ABSTRACT
The war for Vietnam, as American officials were reluctantly recognizing, had to be a Vietnamese struggle. One of the greatest mysteries of the changing conflict was how well the South Vietnamese would perform on their own after years of American infantry, armored, and air support. You couldn't quite tell from the initial losses suffered by the ARVN in the 1972 Easter Offensive. The South Vietnamese often had their own way of regrouping and waiting it out—surviving without winning.
