South Vietnamese Characters

Military Personnel

Ngô Quang Trưởng

Ngô Quang Trưởng
Biographical Information
Born	December 13, 1929
Age	39
Status	Active
Physical Information
Rank	General
Gender	Male
Political Information
Affiliation	Republic of Vietnam Ranger Forces
Occupation	General and military leader of South Vietnam.

Born in 1929, Ngô Quang Trưởng gained his commission into the State of Vietnam army in 1954. He quickly gained fame as a leader in the Vietnamese airborne division, where he served along side the Peacekeeping divisions deployed in 1956, and later in the newly formed Army of the Republic of Vietnam, where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

In 1962, with the country crumbling under Ngô Đình Diệm's regime and NVA forces rolling over the border, Trưởng gathered his best airborne troops and militia leaders, along with as much Allied equipment as he could find, and with assistance from Allied military advisers from the Peacekeepers, organised them into the Rangers.

Over the course of two weeks, the sheer ferocity of the Rangers, combined with Trưởng's tactical genius, resulted in the decimation of the NVA centre line at the Ia Drang Valley and bought time for the rest of the ARVN to rally and stall the communist forces. Unfortunately, guerrilla sabotage and the government's incompetence kept the South Vietnamese forces from retaining their momentum.

For the next two years, Ngô Quang Trưởng led the Rangers in a desperate struggle to hold the country together against the NVA and VC. As Ngô Đình Diệm continued to antagonise both the military and the populace, the ARVN decided that enough was enough and overthrew the civilian government in a coup. After two years of political infighting, Ngô Quang Trưởng took power and led a series of counter-attacks that managed to keep the Republic from being exterminated.

At the end of WWIII, the NVA launched the enormous Tet Offensive. The ARVN would have been crushed, if not for a Allied carrier group that arrived in the nick of time and devastated the North Vietnamese army in the space of a week, only for the Vietcong to launch a guerilla campaign against the ARVN and Peacekeeping forces.

Now, General Ngô Quang Trưởng faces a counter-insurgency war against Communist guerrillas, with limited Peacekeeper support and Reservists who have never seen combat before. Complicating matters is the division of opinions amongst the Allies about the ARVN, the Rangers, and Trưởng himself. Some view him as a military dictator who frequently uses overly severe tactics and horrific weapons that cause extreme damage to the environment and kill inhumanely. Other see him as a hero who has been forced by lack of resources to use extreme measures for a good cause to stop the Red Menace. What everyone can agree on is that General Trưởng has revolutionised helicopter warfare to a greater degree than even the Soviet Twinblade squadrons or Allied air cavalry, and that when South Vietnam holds democratic elections, he is likely to be one of the favourites for the presidency.