TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

Tet
War in the provinces differed day­to­day except for Tet,
when a common set of NVA assumptions drove a similar
tactic. The battles got enough breathless reporting then as to
not need repeating now. (Nothing so annoyed the press as
being driven from their lounge chairs poolside at the Cercle
Sportif in Saigon by the sound of gunfire.)
What differed up and down the coast of Vietnam were
the results, town to town. There’s little to add beyond what
the survivors of Co “C” already knew, which was by then, a
lot. By accident of the tour length, Tet hit when there were
few people in country with more experience than they. Most
had been there a year and could call balls and strikes without
an umpire.
Where fights were ordinarily localized, Tet spread
them to everyone, everyplace. With the first shot fired Giap’s
assumptions also got side­swiped. A predicate for his
strategy was still the belief that the ARVN wouldn’t fight.
(Or couldn’t, because a big portion of Saigon’s soldiers were
on New Year cease­fire leave.) He supposed that those left
on duty – undermanned and disorganized – wouldn’t fight.
Neither proved true. Those on duty fought; others returned.
Credit soldiers and Marines for helping give them heart, but
back they came. As the Rangers had at Khe Sanh, they took a
punch and gave one right back.
Giap sent thirty nine battalions of Viet Cong, mostly
main­force battalions, into Saigon. They missed the heavy
beat of the drum in stepping off the line of departure, giving
brief warning that there was to be no cease fire. Saigon
brought its national reserves home: five battalions each of
Vietnamese Rangers, Airborne, and Marines. Two of the
Marine battalions were helilifted from the Delta to the
general staff’s parade ground. Saigon’s best troops outfought
the VC on every block.
The other slipknot in Giap’s plans was to suppose that
country­wide attacks of such force and surprise would
render many small, isolated American units aimless,
awaiting instruction that would be fatally slow in coming.
Selling short the ARVN’s willingness to fight and completely
misunderstanding the innate initiative of GI’s and Marines
to sort their way through confusion were the twin
assumptions that ended up putting Giap on the rocks.
Notwithstanding the reality of facts, it was still easy
enough for the Grand Fromage of the American press, Old
Walter, to step off the plan in Saigon, spin around three
times, and declare the war lost. Had he seen white flags that
Co. C didn’t? In reality, there was no place in Vietnam where
Giap prevailed. Worse for the National Liberation Front,
when the Tet Offensive was over they didn’t have much of an
army left at all. Giap had made good his promise to fight to
the last of their battalions.
Although the Tet offensive was a country­long attack,
only the top part mattered to Hanoi. That’s where Giap
spent his own battalions. In I­Corps provinces he pinched,
top to bottom. At the top he vacillated between attacks on
Khe Sanh and Con Thien. Both failed. Consequentially, he
could never eliminate either of the twin bastions that
anchored the DMZ. Khe Sanh pushed his supply routes
west, and Con Tien denied him a straight shot south,
pushing him east, around it. A multiplication of errors
followed.
The first was in thinking he could back­door his way
into DaNang by way of Que Son and Quang Nam. He
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