Posted on 01/30/2021 4:17:04 PM PST by redcatcherb412
Dick Freeman, 40th PIO
In the early morning hours of 31 January 1968, the Brigade Main Base at Camp Frenzell-Jones (Bien Hoa/Long Binh) came under heavy 122mm rocket, mortar, and crew-served weapons fire.Following the artillery assault came waves of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese from the 274th and 275th Viet Cong Main Force Regiments.The mission of the enemy units were to overrun BMB on their way into Saigon. They were to replenish their supplies, weapons, and ammunition at BMB after destroying all components of the 199th!
The next morning after the all clear and in the days to follow, it was reported that over 500 enemy KIA’s were in and around the base camp's perimeter wire.Camp Frenzell-Jones had been hit hard but not breached.
Ho Nai Village, right across the road from BMB had been heavily infiltrated and overrun, however. For the next two days, elements of the 4-12th Infantry would be heavily engaged in clearing all enemy forces from the village.
There were so many AO's that got hit that night and so many on this site fought there. Doubt if anyone forgets good old TET '68.
I was on the perimeter wire that night.
Where were you? Let's hear it from TET survivor Freepers.
I was 15 at the time, thank you very much for your service!
I was in BanMeThout. (Central Highlands) I remember all the bridges along QL 21 south to NaTrang were blown. Stopped all resupply traffic north for weeks. I must say it was a well coordinated attack by the VC. Their objective was to cut off the City of BanMeThout but it was unsuccessful.
Semper Fi indeed!! Thank you again. I also think about those brave men and women who never made it home. God Bless you and your family.
Thank you all for your service My hubby is a vietnam era vet, he volunteered twice for vietnam and they were sending over almost every class there, he got sent to Alaska and then Panama. Every American owes you their thanks.
I was at Ft Lewis, processing. My orders were for MACV Hq in Saigon. I was a Personnel Specialist. Friends who had been there before had briefed me and provided key names and phone numbers; who to contract for maid and valet service, where to live in town, bars to avoid, the best tailor, a favorite Mama San......
A few days later, I was standing between the trails of a M114, 155 mm towed howitzer in the Central Highlands. I learned my new combat arms MOS through On the Job Training in actual combat and for the next twelve years in the Army I was an artilleryman.
So what ever you have to say about that SAY IT loud!
btt
When 122's fell like rain, they were ruthless.
God bless then all.
So very true, they threw everyone on the wire they could find. They had pretty well the full 4/12th battalion outside the wire and guys at base recovering from wounds, cooks, drivers, clerks. If you could hold a rifle you were on the wire.
If we had the support of every able-bodied man, we would be celebrating South Vietnam's freedom today - what were you doing that was more important than serving your country during war?
" I have no desire to discuss with veterans who were there."
As well you shouldn't. You missed being counted among the best, bravest men this country has ever fielded.
I finally did go back in '75 as a Lieutenant during the withdrawal operations.
The gift that keeps on giving? Yes, to Democrats and the communists.
Hey chainfella-i said I was sorry for those who were there. I’ll never know what they went through but I’ll always wonder what motivated those that sent them there. Then there’s the history lessons we were taught-we could kick anybody’s butt. The thought they were doing the right thing and hindsight is 20-20.
Btw I am a VietNam ERA vet. Didn’t go there but could have been ordered to at any time.
btt
Wow.
Thank you for your service.
Sadly, The Red China commies are in the white hut now!
Since you didn't go, you have no idea what the war was about - other than what the lefties back here had to say about it. Your 20-20 hindsight doesn't do you a lot of good without seeing it for yourself.
We did "kick their butts" and had we kept sending the SVN support, they'd still be there now.
Happy to hear that you did serve during that period, and for that I retract some of the initial venom. But nothing on earth will ever match the courage I saw and deadly efficiency of our fighting men in Vietnam.
The Vietnam War, in which America was the victor in military battles, is perhaps the most manifest modern example of how propaganda affected the outcome of a war, with much of the mainstream media being an all too willing instrument of such, especially CBS News with Walter Cronkite.
In an exchange during one of his liaison trips to Hanoi, Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. told his North Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Tu, "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield," Colonel Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."[28]
The Tet Offensive was portrayed by the New York liberal media as a defeat for the U.S., while in fact, it was an almost disastrous defeat for the North Vietnamese, as General Westmoreland and historians agree. The Viet Cong not only lost half of the 90,000 troops they had committed to battle, but it was virtually destroyed as an army.[29] British "Encounter" journalist Robert Elegant stated,
For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and television screens - never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought, by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondent's own side.[30]
Some journalists have admitted that their reporting was decidedly biased, and had profound effects on history. West German correspondent Uwe Siemon-Netto confessed, "Having covered the Viet Nam war over a period of five years for West German publications, I am now haunted by the role we journalists have played over there." In relation to not reporting the true nature of the Hanoi regime and its actions resulting from the American withdrawal, he asked,
What prompted us to make our readers believe that the Communists, once in power in all of Viet Nam, would behave benignly? What made us, first and foremost Anthony Lewis, belittle warnings by U.S. officials that a Communist victory would result in a massacre?... Are we journalists not in part responsible for the death of the tens of thousands who drowned? And are we not in part responsible for the hostile reception accorded to those who survive?...However, the media have been rather coy; they have not declared that they played a key role in the conflict. They have not proudly trumpeted Hanoi's repeated expressions of gratitude to the mass media of the non-Communist world, although Hanoi has indeed affirmed that it could not have won "without the Western press."[31] Ironically, it was also because of the bias from the Western press, in particular The New York Times, that caused the NVA to undergo their Tet Offensive with overconfidence that they would cause the entire South Vietnamese to embrace Communism and go against Capitalism and Saigon.[32]
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite regularly carried news reports from its Moscow Bureau Chief, Bernard Redmont. When peace negotiations commenced with North Vietnam in Paris, Redmont became CBS News Paris Bureau Chief. What Redmont never reported during the ten year conflict was that he had been a KGB operative since the 1930s, and member of the notorious Silvermaster group.[33] Redmont was the only journalist to whom his fellow Comintern party member, and North Vietnamese chief negotiator, Mai Van Bo, granted an interview to bring the Communist point of view into American living rooms in what has been called "the living room war."
The single most explicit example of such biased reporting is typically seen to be the portrayal of the Tet offensive, as mentioned above, in which Western media was charged with inspiring and aiding the propaganda war of the communists.
Truong Nhu Tang, a founder of the National Liberation Front, and a minister of justice for the Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government - one of the most determined adversaries of the US during the war - stated years later,
The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnam War that our propaganda transformed this debacle into a brilliant victory. The truth was that Tet cost us half our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were unable to replace them with new recruits. (Truong Nhu Tang, The New York Review, October 21, 1982)
In addition to Cronkite's biased reporting, FBI documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Yahoo! News offer evidence that legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite collaborated with anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960s, going so far as to offer advice on how to raise the public profile of protests and even promising that CBS News would rent a helicopter to take liberal Senator Edmund Muskie to and from the site of an anti-war rally.[34] http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberal_bias#Vietnam_War
I’m a former Marine that served during the Vietnam era … however, I didn’t serve in Vietnam. A good friend of mine spent the entire Tet Offensive at Khe Sanh. Most of it in a bunker … his communications trailer (he was the senior NCO) was riddled with shrapnel. After the Tet Offensive he was rotated back to Da Nang … awarded the Bronze Star … and given a job of teaching Marines on in country leave how to sail. My friend, and fellow Marine, was from Connecticut and learned to sail on LI Sound as a kid. He was picked up by a Marine recruiting team looking for suitable candidates to serve at the prestigious 8th & I Marine barracks in Washington, DC. He ended up his Marine Corps career as a member of the Honor Guard that appeared at a Super Bowl back in that era. In another picture he was the Marine standing immediately below the podium (with the U.S. flag) at Nixon’s second inauguration. This picture was in all of the media publications at the time.
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