11/29/9811/29/98
THE TET OFFENSIVE
"I knew the attack was coming, but I did not want the enemy know I knew"- Gen. Westmoreland
"I remember thinking that this was just like what John Wayne would do"- James m. Mueller
Planned out by their brilliant strategic leader, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the Tet Offensive was a critical campaign by the NVA/VC forces. It was an all out assault on American strongholds in Vietnam. Its main purpose was to strike a blow so strong that Washington would begin to question its role in the war, and so that the government in Saigon was undermined severely.
Giap planned an attack on the Marine's base in Khe Sanh, while at the same time, striking almost all of the provincial capitals in South Vietnam. Realizing that his soldiers didn't have much left, and that the longer the war lasted, the more capable the ARVN would be in fighting the war on their own.
America was besieged by this all out assault. If they defended the base in Khe Sahn, they would most likely be spread too thin to defend all of the other places in the South where battles had broken out. Hopefully for Giap, the US/ARVN forces would sustain a series of minor defeats, which would add up to a total loss. The battle at Khe Sahn was little more than a cover for this plan of spreading out the attack.
The NVA/VC forces knew that they couldn't hold all of the positions that they would win for very long. It was more a matter of principal rather than an actual effort to conquer these cities. The defeats were more about breaking the will of the Americans to fight and forcing them out of Vietnam in a best case scenario.
The offensive began in the end of January, 1968, during the time of the Tet holiday in Vietnam. It was obvious near the end of the month that something was up. There were scattered reports of heavy troop movement towards Khe Sahn. The two divisions, the 325th and the 304th, were on the move towards Khe Sahn. By the end of the month, 6,000 Marines were moved to Khe Sahn to reinforce it, but the NVA numbers also continued to grow. Initial reports had the number of NVA troops around the area of the base at 40,000. That number was inflated, it was really only about 20,000. But nonetheless, they were certainly up to something. The leaders back in Washington were convinced that the most important battle in the war was about to begin. That what was about to happen would be a major turning point in the war. The top story on every TV newscast was what was going on in Khe Sahn, even if it was only a bunch of anxious Marines, waiting for something to happen. It became apparent to the restless American public that this was huge. In a time where the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were huge cultural events, people were starting to become very weary of our involvement in the war. Counter-culture was questioning our purpose in Indochina.
The first attack at Khe Sahn occurred on January 21st. The ammunition supply was blown up and some aircraft were damaged. But a constant supply of necessities like ammunition was coming into Khe Sahn by helicopter and parachute. The Americans had very sophisticated surveillance and weapons around Khe Sahn.
Little did anyone know what was really going on. While this was going on, NVA and VC soldiers were slowly infiltrating Vietnamese cities, especially Saigon and Hue. They moved in small numbers under the cover of civilians during the festive time of Tet. They smuggled in weapons in flower carts and trucks, unknown by any of the soldiers stationed in these cities. Most of the soldiers who patrolled the cities were ARVN and not Americans.
Gen. Westmoreland (known to the troops as Waste-More-Land) continually disregarded reports that something serious was going to happen around the time of Tet. He cast off the information as hearsay and as being too vague. Out of precaution, Gen. Weyand, the US leader in Saigon, brought back a few extra men into Saigon and put them on full alert. This was a good notion, but since the policing of the cities was mostly up the ARVN, it wasn't much more than a drop of water in a glass. Westmoreland claimed that he knew that the Tet offensive was coming. But it seems obvious now looking back at it that he had no idea of the intensity or actual location that it was going to occur at. He was still convinced that Giap was going to mainly concentrate on the battle at Khe Sahn.
Westmoreland was wrong...really wrong. On the morning of January 31st, the beginning of the Vietnamese New Year, the full-scale assault began. The VC/NVA troops waged an attack from which there would be no turning back, and no escape. They attacked every major town and most of the military strongholds and bases that the US held. These attacks were really unexpected. The VC/NVA took control, if only temporary, of large sections of Hue and Saigon.
The biggest move of all was the capture of the US embassy in Saigon. This is important not for its strategic value, but it was for its moral value. This battle on American soil was a shock that shook all the way back to the States. It left an American public with many questions and very few answers. This was in many ways; the actual moment when we realized what was really going on. That this wasn't a police action. This was a war, and we were losing. Or at least that is how it seemed on American TV. In his 1971 book "Tet!" Don Oberdorfer said "There's no doubt Tet was one of the biggest events in contemporary American history...Within two months, the American body politic turned around on the war. And they were significantly influenced by what they saw on television." Walter Cronkite, America's most trusted news source would later go on to say on Feb. 27, 1968, that the war was a "stalemate" and that the "only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people..." After this, it became fashionable for people in media to oppose the war.
So how did the VC/NVA troops manage to infiltrate the embassy? According to which report one believes, the either rolled up in an old truck, or literally by taxicab. The nineteen VC commandos blasted their way through the wall and proceeded to overrun the embassy until the 101st Airborne arrived and bailed out the embassy. It wasn't so much that the actual embassy was ever in all that much danger, but he statement of it shocked America.
The VC/NVA also attacked the president's palace, a radio station, the ARVN headquarters and even Gen. Westmoreland's own compound at the Tan Son Nhut air base. At one point, the compound was under such pressure, that Westmoreland ordered his personal staff to get into the fighting. Twenty-three Americans were killed and Eight-five more were wounded ant Tan Son Nhut. At Bien Hoa, the Americans planned ahead and cut down a forest of rubber trees in front of the base. This would allow for air support if needed. They lost 170 men, but claimed at least 1200. One American soldier, who had written a web site, claimed that this number was very low, and that many more VC/NVA than that were killed. He said that they killed so many that the bodies had to be placed in ditches and burned because there was simply too many of them.
The fighting lasted in Saigon until Feb. 5th. But by the time it was over, Saigon was a wasteland. It had been decimated by fire on both sides. The United States with their notoriously low estimates figured that 15,000 civilians were killed and 2,000,000 were refugees. Imagine how high those numbers probably actually were.
The other huge battle occurred at Hue. The VC/NVA captured a building called the Citadel. An ancient palace, the Citadel had very high walls that were several feet thick. By the morning of Jan. 31st they had captured it and run up their flag. The VC/NVA would discover that the people of Hue were very supportive of them. The VC/NVA, released people from prisons, and executed people who resisted them. All told, they executed around 6,000 people. It was a serious killing spree.
Hue was an ancient and sacred city. But the Americans refused to send in their troops without air support. So they bombed and shelled the ancient city until there was little left to speak of. It took until Feb. 25th to reclaim Hue. It cost the Americans 119 lives and the ARVN 363 lives. The VC/NVA casualties were around sixteen times that amount. The one sided nature of this kill total is due in large part to the air strike capability of the Americans, because outside of that it was a very close battle. At least 6,000 civilians were killed and 120,000 left homeless in the battle for Hue. The ARVN commander at Hue reportedly knew about the attack well before it happened. He said that he kept it a secret and let the VC/NVA in so he could spring a trap.
Giap's forces didn't win much of a victory over the Americans in Vietnam. Thanks to terrific aerial support and tough fighting by the ground troops, the Americans held on. The casualties suffered by the Americans and their ARVN allies were only about 4,300. The VC/NVA death totals were far higher, possibly around 45,000. But the real victory was in the opinions of Americans at home. They had watched their forces be tricked at Khe Sahn in a cover-up for the big picture. They watched their embassy get overrun. They were losing confidence in what was happening in Vietnam.
At home President Johnson's approval rating of how he was handling the war was floundering at 26%. Gen. Westmoreland was asking him for 206,000 more troops. Johnson consulted Clark Gifford who had replaced the delusional McNamara as secretary of defense. But there was obviously no way that the war could be won in any reasonable time frame.
Also, being anti-war was a very fashionable notion in the States. Robert Kennedy led the charge before his assassination and Senator Eugene McCarthy, also a democrat like Johnson, barley lost in primaries to the president. The close race was unheard of for an incumbent president. Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election. With his senior advisors and the CIA now also opposed to the war, he went on television and announced that bombing of the North would stop and peace would be reached.
In all likelihood, in time, the Americans could have won the war. But due in large part to the Tet offensive, the war received terrible press. This anti-war sentiment was strong amongst the people as well. Los Angeles Times writer Robert Elegant wrote that, "For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield, but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen."
WORKS CITED:
www.war-stories.com/sundaydriver.htm
Great Links For Further Reasearch:
http://thehistorynet.com/vietnam/articles/1997/0297_text.htm -this is an account of the Tet at Hue
http://iris.npr.org/ramfiles/980129.totn.02.ram - A great radio show, 1 hour long, about the Tet Offensive
http://users.intermedia.net/cepenley/stories/10series/html - a list of all the radio call numbers used during the Tet offensive
www.geocities.com/~nam_album -an extensive site full of photos not included in this page
http://marinecorpsspecialty.com/im2723.htm -site includes the "Tet Survivor" badge among others
