Interestingly enough, CIA station chief Polgar did not agree. As he said in his August 1989 interview with Vietnam Magazine, he ‘considered the Paris Peace Treaty a reasonable and honorable compromise as written and signed….The problem was that as the North Vietnamese sensed and observed a weakening of American will and commitment to continue the support of South Vietnam, the Communists became increasingly contemptuous of the letter and spirit of the Paris Treaty. Had the provisions of the Paris Treaty been enforced as, for example, the provisions of the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement were enforced, the continuity of an independent, if feeble, South Vietnam could have been assured over a period of many years.’

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But that was not to be, for at the critical moment the United States reneged on its word. Not only did the Congress, as General Homer Smith has noted [in the April 1995 issue of Vietnam magazine (’Final Forty Five Days in Vietnam’), fail to appropriate the $1 billion in U.S. military assistance authorized by the Defense Assistance Vietnam program, but the U.S. government went back on its security guarantees as well.

‘You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to abide by the terms of this agreement, it is my intention to take swift and severe retaliatory action,’ said then President Richard Nixon in a note to South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu in November 1972 on the eve of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. But less than two years later Nixon was out of office, brought down by the Watergate scandal.

At a meeting of the North Vietnamese Politburo in October 1974, Le Duan, Ho Chi Minh’s successor, took note of that fact and ‘drew an important conclusion that became a resolution.’ Having already withdrawn from the South, he said, the United States could hardly jump back in, and no matter how it might intervene, it would be unable to save the Saigon administration from collapse.

Phuoc Long province northwest of Saigon was to be the test of that resolution. Relatively isolated, its defense consisted primarily of four 340-man Regional Force (i.e., local militia) battalions and a number of Popular Force (i.e., homeguard) platoons. Fire support consisted of four 155mm and 16 105mm howitzers employed in two-gun platoons throughout the sector.

Far outmatching these defenders was the attacking NVA 301st Corps, consisting of the newly formed 3rd NVA Division, the veteran 7th NVA Division, a tank battalion of Soviet-supplied T-54 tanks, an artillery regiment, an anti-aircraft artillery regiment, and local force sapper and infantry units. Launching its attack from its Cambodian sanctuaries on December 13, 1974, the 301st picked off the South Vietnamese outposts one by one, then concentrated its attack on the airfield at Song Be.

The garrison there was reinforced by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry, which was helicoptered in from its base at Lai Khe. Six additional 105mm howitzers were helilifted in as well. Later, two companies of the ARVN 85th Airborne Ranger Battalion were also flown in.

But they were no match for the NVA, whose artillery was particularly devastating. By January 3, 1975, the NVA’s rate of fire had increased to 3,000 rounds per day. ‘Finally, on 6 January, the province chief realized that he could no longer influence the battle,’ notes the official historical account of the battle.

‘Under direct fire from four approaching T-54 tanks, and seriously wounded, he and what remained of his staff withdrew from Song Be,’ the report reads. ‘The NVA had captured the first provincial capital.’ South Vietnamese losses were staggering. Over 5,400 ARVN and Regional and Popular forces were committed to the battle, and only some 850 survived. The province chief never made it to safety. About 3,000 civilians out of 30,000 or more escaped Communist control. ‘The few province, village and hamlet officials who were captured were summarily executed,’ according to the historical account. Tragic as those losses were, however, the battle had far grimmer consequences. The little-known battle for Phuoc Long was one of the most decisive battles of the war, for it marked the U.S. abandonment of its erstwhile ally to its fate. Le Duan’s ‘resolution’ had been all too correct. In the face of this flagrant violation of the Paris Accords–and it was deliberately designed to be flagrant so as to clearly test U.S. resolve–President Gerald Ford pusillanimously limited his response to diplomatic notes. North Vietnam had received the green light for the conquest of South Vietnam.

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