The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam by General Bruce Palmer Jr

Author:General Bruce Palmer Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2014-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

6

1972-1973: Cease-Fire Achieved

As the crucial year of 1972 approached, MACV and the Vietnamese Joint General Staff worked overtime to get the nation’s defenses in a better state of readiness to meet the next NVA invasion. It was expected to come in January or February 1972 and to hit hardest in the northern provinces of South Vietnam.

An important element of the Vietnamization program entailed a large expansion of the regular South Vietnamese forces, which increased by almost one-third (from about 825,000 to over a million), while Saigon’s paramilitary forces almost tripled in size (from 1.3 million to 4 million). (Most of the latter increase was in the People’s Self-Defense Forces, which were armed with primitive weapons and had no organized units.)

The program for the regular forces (the Navy and Marine Corps doubled in size and the Air Force multiplied two and a half times) included a strenuous effort to build greater capabilities for air, naval, artillery, logistic, and other activities of a supporting nature. This effort involved training thousands of pilots, mechanics, navigators, engineers, and others requiring advanced skills, many of them in the United States, which in turn demanded a mastery of English as a prerequisite. Large numbers of U.S. aircraft, naval craft, armored vehicles, and artillery pieces were turned over to the South Vietnamese. Whether this program would give the South Vietnamese capabilities anywhere approaching U.S. standards was highly questionable. But given the limited time available to train the South Vietnamese in these long-term skills and to develop effective, modern forces, the program was probably the best that could have been achieved.

An encouraging development was the improvement in the combat performance of the 5th and 18th ARVN Divisions in III CTZ and the 7th ARVN Division in IV CTZ. On the negative side, ARVN divisions in II CTZ had not significantly improved, and this was a worrisome factor for the allied high command, who were well aware of the importance of the Central Highlands in Hanoi’s strategic thinking.1

The gravity of the situation in I and II CTZs was starkly heightened by the continuing withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. By mid-1971 almost two-thirds of American maneuver units had departed the theater, and by the end of 1971 there was less than a U.S. division equivalent total in the northern two corps tactical zones. Moreover, many of the so-called Free World forces had returned home. The South Korean government, however, agreed to retain its two-division force in II CTZ until the end of 1972, but operationally kept the force under wraps.

In addition to the withdrawal of American combat units, the senior American headquarters—MACV, USARV, 7th Air Force, and III Marine Amphibious Force—had been sharply reduced; the large U.S. headquarters in each CTZ that had controlled U.S. ground operations were replaced by small regional assistance groups; and most of the large, complex U.S. intelligence, communications, and logistics structures in Vietnam had been dismantled. Virtually all American-built bases had been turned over to the South Vietnamese, who lacked the means to secure and maintain them.

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