How South Vietnam Died by a Stab in the Front

  

"A pregnant lady" – abandoned by her lover to face her fate. 

At 8 o'clock on the morning of Saturday, March 15, Tran Van Anh, a shrewd, wiry man of 45 who managed a small ice‐making factory in Pleiku, climbed into his old Dodge truck, which he had bought cheaply from the departing American troops in 1973, and drove to work. He did not notice anything out of the ordinary. Groups of off‐duty South Vietnamese soldiers wandered aimlessly in the potholed streets of the drab, dusty town that served as headquarters for the 20,000 square miles of South Vietnam's Central Highlands. Packs of lean, yellow dogs rooted in piles of uncollected garbage. By the door of the Dong Khanh Hotel, where American G.I.'s on leave had once stayed, the owner, a slight man with a wispy white beard, sat on a chair, as he did every morning, nodding to passers‐by.

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SVAF General Phan Phung Tien on the last two years of the war when I was DAO's Funds Manager for the SVAF