The FReeper Foxhole Revisits Tet 1968 - Jan. 31st, 2004

http://members.fortunecity.com/stalinmao/Vietnam/VietnamWar/tet.html ^

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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TET OFFENSIVE


1968

Tet: The Turning Point

Four-star General Vo Nguyen Giap led Vietnam's armies from their inception, in the 1940s, up to the moment of their triumphant entrance into Saigon in 1975. Possessing one of the finest military minds of this century, his strategy for vanquishing superior opponents was not to simply outmaneuver them in the field but to undermine their resolve by inflicting demoralizing political defeats with his bold tactics.

Giap was prepared to take a gamble. His divisions had been battered whenever they met the American forces in conventional combat and the VC- if not exactly on the retreat -was at least being pushed backwards. Hanoi was perfectly aware of the growing US peace movement and of the deep divisions the war was causing in American society. What Giap needed was a body-blow that would break Washington's will to carry on and at the same time would undermine the growing legitimacy of the Saigon Government once and for all.

In one sense, time was not on Giap's side. While Hanoi was sure that the Americans would tire of the war as the French had before them, the longer it took, the stronger the Saigon Government might become. Another year or so of American involvement could seriously damage the NLF and leave the ARVN capable of dealing with its enemies on its own. Giap opted for a quick and decisive victory that would be well in time for the 1968 US Presidential campaign.



Giap prepared a bold thrust on two fronts. With memories of the victory at Dien Bien Phu still in his mind, he planned an attack on the US Marines' firebase at Khe Sanh. At the same time the NVA and the NLF planned coordinated attacks on virtually all South Vietnam's major cities and provincial capitals. If the Americans opted to defend Khe Sanh, they would find themselves stretched to the limit when battles erupted elsewhere throughout the South. Forced to defend themselves everywhere at once, the U~ARVN forces would suffer a multitude of small to major defeats which would add up to an overall disaster. Khe Sanh would distract the attention of the US commanders while the NVA/VC was preparing for D-day in South Vietnam's cities but, when this full offensive was at its height, it was unlikely that the over-stretched American forces would be able to keep the base from being overrun and Giap would have repeated his triumph of fourteen years before.

It's highly doubtful that the NVA/VC expected to hold all or even some of the cities and towns they attacked, but the NLF apparently did expect large sections of the urban populace to rise up in revolt. With a few exceptions, this didn't happen. South Vietnam's city dwellers were generally indifferent to both the NLF and the Saigon Government but the VC clearly expected more support than it actually got. The object of attacking the cities was not so much to win in a single blow as it was to inflict a series of humiliating defeats on the Americans and to destroy the authority of the Saigon Government.

When the US/ARVN forces finally drove the NVA/VC back into the jungle, there would be left behind a wasteland of rubble, refugees, and simmering discontent. Stung by their defeats, the Americans would lose heart for the war and what was left of the Saigon Government would be forced to reach an agreement with the NLF and Hanoi which - after a time - would simply take over in the South. This offensive would begin in January 1968 at the time of the Vietnamese Tet (New Year) holidays.



The village of Khe Sanh lay in the northwest corner of South Vietnam just below the DMZ and close to the Laotian border. Khe Sanh had been garrisoned by the French during the first Indochina war and became an important US Special Forces base early on during the second. Its importance lay in its proximity to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. From Khe Sanh, US artillery could shell the trail and observers could keep an eye on NVA traffic moving southwards. If necessary they could call in air-strikes or alert CIA/Meo raiding parties across the border in Laos. Special Forces working with local Montagnard tribesmen also harried NVA traffic in the area and were a definite nuisance to Hanoi. In 1967, the Marines took over Khe Sanh and converted it into a large fire base. The Special Forces moved their base to the Montagnard village of Lang Vei.



Towards the end of 1967, it was obvious that Giap was planning something. Broadcasts from Hanoi were speaking of great victories and of taking the war into the cities of South Vietnam. Two NVA divisions- the 325th and the 304th were spotted moving into the Khe Sanh area and a third was positioning itself along Rout#9 where it would be able to intercept reinforcements coming in from Quang Tn. The two NVA divisions near Khe Sanh had fought at Dien Bien Phu and the warning was clear. Westmoreland picked up the gauntlet and began to reinforce the base despite predictions of upcoming bad weather which could hinder air support and interfere with vital supply planes.

Appearances to the contrary, Westmoreland had no intention of duplicating the French mistakes at Dien Bien Phu. American airpower was capable of delivering devastating attacks on concentrations of enemy troops and - apart from anti-aircraft guns - was unopposed. Helicopters and parachute drops by low-flying cargo planes reduced the dependence on re-supply by road.



By late January, some 6,000 Marines had been flown in to reinforce the Khe Sanh garrison and thousands of reinforcements had been moved north of Hue. The NVA build-up also continued; 20,000 North Vietnamese were ultimately moved in around Khe Sanh but other estimates put the number at twice that. Initially, Giap would position his artillery in the DMZ and then send his assauIt troops against the fortified hills surrounding Khe Sanh which the Marines had captured in the dogged fighting in 1967.

Having captured the hill positions, Giap reasoned, the NVA artillery could be moved onto the heights above the beleaguered base. Then - as happened at Dien Bien Phu - waves of determined infantry would steadily grind away until the defenders were pushed into a corner and finally over-run. The White House and the US media became convinced that the decisive battle of the war had begun. TV news reports were so obsessed with Giap's threatened replay of Dien Bien Phu that day-to-day life at Khe Sanh became lead-story material even when it showed nothing other than anxious Marines waiting for something to happen.



The first attack began shortly before dawn on January 21st, when the NVA attempted to cross the river running past the base. It was beaten back but followed by an artillery barrage which damaged the runway, blew up the main ammunition stores, and damaged a few aircraft. Secondary attacks were launched against the Special Forces' defenses at Lang Vel and against the Marines dug-in on the hills surrounding Khe Sanh but these attacks were aimed more attesting the defenses than anything else. The next day, helicopters and light cargo aircraft flew in virtually every few minutes replacing lost ammunition but the weather began turning worse.



The NVA began a concentrated artillery barrage and moved their troops forward to begin building a network of entrenched positions in which they could prepare for further assaults on Khe Sanh's outer defenses. Anti-aircraft guns and the worsening weather made incoming supply flights difficult running skirmishes designed to break through on Route#9. Air and supporting US forces moved-up to engage the NVA in running skirmishes around Khe Sanh and were intensified and despite the weather- pounded the North Vietnamese hour after hour.

Electronic sensors of the types running along the McNamara Line surrounded Khe Sanh. Seismic and highly sensitive listening devices enabled the Americans to monitor everything from normal conversations to radio communications. Overhead, high-flying signal-intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft intercepted communications traffic over the entire front and to and from command centers in North Vietnam. While the world was watching the drama unfolding at Khe Sanh, however, NVA and VC regulars were also drifting into Saigon, Hue, and most of South Vietnam's cities.



They came in twos and threes, disguised as refugees, peasants, workers, and ARVN soldiers on holiday leave. In Saigon, roughly the equivalent of five battalions of NVA/VC gradually infiltrated the city without anyone informing or any of the countless security police taking undue notice. Weapons came separately in flower carts, jury-rigged coffins, and trucks apparently filled with vegetables and rice.

There was also a VC network in Saigon and the other major cities which had long stockpiled stores of arms and ammunition drawn from hit-and-run raids or bought openly on the black-market. It was also no secret that VC drifted in and out of the cities to see relatives and on general leave from their units. Viet Cong who were captured during the pre Tet build up were mistaken for regular holiday-makers or deserters. In the general pattern of the New Year merry-makers, the VC's secret army of infiltrators went completely unnoticed.

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[SAMWolf]

Actually if we start making the punishment fit the crime on a daily basis then it will no longer be unusual.

Amen!

[SAMWolf]

Evevning Victoria. Thanks I'm working on it. Getting lots of rest today.

[SAMWolf]

Hi Radu. You feeling better?

[SAMWolf]

If I was in Oregon I could probably physically wrestle him as bad as he feels today. LOL

HEy You'd still at least know you were in a fight! ;-)

[SAMWolf]

Thanks GailA.

[SAMWolf]

Evening Phil Dragoo.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations
April 23, 1971

I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the motions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

...

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

[PhilDragoo]

The Joint Chiefs went to the White House November 1965 to urge Johnson to allow them to bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong.

He gave them fifteen minutes standing up to make their case, then cursed them in humiliating fashion.

The Day It Became the Longest War, Proceedings, May 1996.

Johnson prevented effective action with his asinine rules of engagement, rules which protected the Communists.

Johnson bugged out, after forcing better men than he to die with one hand tied behind their back.

He was preoccupied throwing six trillion away on his War On Poverty.

JFK's NSAM 263 of September 1963 began the withdrawal of US advisors to be complete by the election of 1964.

LBJ's NSAM 273 signed November 26, 1963, the first business day after JFK's funeral, rescinded that.

Yet LBJ was not "in for a penny, in for a pound", he was as phony as Kerry getting Vietnam real estate contracts for his cousin Forbes.

The Vietnamese Communists later said they'd laughed at Johnson's professed concern of involving the Soviet Union and China in Vietnam.

As though they weren't.

The resilience of American forces in the face of the sudden attacks stands as clear testament to their bravery and strength.

They deserved a President Goldwater and skies black with B-52s, not Little Miss Muffett sanitizing target lists, awarding the Communists safe haven on four sides of the board.

I went door-to-door for Goldwater as a dangerous right-wing member of YAF.

Today, terrorists prefer Hanoi John Kerry, who sought to cut counterintelligence by a billion, to cut the B-1, B-2, Apache, Patriot, Aegis.

The F in John F. Kerry is for Forbes.

In 1991, the United States Senate created the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to examine the possibility that U.S. POW/MIAs might still be held by the Vietnamese.
As chairman of the Select Committee, Kerry proved himself to be a masterful chameleon portraying to the public at large what appeared to be an unbiased approach to resolving the POW/MIA issue.
But, in reality, no one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with Hanoi, than John Forbes Kerry.
In fact, his first act as chairman was to travel to Southeast Asia, where during a stopover in Bangkok, Thailand, he lectured the U.S. Chamber of Commerce there on the importance of lifting the trade embargo and normalizing relations with Vietnam.
During the entire life of the Senate Select Committee, Kerry never missed a chance to propaganderize and distort the facts in favor of Hanoi.

C. Stewart Forbes, Chief Executive Officer of Colliers International (Kerry's cousin), was awarded a contract worth billions designating Colliers International as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam.

Clinton says Kerry not too far left

[SAMWolf]

I have no problem getting to that site, must be you.

[SAMWolf]

Parsley? All those garnished wages. :-)

[SAMWolf]

Excellent flick.

[SAMWolf]

Sounds like that worm that sends you to a search engine.

[U S Army EOD]

Well I guess we FReepers just need to go on the offensive during some of Kerry's public speeches. Hold up the signs that would bring attention to this and get his reaction to it on the news. I'm game to do it, anybody else?

[SAMWolf]

Communists plan very, very long term. Figure the people they wanted to be in power in the 90's and now where recruited in the 60's.

[U S Army EOD]

Kind of make you wonder if Kerry didn't plan his medals in Vietnam, it sure looks like he did.

[SAMWolf]

From what I read. The purple hearts are legit, even thhough the wounds were light(luck of the draw). The Silver Star sounds suspicious, looks like "rules" were bypassed.

[U S Army EOD]

But it seems he knew three Purple Hearts would get him out of country. I wonder if anyone actually saw him get hit. I really do.

When Long Binh ammo depot blew in 1972 I had a 1st LT that lived near me. He and I had several run ins and I threatened to have him court martialed one time. Anyway I told him to stay put while I got my unit in gear and ready to go. Then I grabed my 1st Sgt and we drove into the ammo dump while it was blowing to check on an infantry security unit that was reporting rounds landing among them and exploding. I went in and stayed with these guys and called their CO and told him he needed to pull them out. He said no they say, at which time I told him to get his ass down where we were and assess the situation. He decided to pull them out.

This other guy which happened to be his exec gets his jeep and camera so he can get some neat pictures. He is still about a mile away from the explosions when a tip of a PD fuze lands in the jeep with him. He jumps out and hurts his back a little bit and they give him a, "Purple Heart".

[Professional Engineer]

Fascinating isn't it?

Absolutely. One of the many things I enjoy about the Foxhole is being able to share stories and learn about the stuff other guys/gals have expirienced.

[snippy_about_it]

HEy You'd still at least know you were in a fight! ;-)

No doubt about it :-)

[snippy_about_it]

All those garnished wages

ha ha ha!

[snippy_about_it]

Yep. It's a worm. :-(