Vietnam Marks 25th Anniversary of Pivotal Battle Victory Over South

This country Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the battle that began the last chapter of the Vietnam War with a nationally televised parade in the Central Highlands featuring artillery pulled by elephants and the dedication of a memorial to fallen soldiers.

The ceremony marked the start of a seven-week nationwide observance that will culminate with festivities in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, on April 30, the date when, in 1975, the South Vietnamese government surrendered to Hanoi’s Communist troops, ending 40 years of war involving Japan, France and the United States, and reuniting Vietnam as a single country.

In Ban Me Thuot, the provincial capital of Dak Lak in the Central Highlands, thousands lined the streets Friday to cheer marching youth groups, young soldiers and the lumbering elephants. Also in Ban Me Thuot, 150 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City, a soaring monument to the war dead was unveiled in the main square 25 years to the day after South Vietnam’s 23rd Division was defeated there, leading to a rout of southern forces that spread southward, town by town, with stunning speed.

“We still thought we had another couple of years’ fighting ahead,” said Nguyen Quoc Khanh, 72, a retired North Vietnamese colonel who now runs a hotel in the old imperial city of Hue. “But the puppet Saigon soldiers fell apart so quickly--in Ban Me Thuot, Da Nang, Nha Trang, everywhere--Hanoi decided in late March to make the final push into Saigon.”

Although the government hasn’t announced specifically how it plans to commemorate the “liberation” of the South in festivities scheduled for Da Nang, Hue, Ho Chi Minh City and other cities, its televising of the Dak Lak parade indicates that April 30--always a national holiday--will be pumped up into a major event.

Hundreds of foreign journalists are expected to be in Ho Chi Minh City on April 30.

The State Department, meanwhile, has instructed diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and the Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City not to give any interviews commenting on events of 25 years ago, U.S. envoys said. Washington wants to shift the focus from the war to the fifth anniversary of restored U.S. and Vietnamese diplomatic relations and the continuing process of reconciliation.

As part of the process, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen is due in Hanoi on Monday, becoming the first U.S. defense secretary to visit Vietnam since the war.

North Vietnam’s attack on Ban Me Thuot was launched at 3 a.m. March 10, 1975, to test the resolve of South Vietnam’s weakened forces and the reaction of the United States. Hanoi was satisfied on both counts. South Vietnamese troops fled with hardly a fight.

Gen. Pham Van Phu, a South Vietnamese corps commander with a valorous record, was unable to regain control of his troops, who poured southward, eventually trailed by 200,000 refugees, and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu ordered the entire Central Highlands abandoned, hoping to regroup his forces around Saigon.

His plan failed, and Thieu resigned and fled Vietnam nine days before Communist troops marched into South Vietnam’s capital and the last American escaped by helicopter.

“I was in Ban Me Thuot the day it fell,” recalled Nguyen Xuan Kien, 48, a former South Vietnamese soldier who is now a member of a Communist People’s Committee near Dong Ha, at the old border between North and South. “I knew the war was almost over. I stripped off my uniform and hitchhiked home.”