The Battle of Hill 723 was a Vietnam War battle in the country of Laos, which was fought between the South Vietnamese Army and the Communist North Vietnamese Army (NVA). It took place from March 7 to March 16, 1971, during the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos. The result was a North Vietnamese Army victory. As the South Vietnamese Army approached Hill 723, moving along Route 9 on March 7, 1971, the North Vietnamese Army artillery opened fire and quickly pinned down the advancing South Vietnamese troops. The South Vietnamese Army (ARVN)’s 1st Infantry Division was trapped as the northern flank was closed and the main column was cut off. To no avail, the South Vietnamese High Command attempted to reinforce the 1st Infantry Division with the 2nd and 3rd Regiments. The result was that the South Vietnamese forces were almost completely annihilated.
Famous quotes containing the words battle and/or hill:
“The mother’s battle for her child—with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life—needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.”
—Adrienne Rich (20th century)
“Who knows but this hill may one day be a Helvellyn, or even a Parnassus, and the Muses haunt here, and other Homers frequent the neighboring plains?... It was a place where gods might wander, so solemn and solitary, and removed from all contagion with the plain.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)