Timeline, December 12th

[David]

FIRST INDOCHINA WAR:
December 12, 1951 (Year of the Hare [Tan Mao]): The 5th Colonial Paratroop Battalion (5 BPC), backed up by a squadron of Sherman tanks from the Far Eastern Colonial Tank Regiment (R?giment Blind? Coloniale d'Extr?me-Orient, I think, or RBCEO), attacks the Viet Minh along the road between Yen Chu and Ap Da Chong, but can't dislodge them. As night falls, the road remains blocked and the 5 BPC is ordered to pull back but has difficulty breaking contact. A Viet Minh battalion from Regiment 165 ambushes one of the 5 BPC companies, killing 34 paras, including three platoon leaders, and wounding 66.

SECOND INDOCHINA WAR:
December 12, 1960 (Year of the Rat [Canh Ty]): Hanoi directs the guerrillas in the South to establish a political group, the Mat tran Dan toc Giai phong Mien nam, known in English as the National United Front for the Liberation of the Southern Region (NLF). Leaders and founders include Nguyen Huu Tho, Huynh Tan Phat, Tran Buu Kiem, Nguyen Thi Binh, Duong Quynh Hoa, and others. Over the next month, Hanoi will enact a major reorganization of its chain of command with the south by re-forming the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) in Tay Ninh Province (COSVN had been disbanded in 1954). The NLF will form its own armed forces, the Peoples Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), or just Liberation Forces, consisting of Main Force units and two paramilitary troops - the Regional and Local Forces. The South Vietnamese government will call them all Viet Cong ("Communist Vietnamese" - for example, Chinese [Trung, in Vietnamese] Communists are called "Trung Cong," which is also the Vietnamese phrase for Communist China) and eventually everybody, including the Communists themselves, will use the term. (Some sources give the date of formation as December 20, as that was the date the new group was introduced to the world via "Liberation Radio." The December 12 date is from Histoire, but they don't explain where they got it.

December 12, 1967 (Year of the Goat [Dinh Mui]) (US Counteroffensive Phase III): A ten-man SAS patrol (including two US SEALs) ambushes a Viet Cong patrol, killing seven.

December 12, 1968 (Year of the Monkey [Mau Than]) (US Counteroffensive, Phase VI): 4 Troop, New Zealand Special Air Service Rangers arrive and join the Australian 2 SAS Squadron already at Niu Dat.

December 12, 1968 (Year of the Monkey [Mau Than]) (US Counteroffensive, Phase VI): 1 ATF conducts Operation Goodwood, to interdict VC movement from the Hat Dich to the Long Binh-Bien Hoa military complexes.

December 12, 1968 (Year of the Monkey [Mau Than]) (US Counteroffensive, Phase VI): An F-4 is shot down in Laos.

December 12, 1969 (Year of the Rooster [Ky Dau]) (US Winter-Spring 1970): Operation Atherton update: 8 RAR has its first contact of the operation when 1st Platoon, A Company engages the enemy. "6 X 1" (am not sure what this means) platoon members are wounded by rocket-propelled grenades.

THIRD INDOCHINA WAR:
December 12, 1978 (Year of the Horse [Mau Than]): Following a clash between a Vietnamese gunboat and a Chinese fishing vessel, Radio Hanoi claims that Chinese troops have made an incursion into Cao Bang Province, and that China is moving "thousands of reinforcements' to the border. At a 40-nation conference in Geneva to discuss the refugee problem, Vietnam denies that it is organizing the flight of refugees by sea and claims that China is inciting the exodus of ethnic minority refugees from Vietnam. The conference estimates that some 320,000 refugees have now left Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (Kampuchea); about 150,000 of them are in camps in Thailand.

December 1988 (Year of the Dragon [Mau Thin]): The remains of Airman James E. Pleiman are returned to US control.