January 30 was the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. For the younger readers the Tet Offensive was the largest battle during the Viet Nam War.

By 1968, the Vietnamese had been fighting occupiers and each other for centuries. The French were the latest colonizers and were defeated in the Dien Bien Phu Valley. As a part of the agreement giving control of the land to the Vietnamese, the country was split. Each had its own government elected by the people. Ho Chi Minh, a patriot, who had fought against the Japanese occupiers, pled for independence after World War II, and defeated the French, was elected the North’s leader. His fight with France had been supplied by Mao so he became a Communist. The South was more fertile and wealthier so it became “Democratic”. The agreement was supposed to allow a unification vote in a couple of years. It never happened. So Ho started a process to do it by force. The restive peasants, called the Viet Cong, became guerillas whose aim was to topple the government and unify the countries.

We got involved when Eisenhower sent transport planes to the French and devised the Domino Theory in which Mao would take over one Southeast Asian country after another. Kennedy expanded our involvement with advisors, Johnson added troops and bombing, and Nixon added more totaling 2,709,918 troops. When Tet occurred, we had over a half million troops in Viet Nam with a terrible U.S. military and civilian command and control.

After many interviews with the North Vietnamese, we now know the leadership wanted to cool down the fight by pulling most of their troops back to Cambodia, Laos, and home. The V.C. would continue their operations at a slower pace. Two leaders persuaded the others, including Ho, to make one last all-out effort to persuade the American people that the war was unwinnable. Causalities were expected to be necessarily high!

The plan was for a simultaneous attack by the NVA and V.C. on targets all over South Viet Nam. Small and large bases and small towns and large cities would be attacked by the V.C. The NVA would strike Northern bases and cities, the provincial capital and historical city of Hue being the most important. Over 10,000 NVA troops and hundreds of V.C. captured the city and executed thousands of civilians. U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops were sent to oust them. It took over two weeks and destroyed Hue.

The plan went wrong because South Viet Nam used the new calendar and the NVA used the old one (Tet Holiday was a day later in the North.) causing the V.C. to attack a day early. This allowed the response to start against a smaller force and warned against the larger one to come. Hue was the meat grinder the North wanted and the Marines killed most of the NVA and V.C. American losses were 216 killed and over 1,300 wounded. Over half the attacking force died.

Walter Cronkite, who was a CBS anchor and considered the most trusted man in American, saw the Hue battle personally. Based on his belief, he told his viewers the war was unwinnable causing support to dwindle. The fact is the V.C. was almost completely annihilated and the NVA had been badly damaged and pulled back across the borders.

In reality the war had been won but Americans didn’t know it. It continued until 1973 when we left a poorly led South Vietnamese army to fight a well-trained and led NVA. The South lasted until 1975.

Our battle deaths were 47,434 and 10,786 non-battle with 153,303 wounded (sources disagree some). North and South Vietnamese fighters and civilians could total well into millions.

Fifty years later we have kissed and made up!