TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

Tet
jumped, showing up at his headquarters in hospital
pajamas.
His units all over the town had been hit hard. The
question was how to re­organize them; how to do that in
plain­language on field radios in a town chock­full of NVA?
The 1 st ARVN Division was a fine outfit. It did,
however, lack odds & ends of units that Marines were
accustomed to. One was a reconnaissance unit. (VN
Marines had one, led by our Hien (d).) Consequently, on the
occasion of some large­arrow operation, Gen.Truong would
ask for a screen from 3 rd Recon Bn. The battalion would
send up to Hue their only lieutenant who claimed to speak
French, which was one more than those who spoke
Vietnamese. When shown the requested recon­zones, the
lieutenant would grandly answer, “Mais oui” and depart.
“Yes” was never a problem for him since it fell to Bill
McBride to go. The scheme worked smoothly enough for
everyone except Bill.
Finally Truong asked if 3 rd Recon wouldn’t train a
platoon of his men as scouts. Never wishing to loose face,
the 1 st ARVN Div picked good men and a fine officer, a Lt
Tan. Sergeants in Bill’s company spun them up and it all
went well except for exposing how little French the S­3
lieutenant spoke beyond mais oui (of course), combien?
(how much?), and zoot alors! (You’re kidding!)
The night of the Tet attack, Truong had few troops in
Hue except for his division staff and support units. His elite
Hoc Bao company (& Jim Coolican) was at the airstrip, but
his heavy regiments were north of town. Struggling to reform,
Truong grabbed his new recon platoon to use as
runners. It was a stroke of rare luck. Truong was able to
fight on in the north­east part of the Citadel with the meager
forces he had because he found a way to communicate –
exactly what Giap wrongly thought impossible.
Giap had also supposed that U.S.– VN
communications would be disrupted. At the top things
slowed, sure, but at the battalion level they worked
sideways, just fine. Quickly enough, two VN Marine
battalions found themselves shoulder to shoulder with U.S.
Marines, attacking the Citadel. What Hanoi miscalculated
was that each VN Marine battalion had two U.S. Marines
embedded, and many officers of both Corps of Marines had
gone to school together in Quantico, shared the same field
manuals, and occasionally knew each other well. (If you saw
Pete Oatis, you looked for Hien.) At the Citadel, nobody’s
Marines missed a step going forward, supported from above
and on their flank by other old classmates – like elder
brothers Chu and Dat.
***
Histories of the Battle for Hue always focus on the big
battalions. Of late, nit­wits like Boden, (Hue ‘68), muddy
what we actually can confirm with unconfirmable nonsense
from the other side. The problem is, they lie. Discounting
dishonest history, what honestly gets lost in the telling is
everything that swirled around the battles. There was a
color, a texture to Tet that somehow differed from other
battles and other times. It reminded you, in a less peaceful
way, of the fine quilts made by Amish women, where every
women in the community sews in one piece, and the whole
cloth reflects them all. Tet was like that.
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