Tet Offensive
Locals fought in historic 1968 Vietnam War engagement
The end of January marks the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, a major event in the Vietnam War. We now see the Offensive as a turning point in the conflict and also in our country’s history. Several Siloam Springs residents served in Vietnam at the time. Some have shared their stories; others haven’t. I hope they will.
Like much else related to the Vietnam War, opinions about the Tet Offensive differ and stir controversy. But some things seem clear. The Tet Offensive was a series of attacks throughout South Vietnam by the communist North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and South Vietnamese guerrilla Vietcong (VC), and it was a failure. Among the bestremembered events of the Offensive was the breaching of the walls of the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon. The insurgents’ mission was to take the embassy and hold it until reinforcements arrived. But they never got into the actual embassy and they never controlled any part of the embassy property. Yet, since the breaching of the compound’s walls and the ensuing firefight were dramatic, that became the main news story.
According to the Offensive’s planners, the people of South Vietnam would see the countrywide assault as a chance to rise against their government and the allied forces defending it. Insurgents went through cities with bullhorns calling on the people to join
the North’s revolution. Few did. It may have been true that many South Vietnamese were not happy to have U.S., Australian, New Zealand, South Korean, Filipino and Thai forces in their country, but more of them feared communist rule. Pre-planned, orchestrated massacres inflicted on many hundreds of civilians by communist forces during Tet, especially near the city of Hue, help to explain why.
The fight for the city of Hue was the longest and hardest of the Tet battles but, like all the rest, it was an Allied victory.
Many think that if the U.S. had seriously pressed the war when the NVA and VC were reeling in February 1968, then the war could have been won. That isn’t certain, but it is certain that the ground war wasn’t vigorously pressed, the war wasn’t won and, after 1975, generations of South Vietnamese were consigned to live with the poverty and lack of freedom that came with communist rule in a unified Vietnam.
President Lyndon Johnson, always looking to negotiate with North Vietnam, seemed incapable of understanding that the North’s only objective was to win. It had no interest in negotiating. Soon after Tet, exhausted and still misunderstanding the enemy, Johnson announced that he would not again run for president. It seemed like he had given up.
And since the breadth and intensity of Tet came as a surprise to U.S. leaders, some journalists and politicians snatched a sense of loss from the jaws of victory by speaking of Tet as a “psychological defeat”— a story the beaten NVA and VC were happy to adopt. Then, a remark by an Army officer — “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it” — and a well-known photograph of a South Vietnamese officer executing a Vietcong who had just murdered a family were presented to the American public with little context and more misunderstandings were born.
There’s a reason why many Vietnam veterans feel that elements of the nation’s media and some in the political class were adversaries.
Fortunately, the country has learned to honor military forces, whatever we might think about the decisions national leaders make. And our Vietnam veterans know that we honor them. Among the things we honor them for is their achievement during the Tet Offensive of early 1968.
On February 6th at 7 p.m., three veterans of the Tet Offensive will share their stories at John Brown University. This discussion will not focus on controversies or politics but on the war as it was seen and experienced by three combatants now living in Northwest Arkansas. The event, held in Simmons Hall, is open to the community.
For information call 479238-8688 or email pjones@jbu.edu