1973 in the Vietnam War Vietnamese parties wanted the kind of peace promised by the agreement" was the conclusion of one scholar. The last American combat troops left Vietnam as per the Paris Peace Accords. The U.S. military command in South Vietnam, MACV ceased to exist. Fewer than 250 U.S. military personnel remained in Vietnam assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon for advisory duties plus a few marines for protection of the Embassy. About 8,500 civilians working for the U.S. government remained in South South Vietnam. An official publication of North Vietnam summed up the pluses and minuses of the peace agreement. On the
1972 in the Vietnam War The United States Joint Chiefs of Staff assessed the performance of South Vietnamese armed forces thus far in the Easter offensive as "encouraging." The city of Quang Tri was captured by the communist forces, the only provincial capital to fall to them during the Easter Offensive. The preceding week saw South Vietnamese casualties, especially near Quang Tri, reach their highest level of the entire Vietnam War. Two combat divisions of South Vietnam collapsed and fled the fighting. President Nixon withdrew his demand for a withdrawal of all North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam as a precondition for a peace agreement.