center of the enemy command, taking the town in one day and only then sending the troops out to destroy the perimeter outposts. We called these tactics the 'parairoop' tactics or the 'blooming lotus.' " The NVA would use a variation of the "blooming lotus" to capture Phuoc Long Province and upon that success build a battle plan that would know no defeat.1

North Vietnam's tactics in the Phuoc Long campaign involved isolating each garrison, attacking it, and through massive shelling and sheer numbers, overrunning it. By this process, which lasted less than three weeks, the NVA captured Due Phong, Bo Due, Bunard Fire Support Base, Don Luan, and, with the fall of Phuoc Long City on 6 January, the province. Phuoc Long became the first province since 1954 to fall intact into the hands of Hanoi's forces, and its capture exposed the VNAF's gravest weakness, the absence of an uncommitted reserve. For the South Vietnamese, it meant not only the strategic loss of territory in an area of intense North Vietnamese infiltration, but the loss of more than 3,000 soldiers including nearly half of the 250 members whom the elite 81st Ranger Group committed to the battle. At 0900 on 5 January, in a desperate attempt to save the besieged capital, the JGS inserted by helicopter these veterans of the 1972 South Vietnamese victory at An Loc, chosen for the mission because of their ability to fight behind enemy lines. The NVA tanks proved an unfair match and 39 hours