TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Year in the Provinces
airborne battalion had won in a single night. (plus the
ruff‐puffs, let’s not forget.) At first they were all holding
their breath too tightly to cheer, then they couldn’t find
their manual for victory parades. Still, some sort of show
was needed so they piled hundreds of dead NVA into 6x6s
and drove in circles around town...three days later.
***
At the one place Hanoi had to win – Quang Tri – it lost.
They lost because Giap assumed too much. Predicating so
much on assumptions so readily disprovable was worse than
foolhardy. What he was willing to do, earlier at Dien Bien
Phu and later in I­Corps, was to burn up his men,
relentlessly. The man had the heart of a cat. The
consequences were soon clear. (Manifestly clear overnight
at Quang Tri – even before old Walter had declared the war
lost.) The first one was that Giap had wrecked the National
Liberation Front as a fighting force. In I­Corps he did use
his own NVA, but everywhere south he used main­force VC
and buried most of it.
It was a bad plan, clearly. Less clear, however, were
his objectives. Historians, particularly American, will
debate forever whether Khe Sanh or Tet was the principal
military objective. Not so the South Vietnamese. They saw
it not as a chess match, but rather as Chinese checkers – a
different game altogether. Tet, they’d tell you, was political.
General Truong, himself, had a candid take on that.
It was this: Hanoi was being battered from the air by one set
of [our] classmates and bled dry on the ground by the
remainder. Many in the North wanted a resolution, but it
would have to be something they could sell at home. Calling
it quits wouldn’t do. Giap, of whom Hanoi demanded
results (or a replacement), spotted a face­saving solution in
Quang Tri. The province was halved artificially by the
DMZ. If he attacked everywhere but could seize
and hold Quang Tri city, regardless of what happened
elsewhere, Hanoi could immediately sue for peace,
demanding in return the southern half of the province. That
town (+Cowan) became the victory­defining objective.
Everything to the south was a diversion. If they got lucky
anywhere, swell; if lucky at Khe Sanh, better yet. But Quang
Tri was the lottery­winning ticket. There, they had to win
and hold– and did neither.
So the war went on.
A‐44
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