31 January, 1968. The opening of the new lunar year, the year of the Monkey, and the beginning of the Vietnamese Tet holiday. Tet in Vietnam is akin to a combination of Christmas and Independence Day in the United States. In 1968 the Tet holiday was also the start of the largest, most destructive Vietcong offensive against the American and South Vietnamese forces.
The North Vietnamese and Vietcong had spent the year of 1967 carefully coordinating and planning the Tet offensive, with the North Vietnamese launching a series of bloody encounters in the Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta. These battles served the purpose of drawing the American forces out of the cities and into the countryside, leaving the cities open for thorough reconnaissance by the Vietcong. These battles may have also given General William Westmoreland, Commander US Military Assistance, Vietnam (COMMUSMACV) a false sense of confidence. Fighting in the Mekong and the Central Highlands allowed for full use of American firepower, and Westmoreland had decided that the measure of our success in the war would be the number of enemy fighters we killed in combat. Fighter-bombers dropping napalm and high explosives on Vietcong and NVA troops added to the enemy body count, which became an obsession with Westmoreland as proof that we were attriting the enemy faster than they could regroup.
On 21 January, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army, assisted by Vietcong, launched a fierce attack on the Marine outpost at Khe Sanh. Westmoreland responded to this attack by flooding the area around Khe Sanh with more troops and the most massive concentration of aerial firepower in history. As the eyes of the world turned to Khe Sanh, the Vietcong prepared to launch a series of coordinated attacks against the major cities and provincial capitals of South Vietnam. Their job was made easier by the announcement by the South Vietnamese government that a cease fire for the Tet holiday would go into effect from 27 January until 3 February. Their job was also made easier by the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies had deduced that something major was brewing, but Westmoreland failed to adequately communicate this information to Washington or to his commanders in the field. When the attacks began to erupt, everyone was taken by surprise.
Preliminary attacks began on 30 January, with the transmission of the code phrase “Crack the sky, shake the Earth” to the VC forces preparing for the assault. Nha Trang, Ban Me Thout, Danang, and Pleiku were all attacked as the VC launched mortar attacks, followed up with waves of foot soldiers throwing grenades and linking up with local VC cadres to launch more mayhem.. On 31 January the full fury of the offensive erupted as 85,000 VC troops attacked cities all across South Vietnam. Some of the most devastating attacks came in the capital city of Saigon, where the U.S. embassy was nearly overrun. While the shock of the initial assaults took the American and South Vietnamese forces by surprise, they quickly overcame their surprise and began engaging the enemy with full force, with Hue City being the only city to fall to the VC. The US embassy grounds were quickly cleared, and once the battle was joined, the VC began to suffer enormous losses. The worst thing for a guerilla force to do is to come out in the open, which is what decimated the VC. Losses suffered by the VC during the assault eliminated them as a force in future combat operations.
The biggest impact of the offensive fell on the American people, who had been told by General Westmoreland and President Johnson that the enemy had “met his match” and that “there was light at the end of the tunnel” as 1967 came to a close. As Americans watched Marines and soldiers engaging an enemy “who had met his match”, they began to question what we had accomplished after nearly 4 years of combat. The offensive emboldened Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy to challenge President Johnson for re-election, serving as the first real primary of the 1968 election year. In short, the offensive was a military failure for the VC, but a strategic victory, as the tepid support the American people had for the war began to dissipate. As combat continued over the next several weeks, President Johnson would be tested as no American wartime president has ever been tested.
