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Battle Of Ap BacThe Battle of Ap Bac on January 2, 1963 was an engagement in the Vietnam War that took place at the hamlet of Ap Bac in the Mekong Delta. The combatants involved were a regiment of ARVN soldiers equipped with helicopters and M113 armored personnel carriers against a scattered force of NLF guerrillas, which ended in a NLF victory. The NLF had expanded control over the delta area in late 1962 but were outnumbered 10 to 1 in the canal of the delta where the battle occured. Three NLF units were pinned in, but due to poor morale, the ARVN commander refused to order his troops to advance. Further complications arose when ARVN paratroopers dropped on their own armor division and both forces fired upon each other. The trapped NLF forces were able to flee from the battle suffering only three casualties. "It was a miserable damn performance" was the way one American military man summed up the humiliating and costly defeat suffered by the South Vietnamese army at the hands of outnumbered Communist guerrillas in the fight for the jungle hamlet 30 miles south of Saigon. Ap Bac represented a major turning point in the war. Following this battle, the United States made the decision to escalate their presence and actively replace the stubborn & broken ARVN troops with their own ground forces. Ap Bac
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