I would find out later that several thousand guerrilla fighters had attacked Saigon, part of a force of eighty-four thousand North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong soldiers who’d invaded a hundred towns and key military sites all over South Vietnam, in what came to be known as the Tet offensive. It had been masterminded by General Giap and his military logistician, Le Duan, who took advantage of LBJ’s acceptance of a New Year’s truce to launch the attack. It was the definition of perfidy.
A month before, the United States had entrusted the security of Saigon to the South Vietnamese National Police, after our military and police had provided extensive training. General Giap must have realized the vulnerability there. He believed that if his army and the Vietcong could overtake strategic sites such as the US embassy, the Presidential Palace, the airfield, and the radio station, then the people of Saigon and the other cities under attack would join them in an uprising. At the very least, it would look extremely bad to Americans back home watching it on the evening news.
For three months, the enemy had been bringing into the towns weapons and ammunition hidden in vegetable trucks. Now, soldiers themselves had infiltrated under the guise of travelers headed home to ancestral villages for the Lunar New Year, for which a five-day truce had been declared.
They broke the truce and attacked Saigon and major US bases and airfields at Chu Lai, Phu Bai, and Tan Son Nhut, as well as key American installations at An Khe and Vinh Long. The US military leadership had received intelligence that something big was about to happen, but it underestimated how big. The death toll in the two-month period of Tet, from January 29 through March 31, 1968, was 3,895 American servicemen, 14,300 civilians, 4,954 South Vietnamese soldiers, 214 allies, and 58,373 North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces.
Many Americans wondered how tens of thousands of troops could “sneak” into South Vietnam armed with artillery, weapons, and ammo, and catch our military leaders so unprepared. The map tells part of the story. Vietnam, shaped like a dog bone, is so narrow in its middle that it’s only thirty miles wide in places. Laos and Cambodia form another dog bone next to it. North Vietnamese troops would hike south through the jungle along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, down through Laos and then Cambodia, to infiltrate South Vietnam from the west.
Another factor was that our political and military leaders thought the North Vietnamese would never violate the deeply religious holiday. Westmoreland called it “Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July rolled into one.”
Eight NVA battalions overtook Hue, the old imperial city, and the marines and the army had to fight them off for twenty-five days. Two battalions invaded Ban Me Thuot; two battalions attacked Qui Nhon, where Tommy Collins was; and two attacked Nha Trang. Three battalions attacked the city of Kon Tum, and three more battalions took over Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon, home to General Westmoreland’s headquarters. The 716th and 92nd Military Police Battalions at Tan Son Nhut fought them off in a seven-hour gunfight. While most places were retaken within days, even hours, fighting in Hue, Da Lat, Pleiku, and other sites would go on for weeks. Seven US Army battalions moved into Saigon.
General Giap’s uprising never materialized, but he won the propaganda war on day one: when the American people saw that our embassy and Westmoreland’s own military headquarters had been under siege, mistrust of White House and military claims and antiwar sentiment grew.