Tet Offensive
Vietnam was not only a war to the American people it was a massacre. The Tet Offensive was a Vietnamese lunar holiday, which celebrated the year of the monkey, which was usually a very peaceful and calm period but not at this time. This certain day was supposed to be a celebrated cease-fire holiday until the NLF(National Liberation Forces), NVA(North Vietnam Army), and the Vietcong forces unleashed the biggest surprise to the South Vietnamese and U.S. sources. Many historians thought it of as the turning point of the war but if not that it at least marked a crucial time in the Vietnam War. It was a great wake up call for the Southern Vietnamese and U.S. troops. The American intervention in Vietnam began in 1963 with the direct aim of stopping the South falling into 'communist' hands. In August of that year, Lyndon Johnson, who had taken over the American presidency in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, ordered the first air strikes on the North. Only 6 months later the “rolling thunder” air campaign was constructed. In just this campaign alone more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than in all of World War two. Seven million tons of bombs and other hazardous weapons were dropped le . . .
The Tet Offensive made it obvious that the Communist forces were far stronger than US spokesmen had admitted. The US and ARVN troops were going to desperate measures but they got done what needed to be done. The communists were making their impression felt as their forces made their assault on Saigon from not only the north but the east and west also sending four to five thousand troops into the city right before Tet occurred. There were several reasons for this. It lasted for a brutal 77 days before it was halted. Then the Vietcong held a section of the compound as hostages until they were routed by an assault force of US paratroopers who landed on top of the building by helicopter. Thus the offensive lost its element of total surprise that was very important. This weakened the NLF organization in the countryside very drastically, and it never completely recovered. General Westmoreland was pressuring Washington to send him 206,000 troops to carry out the campaign in the South and to make a limited invasion of North Vietnam just above the DMZ. Many cities suffered greatly including the buildings and the population but one man who survived all of this tragedy expressed his sentiments in a poem. But on February 6, a nearby US Army Special Forces camp at Long Vei was overrun by NVA regulars and nine soviet tanks. If these attacks were timed better and were not held on different nights then the South would have been in for a lot more trouble. For all of these reasons, the Tet Offensive made the US news media, and the US public, much less enthusiastic about the war than they had been previously. By some reason, the North Vietnamese Army Supreme Command was not aware of the fact that there were different dates for Tet between North and South Vietnam. The battle of Hue was one of the bloodiest and horrendous battles in the Tet Offensive.
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