushed to the brink of defeat in
what appeared to be the end for the Thieu government. Ultimately,
however, the timely and massive intervention by U.S. and South
Vietnamese air power, along with the bravery of some South Vietnamese
commanders and their American advisers saved the day. Hanoi's gamble had
failed and in its wake lay up to 100,000 dead and South Vietnamese roads
littered with the smoldering wrecks of North Vietnamese military
equipment. Moreover, it would be another three years before the North
had recovered enough to try again.
