I. Abstract
This presentation reviews the 1968 Tet Offensive, first, with an analysis of the
root causes and the situation leading to the crucial event of the Vietnam War;
second, how the event unfolded itself with its major characteristics of
unconventional warfare; and third, the inevitable consequences on the direction
of the War. The presentation is based on the studies of some 30 Communist
documents captured by American and ARVN forces during various military
operations into Communist strongholds before and in the aftermath of the Tet
Offensive. The analysis is also based on interviews of former Communist, armed
and political, cadres rallying to the Chieu Hoi program. In addition, many
pieces of valuable information came from knowledgeable Western as well as
Vietnamese writers.
II. Prelude to the Tet Offensive: the Ground Situation Leading to the
Offensive
II.1. The cause: Stalled momentum – Lost Opportunity for the Communist
The Communist momentum reached the climax in 1865 when the American entered the
war. With its hardware, firepower, and mobility, the American military
drastically changed the balance of power.
The battle of Pleime, Ia Drang and Van Tuong were typical in a series of set
battles where the Communist forces decided to stand the ground only to be
decimated by the allies firepower. Their war momentum was effectively stopped
dead on the track.
In October 1965, the U.S. Special forces camp at Pleime came under attack by a
force of about 6,000 men from two North Vietnamese regular Divisions, the 324th
and 308th. The enemy, which outnumbered the defenders 15 to 1, launched wave
upon wave of attacks and assaults, relentlessly for 178 hours. Using the human
wave tactic, and the tactic utilizing different units taking turns on the
offensive to keep the attacks rolling, the enemy hoped they could eventually
break the defense and crush the camp. They also used the tactic of attacking the
outpost while laying ambushes to intercept the reinforcements. But after 8 days
of fighting, allied forces, with reinforcements from Pleiku and with full use of
artillery and airpower, succeeded in relieving Pleime. The enemy had to pull
back after suffering heavy casualties, estimated at 800 killed and 1,500
wounded.
The attack at Pleime was followed by the Battle of Ia Drang, the Battle of Van
Tuong south of Chu Lai. At Ia Drang, 2,000 North Vietnamese regulars were killed
in close quarter fighting with U.S. troops. At the Battle of Van Tuong, naval
gunfire from two U.S. destroyers and one battleship alone put out of action a
whole company of North Vietnamese regulars. The total Communist casualties were
567 deads.
The firepower and mobility of allied forces had suppressed the enemy superioty
in number and rendered ineffective their commonly used “human wave” tactics and
others. The firepower of the B-52’s was especially devastating. The B-52’s could
pulverize whole enemy battalions or regiments in a direct hit. Such was the case
of the North Vietnamese Thanh Hoa Battalion which simply disappeared into thin
air somewhere on the trails along the Truong Son Mountain Range.
Unconventional warfare used by the Communist eventually had to shift gear to the
intermediate stage of mobile and stationary warfare before passing on to the
phase of conventional warfare necessary to achieve clear-cut victory. However,
in the period between 1965 and 1967, the Communists were forced to wage mobile
and stationary warfare with an adversary having modern firepower and mobility
far exceeding their tactical capabilities.
The above set battles were followed by large scale operations into the Communist
strongholds deep in the mountainous jungles called the no-man land. The
operations Cedar Falls, Attleboro, and Junction City claimed hundreds of tons of
Communist war materials. The Communist casualty in these operations was light,
not proportionate to the scale of the campaign. This led many media commentators
and scholars to metaphorically compare these operations to the use of a
sledgehammer to kill mosquitoes.
Although the comparison was cute, it entirely missed the point. From the
interviews of Communist defectors, and also from reading other interviews, I
soon realized and learned that the above operations proved to be disastrous to
the Communist forces: they lost most of their immediate supply; they were denied
the precious chance to rest, to replenish the battle losses in manpower, to heal
the sicks; they were finally denied the opportunity to train, to regroup, and to
prepare battle plans for next military actions. This explains why the annual
Winter-Spring Campaign for 1966 could not be carried out as intended. Finally it
was cancelled.
The growing problems facing the Communist forces in South Vietnam prior to Tet
had many causes as complex as the war itself.
II.1.i. “Repressing Counter-Revolutionaries”: The Viet Cong System Of
Punishment.(1) The policy of terror and methods used by the Communists to
influence the behaviors of the people have been recorded through the years,
particularly by Douglas Pike. In South Vietnam, the terror campaign had been an
ongoing business ever since the early years in 1959, in preparation for the
“Concerted Uprising” (Dong Khoi 1959) and the launching of the NLF.
The characteristic features of Communist terrors directed at the South
Vietnamese people covers a wide range of targets: “…the terror was directed not
only against officials but all whose operations were essential to the
functioning of organized political society: school teachers, health workers,
agricultural officials etc…” (2)
The referrenced document about the “Repressing Counter-revolutionaies” was
captured by the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division. It was in the form of a directive
issued December 24, 1965 by the headquarter of the Communist Military Region 5,
a name used by the Communist to embody the geographic area of the Northern
provinces of South Vietnam.
The document entitled “Concerning a number of problems that require thourough
understanding in Z’s task of repressing counter-revolutionary elements” (where Z
was the secret code for Communist Military Region 5) confessed:
“…however, we still committed many mistakes in our task of repressing
counter-revolutionary and still suffer from many shortcomings, especially since
large areas in rural lowland have been liberated. The struggle between us and
our enemies is being conducted in a fierce manner.. As we face new plots and
stratagems of the enemy, our mistakes assume a more serious, widespread and
extensive nature and include facts such as the following:
--We arrest people arbitrarily. In certain areas, the offenses of those arrested
have not been confirmed and persons arrested have not deserved to be arrested
(doubtful cases, [ those guilty only of ] minor offenses in daily routines).
There are also cases where the reason leading to arrest are not correct
(personal vengeance etc.).
--The organization of detention is still poor and, at certain places, detainees
suffered from malnutrition, illness and lack of clothing. Many places pay
excessive attention to required labor and production and neglect the task of
educating, reforming and iradicating the reactionary thought [of prisoners].
Torture and third-degree interrogation are still used. At certain places, jails
even exist at the village level.
--Judgement are not made seriously and prudently. Too many people are arrested
and punished. There is no discrimination between detaining people pending
judgement and forcing them to undergo thought reform or on-the-spot education.
Efforts have not yet been made to conduct public trials to anounce sentence and
the time necessary for reform. At the present time, the rate of people
assassinated in the liberated areas is too high. There are many cases of unjust
killing, careless killing, incorrect killing for wrong accusation and, at
certain places, some people have been executed savagely.”
It could be noted that the document enumerated the terror acts committed by
Communist agents as mere mistakes and shortcomings for political reasons, not as
crimes that should be punished.by a court of law. Furthermore, the document
revealed the arbitrary and tyranical nature of these “revolutionaries”, how
powerful and absolutist they were once they achieve their brand of “democratic
revolution”.
Another point to note is, in the time frame leading to Tet Offensive, facing the
danger of losing the rural area due to atrocious policies against the people,
the Communists had to think about refining their terror campaign for greater
efficiency. There may be two tactical reasons for the above choice. First, the
Communists dare not take the chance of loosening their repressive grips for fear
that the people could find the good opportunity to flee from their control.
Second, they were nurturing great hope in their ensuing military activities that
would help them overcome the people resistance to their terror tactic.
One strong card they still had in their sleeve at that point was their political
infrastructure in the rural areas still remained intact, although weakened and
shakened. In addition, in the period before Tet, Hanoi was still able to
infiltrate around 4,500 soldiers monthly into the South.
In any event, the subject of terror was not new, but the timing of the directive
reflected a growing fear among the Communist leadership that they were loosing
the upper hand and facing the possibility of a reversal of good fortune. The
danger of a downturn was not emminent yet, as this was only the early phase of
the American deployment in Central Vietnam. The directive was merely a
re-affirmation of the traditional policy and also represented a far-sight of
coming adverses.
This early fear proved to be a timely and accurate prognosis as the events were
gradually unfolding in the subsequent months and years.
II.1.ii. The problems along the infiltration trail from North Vietnam. As has
been known by serious researchers and intelligence agencies, armed fighters had
been secretly sent to South Vietnam through the porous border of Laos and
Cambodia ever since the early 1960’s. The first few years saw mostly South
Vietnamese returnees, then as the war was becoming more and more deadly, the
returnees were running dry. North Vietnamese native soldiers had to hit the road
to pick up the load.
Irrespective of North or South Vietnamese native Communist soldiers, the war
casualties were not limited to mere shooting or bombing actions, but came from
many sources along the infiltration path. The longer the time spent along the
trail (from some three to twelve months), the worse were the losses. The most
common causes were sickness and disease (among which: malaria and dysentery most
pronouncing), hunger and malnutrition. The rest included self inflicted wounds,
snake bites, accidents, poisonous vegetables eaten by mistake.
Captured diaries told volumes about the problems, and one of the documents
belonged to Mai van Hung.(3) After finishing the training, he departed for the
South on 24 August 1965, going all the way down the North Vietnam panhandle,
passing Nghe An in early September, where he learned that there had been 29
contingents ahead of his through this location. He first crossed the 17th
parallel to step on South Vietnam soil on 27 September. His homesickness mixed
with a strong feeling of patriotism, he looked forward to fighting for freedom
and revolutionary cause.
It took him roughly 8 more months to cross half way into the South through
jungles, and reaching …the “hospital” in Chu Fong. Throughout this time, Hung
had been learning of constant hardships without rest for recuperation,
demoralization, and sickness. With more than fifty per cent of them being sick,
Hung started to have questions about when to return to the North.
A detailed treatment of the infiltration and its entailing problems was given in
“Duong Di Khong Den” (Journey With No Arrival”) by Xuan Vu, a South Vietnamese
native who regrouped to North Vietnam in 1954 then volunteered to return to
“take over” the “liberated” South. A great number of these infiltrators soon
became disillusioned in discovering the difference between the indoctrination
and the reality. This resulted in defection, dropping from the ranks to avoid
fighting. In some extreme cases, a whole infiltration unit simply turned 180
degrees home, defying harshest punishment. Nothing had been heard of what
happened to these poor guys.
II.1.iii. The problems of the infiltration forces once in action. A typical
case study was that facing the North Vietnamese 95th Regiment, of the 5th Army
Division stationing in Phu Yen Province, in the southern part of Central
Vietnam.(4) This Region used to be strongly pro-Communist until the period
between 1965 and 1967. It was in January 1967 that a captured document was
issued as a directive for a planned Summer Campaign to be launched by this
Regiment.
During the good days, according to the document, the Communist controlled
roughly 260,000 inhabitants in Phu Yen liberated area, out of a total of 360,000
in the entire province. But “…At present, due to the enemy sweep operations and
his plan of settlement of the people, we control only 20,000 inhabitants or 1/10
of the old figure…”
“Limited warfare (5) has brought new features. We were not warned of this, nor
did we realize the full impact of the situation. After one year of fighting and
constant moving, the unit certainly suffered losses in strength (soldiers, arms,
ammunition, etc…) and material privation (food, medicine, etc…) “. As a result,
“…critically low morale such as pessimism, passiveness, individualism…” led to
corruption, recklessness, and deceitful behaviors.
The most important consequence of the Regiment poor performance was the
alienation of the people in the area, as admitted by the resolution.
II.1.iv. Problems in Supply and Logistic Efforts.(6) Without discussing the
importance of material supply vis-à-vis the type of warfare in South Vietnam,
this analysis deals with activities by and the damages done to the 83rd
Regiment, directly under the jurisdiction and control of the COSVN, and
specifically in charge of production, procurement, and transportation of war
supply of all sorts. A captured document referred to the above regiment covers a
partial area of responsibility, namely: Binh Duong Province and the “Iron
Triangle”.
-- hinh 26-189-1
The analysis of the minutes reveals the growing difficulties facing the supply
efforts. Among the major problems was the fact that the civilian support group
was not only under strength but those working were either sick or wounded and in
convalescence. In addition to this, the minutes admitted, “the enemy” had
carried out “his economic blockade plan”.
The analyst of the document commented: “The committee’s conclusion focus upon
ways and means to overcome bad morale throughout the infrastructure in order to
make the supply system work more satisfactorily”. Considering the reality of the
war, the above conclusion was mere wishful thinking. With the withering of the
supply work force, the Communist had to rely on middlemen to go back and forth
between the GVN controlled and the “liberated areas” to buy supply at cut throat
prices. Even then, most middlemen faced the danger of air and artillery
bombardment, and many of them gave up their co-operation despite the promise of
high rewards.
II.1.v. The sum of all fears. Ever since the Air War started in North Vietnam,
the mismanagement of the strategy and tactics by Johnson and his Secretary of
Defense failed miserably to stop the infiltration of men and war material into
the South. In spite of the above failure, the good news was the Land War in the
South since the deployment of American and Allies forces was making a marked
difference. It inflicted not only losses on the enemy fighting units, but
multiplied their problems in the handling of wounded and sick soldiers, their
problems in procurement of rice, arms, and munitions to keep on fighting.
While the problems facing the Communist forces grew with the intensity of the
war, their strength has been drastically depleted, their grips on the
countryside were waning.
One of the most haunting experience suffered by the rank and file was the
disillusion. This came about as a result of seeing the huge difference between
the glowing promise by the recruiting propaganda and the deadly reality of the
war. The immediate consequence was the gradual defection of young civilian
supporters or foot soldiers from the “liberated areas”, meaning a depletion of
their manpower resources.(7) In addition, a migration of people from the
Communist area also means the danger of exposing their back to the GVN and
American intelligence and counter-actions.
Through their strategy of terror imposed on the civilian population, the
Communists used to be feared in the countryside. Now, it’s their turn to feel
the fear against many immediate, direct, and tangible threats: the Pacification
Program, the interruption in supply of rice, ammunition and injury bandages (8),
the dread of protracted war, the plague of desertion, surrender and suicide (9),
all added up to haunt the Communist military and political leadership at all
levels in the South.
In particular, the Pacification Program was dreaded most by the Communists. This
program was a dagger driven at the heart of their infrastructure, organization
and power. The war momentum against the Communists resulted in the contraction
of their controlled geography and the expansion of the GVN controlled areas. The
Pacification Program took advantage of the new situation to drive a wedge
between the Communist repressive apparatus and the civilian population.
Basically, the program set up safer settlements for those who fled the Communist
terror. In this way, it gave the farmers a break. It offered them a chance
either to move to a more secured areas or continue to stay in the newly GVN
controlled with better protection and the opportunity to work and be master of
their lands.
Most important of all, the program opened a huge door to welcome those
disillusioned Communist soldiers or political cadres, and gave them a chance to
make a choice for a new future. The messages made sense and were persuasive, as
verified by the resulting number of those rallying to the Chieu Hoi
administration. (10)
Year Number of ralliers (11)
1963 11,200
1964 5,400
(a sharp drop due to political unstability)
1965 11,100
1966 20,200
1967 27,000
A word of caution: in spite of the successes achieved by the Pacification
program, the
strength of this program was still fragile in the early stage. Since the
Communists considered this program as extremely dangerous to their strategy in
the South, they will not stay idle. They were determined to disrupt the
settlement program in order to restored their lost areas in the countryside. In
section II.4.iii, the path taken by the Communist to combat this resettlement
program will be explored.
The figure of deserters and ralliers to the Pacification program in 1967
coincided with the sense of emergency felt by the North Vietnamese Politbureau.
In March 1967, a delegation of Red Chinese and Cuban military experts made an
observation trip to study the military situation of the Land War in the
South.(12) They came back with a pessimistic view about the progress made by the
insurgency.
At the same time, around March 1967 the 13th Plenum of the North Vietnamese
Central Committee was convened in search of a new strategy.(13) And, as the new
strategy emerged, the subsequent line of logic became clear: the needs for a Tet
Offensive; the attractive opportunity for such a massive operation; and the
complex preparation.
II.2. The Needs For Tet Offensive.
II.2.i. To reverse the down going trend. The primary and ultimate leverage for a
TCK-TKN was to reverse the poor fortune that fell on the Communists due to the
major change in American strategy in 1965. It was a matter of life and death to
the “Revolution in the South”. This aspect will be discussed in more details in
section II.4.iii.
II.3. The opportunities for Tet Offensive: The envisioned plan for the Tet
Offensive was further re-inforced by the subjective and objective evaluation and
perception by the North Vietnamese Politbureau regarding the opportunities
available. In captured indoctrinating documents given to their cadres at the
executive and lower echelons in the war front, great emphasis was placed on the
“one-in-a-thousand-year” opportunity.
II.3.ii. The impending Presidential election in the US. The Vietnam War fought
thousands of miles from the US shore reverberated home after three years of
inconclusive Air War in the North. The failure to force North Vietnam to the
negotiation table eroded national confidence in President Johnson and the
support for the continuation of the War. The previous support for the 1965
Tonkin’s Resolution had been gradually waning into a kind of apathy by mid 1967
when the Tet Offensive was being conceived.
II.3.iii. The anti-war movement fueled by left-leaning media and agents. It’s
not difficult to see the psychological and political advantage enjoyed by Hanoi
given the vocal opposition to the war. Although the anti-war movements had bases
in many Western countries, it was in the main land US that these movements had
substantial influence on the politics of the war.
II.3.iv. The Lunar New Year, a tactically great opportunity. Tet is the
Vietnamese word for festivity. “Tet Nguyen Dan” means New Year festivity
following the Lunar Calendar, which is not fixed on the Western Calendar. In
1968, the Lunar New Year happened to be on January 30th. Traditionally, “Tet” is
the short name for “Tet Nguyen Dan”, unless it is followed by some descriptor
like “Tet Trung Thu” for Mid Autumn Festival or “Tet Doan Ngo” just prior to
Summer.
II.4. Capability: Infrastructure still Intact.
II.4.i. Infrastructure and unconventional warfare.
II.4.ii The Preparations for Tet. It was not known exactly how many months Hanoi
had to prepare for the attacking operation. Apparently the time available was
insufficient. In any event, the grand planning for the concept was made up in
Hanoi, and the decision was transmitted to the leadership in the South for
detailed planning and execution. Between this point and the implementation
stage, time must be allowed for dissemination to and orientation of the
executing units then the final developments and detailed planning for the attack
in each local area (some 28 cities almost simultaneously).
II.4.ii.b. Logistic and Food Supply – The Magic Rod. As part of Giap’s planning,
logistic and food supply stood next in importance. This does not mean they are
in abundance. Quite the opposite. The NLF and COSVN must somehow compensate for
the loss of cultivated areas in the deltas, massive depletion of rice supply,
and shortage of manpower. Since their main operating areas were in the jungle
and mountainous countrysides, rice is not the main stapple available. Instead,
substitutes such as maniocs, sweet potatoes, beans, taro, and maize must come to
their rescue.
II.4.iii. Stepping up widespread terrorist attacks in the rural areas:a
necessary condition for Tet.
II.4.iv. Sharpening The Third Prong. As mentioned very frequently in Communist
documents, the “Three-Pronged attack” embodied the three missions to be
accomplished by the “liberation struggle”, namely: military struggle, political
struggle, and proselyting mission. Military proselyting is the “third prong” in
the overall strategy .
II.4.v. Countdown to D - Day – Strategic concept. In support of the up-rising
from inside, several political cadres, military scouts and liason agents were
planted in the city using false IDs for the ease of movement. Many of them
managed to go about freely to reastaurants and movies a few days before Tet. In
addition, sleeper cells of sapper units were preparing for commando actions, and
the success of these elite units were considered vital to the TCK-TKN britzkrieg.
III. The Concerted Attacks.
III.1. The diversionary attacks at and around Khe Sanh using NVN army units. In
military terms, the Tet Offensive was one of the most momentous event in the
annals of military campaigns ever fought, which caught the imagination of so
many romantic war reporters.
III.2. The Surprise Of Tong Cong Kich – Tong Khoi Nghia - The Use Of COSVN
Forces.
III.2.i. THE MILITARY “PRONG”
Saigon Theater
The battles in other Cities
III.2.ii. THE POLITICAL “PRONG”
III.2.ii.c. Crumbling Political Prong. The puppet show was displayed for
consumption by international media and especially Western scholars mostly
learning about Vietnam through the “long distance telescope”. Hanoi skillfully
played an impressive game that favorably shaped the view of these watchers,
duped by Lenin as “useful idiots”.
III.2.iii. The Military Proselyting Prong. This was the essential leverage for
the military prong. In the type of warfare for the Tet Offensive, if the
proselyting mission failed, the military would surely follow suite. It is
opportune time now to understand what proselyting was about in the Communist
rational.
The irony of Tet Offensive was that the military proselyting function failed so
badly that there happened no mutiny, no GVN unit defected to the enemy side. In
many of the GVN organization or agencies only a small number of polices, that is
para-military members, or even administrative clerks and typists, who happened
to be on duty, yet they fought back and successfully stood their ground. The
Communists failed to take them by forces even at the odds of great surprise and
unpreparedness.
III.3.Terror Campaign. Section II.4.iii discussed the terror campaign in October
and November 1967 in preparation for Tet. The first and immediate objective of
the campaign was to loosen the GVN control of the rural areas surrounding the
populated cities. The second and tactical objective was to refine the skill and
performance of the terror units during the attacks and occupation of the
populated cities during Tet itself. This mindset was based on their assumption
that they would succeed in the “military prong”, leading to the successful
implementation of the “political prong” in establishing political control of
these metropolises.
Unit in charge(UC)
At an even higher level, the terror technique involves a very refined
perception, aiming at shaping the thinking and behavior of the target, and
inducing a reflex from the target without the target realizing that his act is
being controlled by the terror policy. This is an important application of
Pavlovian’s behaviorial psychology. The Communists had been fully and widely
using in depth understanding of conditioned reflex in the indoctrination and
brainwashing of prisoners as well as in using terror for psychological
influence.
IV. Consequences of the Tet Offensive
IV.1. Consequence on the military balance of forces.
IV.1.i. The devastating depletion of the Southern Communist military forces.
IV.1. ii. The Breaking Up of the Sanctuaries
IV.1.iii. Complete Disruption of the Enemy’s Logistics and Supply Network.
The undoing of the Communist infrastructure was a step-by-step process that
started before the Tet Offensive. It grew like a dormant tumor at the strategic
turn from 1965 to 1967 which witnessed a sudden stop to the Communist momentum.
The class warfare was not doing well in the rural areas at a time when Americans
intervention tipped the balance in the comparison of forces.
IV.2. The Political and Strategic Consequence.
V. Conclusion
The 13th Plenum ended with a call for a decisive offensive to achieve victory in
a shortest possible time. In clearest terms for the first time, it discarded the
“protracted war” strategy. The decision was then developed into a major strategy
concept embodying the Tet Offensive, which in Communist jargon, was Tong Cong
Kich, Tong Khoi Nghia (General Offensive, General Uprising). In short and secret
message: TCK – TKN.
The time had been reached when Hanoi got to satisfy three great needs: first, to
reverse the dangerous down going trend in the South; second, to re-invent the
myth of a second Dien Bien Phu; and finally, to resolve the dialectic conflict
between the NLF and Hanoi. These three fundamental needs must be satisfied first
in order to mount the General Uprising and take-over of power.
II.2.ii. To re-invent the psychology of a second Dien Bien Phu. This played
handsomely into the hand of Western media, thirsty for a theory that means to
say “Vo Nguyen Giap is going to beat the Americans in 1968 like he did the
French in 1954”. This aspect will be discussed more in section III.1.
II.2.iii. To resolve the dialectic conflict between the NLF and NVN. Hanoi had
always been using the NLF as a stooge and presenting it to the Western World as
an “indigenous and nationalist movement inside South Vietnam aiming at
liberating the country from the reactionaries serving the American
imperialists”. Furthermore, the NLF had been drummed up as an independent entity
versus North Vietnam, and a champion of “bourgeois democratic aspiration”. That
theatrical act worked like a charm and won over a large number of foreign
politicians and naïve observers in the Western World, including the leftist
fringe groups in the US. In addition, it did effectively fool the wild eyed
Vietnamese intellectuals within the NLF. The hard core leftists in the US might
fully know the truth about the whole scam and found it convenient to quietly tow
the line.
It should be remembered that a portion of NLF hard core or fringe members
consisted of dissenters who did not pledge allegiance to Communism, did not know
that North Vietnamese Communists were pulling the string at the other end. Deep
in their heart, they were fighting to save Vietnam from American “imperialist
design”. “Chong My Cuu Nuoc” were the magic words that hypnotized and mesmerized
many such innocent Vietnamese. Lenin called them “useful idiots”, and Hanoi
labeled them bourgeois Nationalists who should be used for the short range
purpose.
Ho Chi Minh labeled the war in the South as the Bourgeois Nationalist Revolution
(Cach Mang Tu San Dan Toc), a controlled stepping stone toward the long range
goal of establishing Communism. Figuratively, the World was watching a puppet
act played by skillful stringed fingers. Many myopic spectators applauded the
fantastic play without seeing the strings.
For many years, through its loyal performance, the NLF had unwittingly brought
fortune to Hanoi’s war in the South. There was a strong current of World opinion
condemning the American intervention in Vietnam against the “nationalistic
feeling and pride of the indigenous people”, fueling the anti-war movement right
in the US.
Time had changed and the new context had become more complicated in the
1967-1968 time frame. The Vietnamese in the countryside gradually saw the NLF as
nothing more than a North Vietnamese Communist tool. In the South, the NLF
gradually was losing its magic myth even within the Communist controlled areas,
and becoming less than a valued asset. In the comparison of power with the GVN,
the NLF was becoming weaker and weaker and less relevant inside South Vietnam
vis-à-vis the population at large.
On the contrary, internationally the NLF remained a darling in the eyes of the
pro-Communist establishment. If a decisive victory was to be achieved, in
Hanoi’s plan, the NLF solution would face a dilemma. Would the NLF continue to
play a second fiddle to Hanoi? Or, would it become a genie let out of the
bottle, beyond Hanoi’s control? There was no certain answer to the above
questions.
On the down side, short of a quick victory, Hanoi feared the danger that the NLF
may come to reach an accommodation with South Vietnam. This prospect seemed even
more ominous in Hanoi’s eyes, considering the Chinese unclear agenda, and who
knows, a possible secret Chinese deal with the NLF. In this new context, it’s a
great temptation for Hanoi to find a strategy to do away with the NLF before it
becomes a liability and that may be too late.
In “Vietnam At War”, Davidson wrote on page 438: ”…there is some evidence that
the Hanoi leadership feared that the NLF on its own might attempt to reach some
agreement with the GVN to settle the struggle in the South. Even if the NLF took
no direct action to reach an accommodation with the GVN, the Politbureau had to
ask itself how resolute the NLF and the VietCong would stand up under the steady
deterioration of their military and political position”…
And as evidence:”…In 1982, a former NLF leader declared that the reason for
placing the Viet Cong in the forefront of the Tet offensive was to eliminate the
NLF leadership and its fighting forces, leaving the North Vietnamese Politbureau
supreme.”
As far as the above statement is concerned, I strongly hope valuable testimony
by authentic personality involved in the intricate web of the NLF may be
available to this symposium.
Facing the needs for a “decisive and quick victory” , Hanoi saw attractive
opportunities that promised a good chance for success if a grand plan is
carefully designed.
II.3.i. Hanoi’s perception of the political opportunity in South Vietnam.
Hanoi’s Politbureau was obsessed by what they saw in South Vietnam through the
political turmoil since the 1963 overthrow of President Diem. In Hanoi’s
perception and calculations, the current South Vietnamese leadership was so
corrupted, the political arena was a leveled playing field for any political
oppositions to grab for exploits and to disintegrate when danger is eminent and
of such magnitude as projected by the Tet Offensive.
Also, in Hanoi’s evaluation, the South Vietnamese population was so fed up with
the GVN that they would respond favorably to the call for up-rising to overthrow
the current establishment. In addition, due to their (imagined) deep hatred of
the American imperialists, they would stand up “thousand as one” to welcome the
“liberation” forces.
Furthermore, the Communists assumed the South Vietnamese military forces had
very low morale, and not enough motivation to fight and resist the shock of the
Tet Offensive. Under pressure of concerted attacks, mutiny could be induced
within the rank and file of the ARVN through a combination of propaganda,
threat, and offering of bribery. Hanoi Politbureau imagined widespread
defections or surrenders in most ARVN units.
By September 1967, for the first time the public opinion poll showed the
opposition to the War overtook the support among Americans. The shade and the
color of the opposition also changed in the slogan from a “fruitless War” to an
“immoral War”, and strongly reflected the degree of success of the “national
liberation” theme in the psychological war. Politically, Johnson was being
pushed to a defensive position.
Americans are well known for their impatience, a national characteristic,
typically an ”instant coffee” mentality and psychological make-up. In dealing
with the US as friends or foes, ignore the above character trait at your own
peril. As foes of the US, Hanoi seemed to know how to play with the above trait
to their advantage. It all boiled down to this assessment: time is not on
President Johnson side. The issue here is the impending presidential election in
1968. The Vietnam War would certainly be in the forefront of American politics.
It’s not so much about Hanoi’s clever manipulation of American politics than
about Johnson unwittingly playing into Hanoi’s hand through his squandering of
the Air War. After three years of bombing, Johnson dutifully followed a
No-Win-Half-War strategy. This strange concept was marked by several escalations
followed by several bombing pauses, on again then off again application of
pressure,(14) everytime with some kind of proposal for negotiation or peace
feelers. The way Johnson conducted the war was what Admiral Sharp fittingly
called a “Strategy For Defeat”, the title for his book about the Air War War
waged in North Vietnam.
Each time a “smiling” bombing pause was offered on a silver plate with a hope of
a favorable response, Hanoi “warmly welcomed” Johnson’s gesture with a flood of
convoys infiltrating hundreds of thousand of tons of war supply to the Communist
forces in the South. Hanoi was too cunning for Johnson’s kind of child game
diplomacy. It’s unfortunate that America was led by such an inept war leader at
that acute juncture. And it’s a tragedy that South Vietnam’s fate had to depend
critically on such a president of a powerful ally at such a perilous time.
But that was the verdict at the 1967-1968 crossroads. Hanoi’s Politbureau hoped
to spin a major military campaign into a political windfall like what they did
in 1954 with the Dien Bien Phu campaign. The presidential election in the US was
perceived in Hanoi as an attractive opportunity. In 1967, the Johnson’s War was
criticized heavily by the his rivals in the primary, and by his potential
opponents in the Republican camp.
Hanoi knew very well Johnson’s hunger for a peace negotiation, and consequently
planned to be in a strong position in accepting a new peace overture by Johnson,
in the wake of a most wanted and anticipated Tet victory (which never
materialized). Captured documents showed that, prior to the Tet Offensive, the
high level cadres in the NLF were being re-oriented in anticipation of this
potential peace talk.(15)
There were genuine anti-war protesters, who basically were pacifists and existed
in any war. There were also rational butuninformed intellectuals who did not see
the need or justification for that war. Others still, advocated the need of
consultation with and collective action by Weastern countries. The core elements
of these protesters, however, consisted mainly of agents having a political
agenda. The color of their ideology could not be ignored, especially when one
scrutinized the historical similarity and pattern with which these movement
manifested themselves.
Back at the beginning of World War II, a strong anti-war movement existed in the
UK and the US regarding the war against Germany and Japan. But only “…until
1941…”, wrote Stephen Pan, and Daniel Lyons, “There were hundreds of “peace
organizations” under various names which insisted that Britain and the United
States must keep out of war. Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo took interest and
comfort in the movement. After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941,
the international Communists then maitained that the United States should no
longer remain neutral.” (16)
Similarly, in the case of the Vietnam War, ideological allegiance overshadowed
political alignment among the different war-protester groups. Loyalty to the
Communist block defined the allegiance taken by the war protesters and the
media. The war protesters used their vocal chord in the teach-ins and sit-ins,
while the media used their pen and TV tubes. By and large, a driving force
behind the anti-war movement co-ordinated and provided guidance and control of
the timing of rythmic steps. And that driving force was the Communist Party, USA
(CPUSA). In a Directive entitled “Communists behind Peace Demonstrations”, Edgar
Hoover, the FBI Director was quoted by Congressman W.J. Bryan Dorn in his
writing: (17)
“The CPUSA encouraged and endorsed the students march on the Nation’s Capitol on
April 17, 1965, protesting U.S. intervention in Vietnam…Communist marchers from
all over the Country were present, and Communist leaders claimed a major role in
the demonstration.
“This is a typical example of the party’s widespread campaign to influence our
Country’s foreign policies. The strategy is not new, but it is effective. The
party is working through non-Communist groups and front organization to
embarrass our Government and disrupt its efforts. Communist leaders are trying
to initiate other marches and demonstrations to keep their campaign of fear and
terror rolling.
We can expect that the party will push for some type of nationwide action
similarto “peace” strikes or work stoppages to emphasize their aims.
“Party leaders hope, of course, that more and more Americans will be duped and
misled by these tactics. They envisioned a commanding wave of hostility against
American policies abroad. The goal is to incite citizens to the point that they
will demand American Forces to be withdrawn from Vietnam and other places,
allowing International Communisism to take over and engulf more defenseless
countries.”
And incite they did. On April 15, 1967, 100,000 war-protesters rallied in front
of the U.N. building, then marched through the streets of Manhattan Island (18).
The march was led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Singer Harry Belafonte, and Dr.
Benjamin Spock. On October 21, 50,000 marchers staged the protest in front of
the Pentagon (19). Led by Benjamin Spock, Norman Mailer, a novelist and Rev.
Boyles, Episcopal Chaplain at Yale University, the demonstrators shouted
obscenities, threw eggs and bottles, built bonfires then burnt their draft
cards. They did have an obscene time and a powerful show until darkness fell.
At issue was the Communist concept of “struggle” and “unconventional (or
non-symmetrical) warfare” as opposed to the “war” used by “conventional
warriers”. In conventional warfare, the weapons used are guns, airplanes and
bombs. The targets to be hit are army barracks, military outpost, fortresses,
ammunition dumps or any military related industries. In “unconventional
warfare”, the weapons in frequent use include ideas, words, songs, newspapers,
radio programs, TV tubes, -not to exclude weapons of terror. The targets to be
hit are any people anywhere in a public arena or private rooms, where propaganda
can be seen or heard. (Acts of terror also target civilians for maximum effect.
The ultimate objective is power projection).
Pham van Dong, then Prime Minister of North Vietnam, confessed that two third of
the success of the war had been attributed to propaganda. In the Communist eyes,
winning the mind is the most crucial part of winning the war. The media and
academia, in the Communist strategy, are the most effective political weapons to
be used for power projection, and ultimately defeating the enemy through the
conquest of their mind.
It was a long range interest that the leftist professors in America focused on
training their cadres in the media and universities. The Columbia University,
School of Journalism had been the training ground for reporter indoctrination,
preparing them for class warfare and left leaning reporting. From being
reporters, these guys moved up to eventually becoming editors or producers of a
journal, newspaper, TV program, or a TV anchor. In one word, they are supposed
to report keeping a political agenda in their mind. If they are an editor, they
are likely to screen their reporters for the “right” kind of political advocacy.
It is not by accident that American media in the 60’s and 70’s offered a
prosperous breeding ground for pro-Hanoi propaganda. This was still true in the
80’s and 90’s and even now.
During the Vietnam War, using American media and academia for power projection
had been one of the most favourite and important strategy ever conceived in
Hanoi. Their ultimate objective was clear and simple: shaping public opinion to
their advantage. It is very interesting to find how favorably the media agencies
responded to the Communist strategy as events unfolded. On January 2, 1963, a
remarkable battle took place in Ap Bac, a small hamlet in Dinh Tuong Province.
Neil Sheehan, a distinguished journalist reported on that battle for UPI in
1963, and later used that story as one of the main theme in his research book “A
Bright Shining Lie”. In that story Sheehan reported that one Communist
batallion, the 514th, defeated two of their South Vietnamese counterparts. And
he used that story as a striking evidence to prove that the South Vietnamese
could not fight and that the war was being lost.(20)
The fact was that three Communist batallions were engaged in that action. They
were the 263rd, 261st, and 514th batallions. Besides, the 263rd was the leading
unit in that engagement and afterward the NLF received a gift of 263 Cuban flags
from Fidel Castro as a symbolic gesture of salute. Whether Sheehan was not aware
of or ignored the above facts, his report was grossly innacurate, a distortion
of the truth.
Apart from serious authors and journalists who wrote balanced reports on the
Vietnam War, biased journalism was rampant throughout the conflict. Many
journalists relished in portraying South Vietnam under bad light in favor of the
Communists. They were out hunting for incriminating evidence against South
Vietnam. They paid handsomely for photographs showing South Vietnamese soldiers
as bad guys.
Photos showing a South Vietnamese soldiers stealing fruits from the gardens were
paid US$5, while those showing a soldier beating an old woman $50. And there
existed various rate depending on how incriminating each photo was. Once I
confronted an American journalist and asked why he did not report on Communist
shelling of village schools killing innocent teachers and young kids. He said
that would not make news and his boss would not buy it.
While the media fervently claimed to fight for freedom of information against
censorship, they actually set their own censorship rule through the practice of
biased journalism, or advocacy reportage. And this played right into the
Communist hand. With all the great helps they could get from Western and
especially American media, the war grew in intensity in favor of the Communist
forces politically. Every battles between ARVN units and the Communist forces
served as an interesting test of media accuracy and honesty. Sometimes the ARVN
scored a draw, sometimes a plus or a minus in these battles.
Wherever the South Vietnamese scored a victory, the media shied away. When the
Communist forces stood their ground, there was an uproar in the media as if to
cheer a favorite football team. The type of advocacy journalism in favor of Ho’s
warfare contributed to the projection of a desired image – that the insurgency
was growing invincible. In the time frame of 1967 preparation for the Tet
Offensive, Hanoi pinned great hope on the war protesters and the media in the
US.
Evidence on how the media and the war protesters joined force in serving Hanoi
interests can be summed up in an excerpt from the NewsMax.com Staff “For the
story behind story” :(21)
“North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin, who served under Gen. Giap on the general staff
of the North Vietnamese Army, received South Vietnam’s unconditional surrender
on April 30, 1975.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, Col. Tin
explicitly
credited leaders of the anti-war movement, saying they were ‘essential to our
strategy’.
‘Every day, our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to
follow the growth of the antiwar movement,’ Col. Tin told the Journal.”
At this point, it is interesting to note a comment by General Davidson in his
book: (Vietnam At War): “While in mid-1967 the North Vienamese leaders were
losing the “shooting war” in both North and South Vietnam, the American leaders
began to lose the psychological war in the United States.” (VIETNAM AT WAR, p.
450).
Looking back, one must say the U.S. Government was at fault and must be
partially blamed for the above failure. In “Vietnam Crisis”, according to
Stephan Pan, the debates in the teach-in sessions gave the American Government
opportunities to articulate the strong reasons for American intervention in
Vietnam. As it turned out, the government speakers at those debates failed in
their jobs. (22)
In Stephan Pan’s view, “Fluent speakers can swing the opinions of people who
have not made up their minds. Mass psychology can be used for spreading
emotional argumants. Well-meaning persons can often be induced to sign petitions
about which they know little, either as to their significance or their
consequence.”
It follows that the success by the media in influencing the outcome of the
teach-in and the anti-war movement was the consequence of poor performance by
the Johnson’s Administration in the matter of psychological warfare. In the
aftermath of the Tet Offensive, ones will see more clearly how the media would
resonate to Hanoi’s wish, a fact that would simply verify, amplify and intensify
the irony as will be seen again later in Davidson’s book and other litteratures.
Traditionally, “Tet” is the greatest celebration of the year when every normal
activities are abandoned for the sake of celebration and festivity. During the
war, there is exception. Although all official activities are slowing down
somewhat, but ones sleep with one eye opened. As a general alert, the display of
firecrackers used to be absolutely forbiden before, during and after Tet.
This time Tet was different. The NLF radio broadcasted a fraud cease-fire as a
bait to lure South Vietnam into complacency and letting down its guard. This
detail will be discussed in more depth in section II.4.
All of the discussions in this section II.3. summed up the salient points
representing the motivation felt by Hanoi’s Politbureau in the course of coming
up with the plan for Tet Offensive. The motivation was derived from what they
perceived as precious opportunities.
At this point, it is necessary to better understand the utmost important role
played by the political infrastructure, the king pin at the center of Hanoi
strategy of conquest of South Vietnam. The strategy of Communist Insurgency in
South Vietnam was based on a three-tier foundation: the political
infrastructure, the guerrilla forces and the main force. As will be appreciated,
the political infrastructure was the most important element of the three. It was
the source of life that maintained the well being of all the military forces and
the continuity of the insurgency.
The Communist infrastructure, basically consisting of the grassroot Party
organization at the village and hamlet level, helped them secure control of the
countryside. Going back further to the time they initiated their strategy of
conquest at the outset of the Geneva agreement in 1954, Hanoi had arranged to
leave a force of political cadres behind in the South at the district level but
not at the village and hamlet levels. That policy originated from Truong Chinh,
a Northerner unfamiliar with real situation in the rural South where villages
and hamlets, unlike in the North, were more widely scattered. That proved to be
a grave mistake leading to the easy “dislodgement” of Communist infrastructure
from the countryside by President Diem’s Strategic Hamlet Program as well as
other anti-Communist campaigns.
After Truong Chinh was dismissed from his post as First Secretary of the
Communist Party, Le Duan’s influence began to gain in the Politburo where his
strong views about the need to consolidate the Communist infrastructure in the
South came to be accepted. Le Duan was thoroughly familiar with the situation in
the rural areas in South Vietnam, and had always insisted that the
infrastructure had to be built from the grassroot village and hamlet level. Such
infrastructure was the most efficient apparatus for the conduct of
unconventional warfare and for securing control and leadership of the
countryside. In particular, this political apparatus enabled the efficient
control of the source of supplies and fighting force which made it possible for
the Communists to launch the “Dong Khoi” (Concerted Uprising) campaign in 1959
and started the whole momentum of their war of conquest in the South.
The village Party chapter committee was made up of a secretary (the most
important member and also the leader), the military section, security section,
military propaganda section, finance section, communication section, and,
finally the section in charge of the people’ associations. Normally, it was
required that there must be a farmers association, a liberation youth
association, and a liberation women association. A “liberated village” was a
village where there were all of the above associations, meaning almost all
villagers were good supporters. Where only one or two of these associations were
active in a village, such a village would be called a “contested” village.
In a “liberated village” the function of the farmer association was to produce
crop to contribute to the village chapter through the tax system. The function
of the youth and women association was to provide manpower to the military and
supply transportation needs. The security section was to maintain vigilance
against any strangers coming to the village, run spy rings for spying on
villagers, and oversee all security problems concerning the infrastructure. The
security section was also responsible for the assassination of “dangerous
elements” on order of the village chapter committee.
From 1960 to 1964, thanks to the village chapter committees, the Communists were
able to decree a “provisional land-reform program” in which the land from the
rich landowners was taken and given to the poor farmers. The above program was
carried out not without resentment by a section of the peasants. But the task of
the village infrastructure was to contain the situation by using a combined
pressure of political persuasion and threat of terror, and to overcome the
people’s resentment while still being able to perform other essential functions
such as recruiting for the guerrilla forces, as well as recruiting civilian
labor for supply activities in support of guerrilla activities and other
district needs.
For the above tasks, a successful village chapter secretary must be the one who
has political skills and dedication in order to consolidate control of a
“liberated village”. After they had consolidated their control of many villages
and districts in the countryside in 1964, the Communists started a new
agricultural program to collect rice and money from the people. While the policy
of tax and rice collection helped strengthen the Communists, the peasants began
to doubt and to resent what they began to see as the brutalities and greed of
the Communists. However, these doubts and suspicions remained smothered under
the continued growing momentum of the Communist movement in the countryside.
Strategically speaking, the infrastructure acted like a machine that kept
churning out manpower for the armed units and provided finance and food supplies
for the troops. The hamlet and village chapter committee was responsible for the
supply of re-enforcement whenever the main forces at district or provincial
levels suffered losses or needed new unit formation. This explained why, in
their heydays, after every military campaign, even after great losses, the
Communist units kept coming back with full strength capability in a short time.
The Communist term “don quan” meant filling the ranks from below up. This
situation confused many foreign reporters who understood very little about the
secret of the Communist infrastructure.
It was in the capability of the infrastructure at the grassroot level that Hanoi
pinned great hope for Tet. This also explained why the Communists could muster a
remarkable force and launched such an impressive offensive.
For the record, it is important to note how Vo Nguyen Giap got involved in the
decision for and the planning of the Offensive. From reliable intelligence,
General Davidson learned that although acclaimed worldwide as the architect of
the TCK-TKN, Giap adamantly and consistently opposed it.
“His opposition to the concept of TCK-TKN began in the deliberations of the
Politbureau in its debate over the recommendations submitted to it by the 13th
Plenum.
As usual, Giap and Truong Chinh on one side, and Le Duan and Nguyen Chi Thanh on
the other side, clashed in a head-on battle. To the ‘South Vietnam firsters’ (Thanh
and Le Duan), the concept for a quick and decisive victory developed by the 13th
Plenum echoed their own strategy of big units attacks on United States and ARVN forces and bases. Giap and Truong, the ‘North Vietnam firsters,’ fought the
concept. It is now known, from an unimpeachable and still-secret source, that
Giap argued at length that the all-out offensive would fail, and that it would entail
heavy casualties. Giap held obstinately to his theory of the protracted war and
for its emphasis on political dau tranh and guerrilla-type warfare. Giap fought adamantly during
July, August, and September to get the concept abandoned, or somehow greatly modified. On 14 September he published in the Hanoi press his now-famous “The
Big Victory, the Great Task,” a plea for return to the protracted war of guerrilla-type actions, but all of his efforts to abort or modify the concept of
TCK-TKN failed.”
And also for the record, Nguyen Chi Thanh was the winner in the contested
decision for Tet Offensive. Nguyen Chi Thanh, originally a very capable
provincial Party Committee member of Thua Thien Province, he bypassed the Zone
hierarchy to become a Central Party Committee member the a membeb of Hanoi
Politbureau. He was made a four-star General in order to assume the role of
Commander-in-Chief and Chief Political Commissar of COSVN (for Central Office
South Vietnam), an extended arm of Hanoi’s War leadership in control of the NLF.
Contrary to Kenneth Grenville’s view in “The Saving Of South Vietnam” (page 43),
Nguyen Chi Thanh was a hard-liner in view of the war strategy in South Vietnam.
In the time frame of 1967, Thanh was an ardent opponent of Vo Nguyen Giap who
had been accused of “revisionist thinking” by Le Duan and Nguyen Chi Thanh who
got the upper hand in the Politbureau.
The term “revisionist” is a Red Chinese incriminating label for those party
members who leaned on Soviet strategy of co-existence with the Capitalist Camp
led by the US. These “Vietnamese revisionists” advocated a slow process of
fighting and low level of intervention in the South for fear of strong American
intervention and reaction that would destroy North Vietnam with all the
developments achieved up to 1965, thanks to Soviet aids. This was contrary to
Maoist adherents who thought the US was just a paper tiger, and could be
defeated, and considered the revisionists as cowardly, defeatist and even
counter-revolutionary.
For all practical purpose, Thanh was on the winning side. The “revisionists”
were arrested in the hundreds, including senior Party officials such as Hoang
Minh Chinh, Nguyen Thanh Giang, and Bui Cong Trung. Vo Nguyen Giap was spared
because of his non-erasable name in the Dien Bien Phu victory, and because the
propaganda machine brought international fame to him. To reverse gear at that
critical point was not politically wise, and could be harmful.
On July 6th 1967, Nguyen Chi Thanh was killed, probably by a B-52 bombing raid
in South Vietnam as claimed by the Americans. The task of planning for the
TCK-TKN fell on Giap shoulder as if history happened to like a twist of irony.
The study of captured documents and the unfolding events showed that the
planning for the Tet Offensive was extremely ambitious, complex and meticulous
in tactical details, which would have been a merit if the Offensive was
successful. On the down side, failure always has many orphans. The great failure
in the Tet Offensive was attributed partly to the complexity that made it very
difficult to implement, co-ordinate, follow up, control and allow for last
minute changes. This was especially true in the guerrilla warfare attempting
concerted multiple targets in the absence of modern communication and mobility.
II.4.ii.a. Psy-war preparation. This section first deals with Communist psy-warfare
consisting of orientation training directed at the implementers and for friendly
ranks consumption. Second, it deals with propaganda directed at GVN soldiers,
political officials, and civilians for the purpose of sowing doubt, discordance,
division, frustration, anger, hatred against the establishment, leading to
actions that would weaken the GVN position and strengthen the Communists in
preparation for the military actions.
Some time in May 1967 a re-orientation course was given to high level cadres in
the NLF regarding the possiblity of starting the Peace Talk. In July 1967,
during an operation by the U.S. 199th Infantry Brigade in the Hau Nghia area,
many documents were captured among which a note book revealed the content of the
orientation course above. (23)
From the notes taken, one could learn that the NLF were very concerned about the
division between Peking and Moscow, admitting that both Communist Powers gave
aids to Hanoi, but the Soviets refused to give their advanced rockets and
missile system for fear of their being copied by the Chinese. In addition, the
notes indicated that “China is determined to help us to fight until the
generations of our sons and grand-sons”. On the other hand, the notes said, the
Soviet Union “want us to go to the peace negotiation table”.
The document reported the Party leadership’s strategy of “fighting while
negotiation” and negotiation only from a military position of strength, meaning
…”the war will be settled on the battlefield, not in the conference room.” Under
this light, the document demanded great efforts in a general offensive as a
leverage for the political negotiation.
Two other training documents bearing the date August 3, 1967 and September 1,
1967, showed the Communist vision of “perfect opportunities”, citing the major
weaknesses suffered by the Allies and GVN such as being bogged down, facing
condition of “stalemate” and “defeatism.” Their rank and file were promised
“great victories” in a “relatively short period of time”. (24)
According to the Communist defectors that I had a chance to talk with, the rank
and file in the South were presented with the prospect of a
“once-in-thousand-year opportunity, a last sacrifice to attain victory, then
peace forever.” They were “further guaranteed that all they needed to do was to
march into the City (Saigon Capital) where the people will rise up to welcome
them. In case of fighting injury, they will be taken by the people to Cong Hoa
Hospital (a GVN major hospital in Saigon)…In addition, they were told, the
support by the main thrust of North Vietnamese forces equipped with modern
weapons will soon be forthcoming.”
As to the North Vietnamese forces going South, they were told their task were
simply to rush to do the ”take over” because “most of the South had been
liberated. If they came late, they would miss the great great occasion”. Quite
another story and promise.
So much for the sweet-talk-psy-war which gave plenty of political motivation to
those having no other sources of information beside the
one-way-Party-indoctrination.
At the beginning of 1968, Liberation Radio broadcasted a call for extra efforts
to bolster food production in preparation for Tet Offensive (or TCK – TKN),
masked under the name of “Winter-Spring Campaign” as they do every end and
beginning of the year.
“In Response to the Front’s Winter-Spring Appeal, Let our Rural Compatriots
Strive to Outstandingly Step Up Production and Practice Thriftiness Along With
Positively Serving the ForeFront in Order to Win Great Success.” Thus the
broadcast started. In more details, the commentary urged for an over-all five to
seven percent boost in production. In the contested areas the broadcast call for
utmost efforts to maintain production at the same level as in 1967. (25)
Along with the above appeal, the 83rd Regiment alone, a Rear Force unit in the
Binh Duong, Tay Ninh and Gia Dinh areas, made utmost efforts and managed to
procure roughly more than 13 tons of rice per day in preparation for Tet. It
should be noted that each Communist Military Zone has its own Rear Force units.
Taking advantage of Jonhson decision to suspend bombing and then extending the
bombing pauses on the Communist supply trail several times before Tet, (26) the
Communists rushed thousands of military personnel and hundreds of thousand tons
of weapons, ammunitions and equipments into South Vietnam.
In the contested areas of Western Mekong Delta, the Communists resorted to
borrowing money from the farmers. Each poorest family were exhorted to
contribute at least 2,000 piasters, the middle level 10 to 20 thousand, and the
rich 30 to 50 thousand. In Thuan Hung village (Dam Gioi District, Ca Mau
Province) alone, the Communist got away with more than 1 million piasters.
The poor farmers who had no other choices under hostage, accepted the promise of
great victory soon in the immediate future.
One of the Communist remarkable successes was their ability to secretly
infiltrate the weapons into the city of Saigon and Gia Dinh under the nose of
the security network. We learned about this only later from interviewing the
defectors in the Tet Offensive. These weapons were skillfully scattered and
burried in different innocent places like cemeteries. These places would
eventually become distributing points from where the attacks would be launched
on D Day. In smaller cities and townships, the weapons were being hidden in some
of the safe houses scattered in different neighbourhoods.
At this point, the readers may appreciate the
importance of the directive quoted in section II.1.i. regarding Communist policy
on “Repressing Counter-Revolutionaries”. Although issued December 24, 1965, this
represented the basis for their Strategy of Terror throughout the war.
Particularly during the month leading to the Tet Offensive, the Communist
stepped up the terror campaign directed at the Pacification settlements.
The number of civilian victims of Communist repression in their so-called
“liberated” zone is unknown even to this moment. But in the GVN controlled areas
the number was well recorded. In 1967 alone, “…from January 1st to October 7,
civilian victims of VC terror included 2,661 persons killed, 5,266 wounded and
3,682 abducted...” said the document.
The effect of the terror campaign above reduced the ability of the GVN to
maintain a cohesive protective barriers around the populated areas. At the same
time it opened up and multiplied the existing security gaps in geographic areas.
Through these security gaps, the Communists succeeded in the infiltration of
weapons and agents into the cities, especially the Capital of Saigon, prior to
Tet.
Taking advantage of the momentum created, near the end of 1967, the Communists
issued new directives in preparation for Tet. One of such captured directives
(27) revealed a stepped up program of terror to be carried out prior to the
Offensive from village to city level. The directive was issued by the Provincial
Standing Committee of the People Revolutionary Party (an alias for the extended
arm of the Communist Party in North Vietnam). Although the document was issued
by the Provincial leadership (probably of Binh Dinh province), the same concept
application was not limited to this area.
By promising “a new era, a real revolutionary period, an offensive and uprising
period has begun”, the directive instructed the Party members to “act and act
fast…” and “…We need only to make swift assault to secure the target and gain
total victory”. The document exhorted the Party members to sacrifice themselves
to form suicide groups for a special task: assassination of “wicked tyrants and
administrative personnel”. The term “tyrants” in Communist jargon meaning the
civilians who were determined to oppose the Communist policy and support the
GVN.
The immediate mission of the campaign of terror was “…We must swiftly expand our
activities to wrest back control of the rural delta and the majority of the
towns and cities as outline in the directive concerning activities for October
and November, 1967, disseminated to you by this office.”
As indicated, the terror activities in October and November served as a
springboard for the Tet: “…This is to notify you that an offensive and uprising
will take place in the very near future and we will mount stronger attacks on
towns and cities, in coordination with the widespread uprising movement in the
rural areas…”
On the organization side, the directive went into details regarding the
requirement at each geographic level. At hamlet, or lowest level, the
requirement was to form two to three suicide cells. At higher level like
village, district, township, big cities the number of suicide cells could be
expected to multiply. The members were ordered to investigate the targets, make
a list of the targets to be eliminated.
This terror operation was of utmost importance as explained by the
directive:”…It is fundamental that we capture all tyrants from the village and
hamlet administrative machinery and a number of spies. If we are not successful
in this area the uprising will not be able to take place.”
And “…To conduct an uprising, you must have a roster of all the tyrants and
spies and be familiar with the way they live and where they live. Then use
suicide cells to annihilate them by any means.” (highlight by this writer)
The above document explains how the stepped up terror campaign during October
and November of 1967 weakened the GVN control in the rural areas surrounding the
populated towns and cities. The end effect was to enable the Communist forces to
reach closer to the townships and facilitated the surprise attacks. This was
just an important element among others to be discussed in the subsequent
sections.
“Proselyting” in Communist training means psychological and political method and
technique to win over a target on the opposite side of the war. The first step
is to create dissatistaction in the target’s thinking against his/her
organization. The next step is to persuade the target to agree with the point of
view of the proselyter. The final step is to convince the target to work against
his/her organization.
As Tet was approaching, more and more documents on proselyting efforts were
captured, reflecting the guiding thoughts from uptairs, that is Hanoi’s
Politbureau.
As mentioned in the crucial discussion by the 13th Plenum in early 1967, Hanoi
Politbureau believed the South Vietnamese armed forces were ready to break down,
the soldiers were ready to defect, to surrender, or to rebel once facing the
General Offensive. In the South, on the other hand, the local Communist thinking
was more realistic. They saw that the military proselyting program generally
failed in the past because it resulted in very few cases of defection from
Vietnamese and American forces.
Although aware of the fallacy in Hanoi’Politbureau thinking, the Party members
at excutive and implementing level had few choices but producing training
documents on military and enemy proselyting in preparation for Tet. A typical
document of such nature was issued December 1,1967 and later captured by the 4th
U.S. Infantry Division in early 1968. The document referred to the Tet Offensive
simply as the Winter Spring Campaign as some yearly event, keeping total secret
of the planned TCK-TKN.
After discussing some shortcoming and failure in the proselyting efforts, the
document laid out the objective and requirement for the Winter-Spring Campaign
(TCK-TKN), defining the specific target within the GVN and American forces. In
the GVN rank and file the document specifically focused on Buddhists officials
and military officers. In the U.S. forces, the targets are young soldiers and
Negro troops. This shows how the Communists were keen on the racial problem in
the US at that time.
The strategic concept of Three-Prong attacks in TCK-TKN used military
proselyting as leverage to induce GVN troops to give up fighting. This crucial
in helping the military offensive. And a successful military offensive will
provide the backbone for the political take over of power.
The task of taking over the political power would be supported by group
infiltration of some 300 cadres of all occupations such as teachers, university
professors, movie media technicians, performance artists and writers, engineers,
physicians, etc… These groups would serve as the backbone of the eventual
political and cultural front created right after the successful TCK-TKN, in many
cities.
The above contingency sounds too ambitious a Grand Plan, considering the sheer
number of personnel assignment. By comparison with 100,000 civilian GVN
officials at all levels from central agencies down to village administration,
the 300/100,000 ratio looked like dropping a handful of salt in the great ocean.
This led to a hupothesis that Hanoi did not understand the reality in South
Vietnam. If Hanoi did, then perhaps 300 were the maximum number Hanoi could
afford for the immediate task. May be both hypothesises are true, as a matter of
fact.
As a final touch for the preparation, and also an additional insurance of
surprise, the Communist planted a fake cease-fire just prior to Tet, as reported
by many interested Western sources.
“On November 17th, 1967, at 2330 Central European Time, the the Viet Cong
transmitter, “Radio Liberation” broadcast a declaration by the Presidium of the
National Liberation Front in which cease-fire for seven days (January 27th –
February 3nd, 1968) during the Tet period was suggested. “The Central Committee
of the National Liberation Front takes this opportunity” continued the
declaration, “of calling upon all our fellow-citizens , as well as all members of the armed
forces of the National Liberation Front to observe our decision on the temporary
halting of military attacks…” An Order of the Day of the Supreme Command of the NLF armed
forceswas simultaneously published in these terms: “The armed forces of the National Liberation Front accept the responsibility of protecting our
fellow-citizens so that they can celebrate Tet in peace and happiness, as well
as making it possible for soldiers and personnel of the Saigon puppet regime in the liberated areas to
return to their home villages to be united with their families, to respect their
ancesters and to visit their relations. American, allied and South Vietnamese soldiers will be
enable to worship in their churches…” (28)
It turned out that the above broadcast was just a very successful bluff that led
South Vietnam to take a break and drop its guard. Night curfews were lifted for
48 hours, firecrackers were allowed to be displayed for the three days of Tet,
but people broke the laws by firing firecrackers days before Tet. With their
guard down, all military units in the cities and Saigon Capital allowed military
personnel to take home leaves. and the numerical strength on duty at most
headquarters or barracks was down to about fifty percent on the average.
This tactical manoevre gave Hanoi an added element of surprise, absolutely
important in any military operation.
Last final touch: on the occasion of the 1968 New Year, Nguyen Duy Trinh, North
Vietnam Foreign Minister for the first time mentioned Hanoi’s willingness for
Peace Talk. Might this additional dose of sedative have been too much of an
extra trick for diminishing return? In any event, South Vietnam took the bait
and let down its guard a few days right up to D Day.
With a sense of urgency and a belief of inevitable victory, the Communists
launched the attack.
Looking back 40 years later today, the few weeks before the Tet Offensive were
quite confusing and misleading. The picture painted by the media and
commentaries focused on the battle of Khe Sanh as the decisive events. From
Saigon’s PTT (Post, Telegraph and Telephony) center, International Link, the
telex machines were running hot, the lines were overflowed with reporters
messages racing to be the first news to come out to the world. For competition
reason between different news agencies, speed was priority No. 1, veracity or
validity…ugh…could be checked later (!), as long as the information fitted in
with the theory of an impending “Dien Bien Phu”, a popular catch word.
-- hinh 26-212-1
Khe Sanh was just one of many diversionary targets near the long Western border
of South Vietnam which were attacked by Communist forces. North Vietnam brought
heavy pressure to these target in order to draw the American forces away from
the really intended targets in the populated areas. But before Khe Sanh, attacks
fell on other targets which included: Con Thien, Song Be, a small township of
Phuoc Long Province near the Cambodia border, City of Loc Ninh, also near the
Cambodian border, and finaly Dakto in Central Highland, near the three-border
area.
Con Thien was a barren marines outpost. In September, the NVA applied heavy and
persistent bombardment with artillery and mortar, then near the end of the month
they launched a massive attack. The marines defense had the support of arial
bombardment, naval gunfire, and artillery, gave the NVA a bloody loss of 2,000
soldiers.
After a first heavy loss, on 27 October the NVA looked further South and
attacked Song Be using the 88th Regiment against a South Vietnamese batallion.
With air power support by the Americans, the South Vietnamese beat off the
attackers, killed 143 Communist soldiers and even pursued the enemies on their
withdrawal.
On 29 October, Loc Ninh City very close to the Cambodian border was attacked by
the COSVN 273d Regiments, an element of the 9th Division, with greater
intensity. The target was an American artillery batallion which used special
charges called “Beehive” at close range against the bayonet charge, and killed
852 Communist enemies.
The last attack prior to Khe Sanh started with the probing actions by four NVA
regiments at Dakto in late October, where one American batallion of the 4th
Infantry Division were stationing. Westmoreland then quicly reinforced Dakto
with 8 more US batallions and six ARVN batalions by mid-November. Westmoreland
chose to attack first and inflicted a very heavy loss of 1,600 enemy soldiers.
What’s the big deal about Khe Sanh?
Khe Sanh village was an isolated valley in the middle of unpopulated land,
surround by a few high points and hills, and situated on National route 9
reaching Tchepone in Laos. For an artist or a writer, these are some features of
similarity in comparison with Dien Bien Phu. Militarily and tactically speaking,
there is no valid reason to connect Khe Sanh to Dien Bien Phu in the context of
the Vietnam War, because, in experienced military eyes, the differences far
outweighted the similarities.
First, in Dien Bien Phu, Vo Nguyen Giap occupied high ground and encircled the
French Forces garrison being boxed in the low ground valley. This was a huge
tactical advantage for Giap’s artillery and to cut both French arial and ground
supply lines. In Khe Sanh case, the Marines occupied and looked down from high
points such as the Hills 881 S, 881 N, 861, 558, 950, and 1015. Khe Sanh Village
itself had no major military installation or encampment. The nearest garrison
was the Khe Sanh Combat Base and Giap’s forces paid a dear price barely to
approach it, let alone taking it.
Second, in Dien Bien Phu Giap enjoyed superior artillery and mortar firepower
and used that firepower to reduce French manoevrability down to nil, then
paralysed French defense and forced them to surrender. In the general area of
Khe Sanh and the surrounding, it was the Americans who had absolute superiority
in firepower over Giap from both the air and the ground. And Giap knew that, by
both reasoning and learning a bloody lesson.
Third, Hanoi did bring in two divisions to test American challenge: the 325C and
304th, plus one other division the 220th and one regiment of the 324th division
at supporting distance. After seventy-seven days of siege, the Americans lost
205 KIA and 852 wounded. The Communist loss were more than ten times greater.
Walter Cronkite, the media guru, preferred to call this a doom for the
Americans.
There was a theory that Giap used Khe Sanh attack as a diversionary ploy to
attract more Amercan troops to the area and pin them down, and keep them too
busy to defend other potential targets. If that was the case, American superior
mobility failed Giap in his objective. Giap tied down some 20,000 to 25,000 of
his own NVA soldiers for nothing. Six thousand Marines and ARVN rangers stood
their ground, and the American forces elswhere maintained their ability to move
about to protect the populated areas along the coastal line.
Thus, Giap’s diversionary move against American forces did not work. But it
worked against South Vietnam considering ARVN’s lack of mobility, firepower, and
manoevreability. Saigon responded to Communist attacks along the Laotian border
with the deployments of elite troops (the Paratroopers, Rangers and Marines) to
the troubled spots. With the populated towns unprepared, Saigon made a double
mistake.
Those who attempted to call Khe Sanh a second Dien Bien Phu ultimately were
disappointed by the outcome of 1968. By mid 1968, the myth of a second Dien Bien
Phu had been almost completely dissipated. If Hanoi attempted to make Khe Sanh
another Dien Bien Phu, that would have been a very costly, if not to say
suicidal attempt.
Then why did Khe Sanh come about? From the deployment point of view, there were
three strong reasons: first, by its geographical position, Khe Sanh served well
as a marines forward platform for eventual offensive operation into Laos;
second, American tactical air power and artillery fire power supports are
capable of defeating any Communist attempt to overrun the base; and third, this
was the best and most forward place for American military power to confront the
North Vietnamese elite devisions. In this very isolated area, the Americans
could use their maximum fire power to challenge any attempt of human wave attack
and pulverize the attackers to dust, without causing collateral damage to
civilians.
The truth was as simple as that. There was no “Khe Sanh mystery”. And the
“Second Dien Bien Phu” never happened, except in the imagination of some
romantic writers, the media, the un-informed, and those who could not think
straight.
The Communists scored an A+ for their ability to keep the secret of the
Offensive until the D-Day,(29) because the time of action was revealed to field
commanders no more than three days in advance. This worked very well as far as
secrecy was concerned. But in some cases, it backfired as history unfolded
itself.
The Concerted Attack broke loose on D-Day Eve in five capital cities of Central
Vietnam, namely: Quang Nam, Kontum, Pleiku, Binh Dinh, Darlac. This was a wakeup
call for Saigon to call off the cease-fire, send out the high alert, and call
back those on leaves. This did not work well, because many soldiers on leave did
not listen to the radio. The advantage of the surprise remained strong for the
Communist forces.
On Tet night, stronger attacks were launched on the cities of Saigon, Vinh Long,
Phong Dinh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien (Hue), Quang Ngai, and Binh Thuan. The next
night and several nights later, other cities were under attacks. This was Phase
I of the Communist Grand Plan, and 28 cities in total were targeted
For the Tet Offensive, the Communists amassed a largest numbers of troops ever
involved in a campaign in Vietnam: 97 independent batallions, many sapper
(commando) units, plus the following Regiments: Dong Nai, Thep, Dong Xoai, Quyet
Thang, Dong Thap, Phu Loi, and elements of the 5th, 7th, and 9th Divisions being
on special assignment for this endeavor.
At the time of this Offensive, the maximum numerical strength of a Communist
batallion in South Viet Nam was 400. As mentioned above, the diversionary
attacks used all NVA units, while the real Offensive involved all Southern
Communist units. A majority of these units, however, were half populated by NVA
soldiers because time did not permit replacement of loss with local recruitment.
The overall plan for attack was divided into PHASE I, PHASE II, and PHASE III.
In PHASE I: In Saigon Theater alone, 15 batallions (equivalent to 6,000 soldiers
appoximately) and two sappers units, each having the strength of more than a
batallion, were deployed to launch the attack from four directions: East, West,
South and North. The most notorious attack that attracted media attention and
projected most psychological impact was the sapper attack against the American
Ambassy on Thong Nhat boulevard, less than half a mile from the Presidential
Palace.
In “MAU THAN TRUYEN KY” (MAU THAN DIARY) (30) a surviving Sapper Platoon leader
told the story of his platoon in the attack of the American Embassy. A group of
16 commandos, his platoon mission was to penetrate the Embassy compound at 3 am
January 30th, and most important, it was mandatory that they tried to hang on in
there as long as possible, until “the great body of NLF forces march into the
Capital”.
After forcing into the front yard, they met with resistance from the armed
occupants who were mostly administrative personnel.
“…We returned fire sporadically, saving our ammunition to hang on, the longer
the better, in compliance with order from our cammander.
“…As you know, we commandos by profession take advantage of darkness at night,
and by surprise, set off loud explosions for shock effect, quickly do the job
then disappear. It’s not our strong point to stay long behind and defend the
combat position…” explained the platoon leader, “...At around 5:30am, I read my
watch. According to the plan, by this hour the great body of our troops were
already in and were crowding the streets. Very soon our main forces will be
around…”
“On the yard, in front of the main compound, among the well armed American
soldiers, the newsmen with movie cameras running here and there. The U.S. and
the whole world will know…”
At almost 9:00 am, there was no sign of the “great body” of the Main Forces. The
platoon leader was eventually captured, and put in prison after being tortured
and interrogated, so the diary said. Apparently he claimed to be the only
survivor.
Three notable details: first, the primary objective of the effort to “hang on in
there as long as possible” was to give time for TV newsmen and their crews to
come around. “Political projection” and “psychological impact” are the most
pronouncing features of unconventional warfare, and the big gain was achieved
despite the sacrifice of 16 commandos.
Second, “the great body of NLF and NVN forces march into the Capital” was a
constant promise and reminder of solid victory. The promise turned out to be an
attractive bait for the naïve soldiers. This was compatible with training
documents in preparation for the Tet. Thousands of gullible fighters fell for it
and died for it. These commandos were not the only victims.
The third notable detail was the most stupefying fact: the only surviving
platoon leader never existed. All the commandos who got inside the Embassy
compound never got out alive. MAU THAN DIARY was just a Communist propaganda
published in Saigon 20 years later, a kind of “fiction for non-adult only”. The
total number of Communist commandos killed was 19, and not 16 as reported by the
impersonated surviving platoon leader. In reality, the platoon leader was the
first casualty when the platoon just got inside the Embassy ground.(30)
The Embassy attack was a minor military action involving a small group of
commandos. But through the TV screen it was a psychological blast in the
American psyche. The Communists scored their first point.
The bigger picture was the onslaught around the periphery of Saigon, Gia Dinh
and Cho Lon. The sounds of firecrackers all over the Capital area and the
surrounding suburbs drowned out the gunfire of armed attacks launched against
many targets. During the night, except for those in the middle of the on going
fighting, the population of Saigon heard the cracking sounds of gunfire and
occasional explosions and mistook them for Tet celebrations. Until they heard
the radio news in the morning.
At the ARVN Headquarter in Tan Son Nhat, the intruders succeeded by forcing
their way through Gates Four and Five, and took the Language School Building. At
the Independence Palace, the attackers failed in their attempt to penetrate the
side entrance on Nguyen Du street. At the entrance of the Vietnamese Navy
Headquarter, all the attackers were killed. The Tan Son Nhat Airport was well
defended, and the attackers took heavy losses while trying to approach the
Western end facing Ba Queo area.
The Radio Station on Phan Dinh Phung street was the only GVN installation seized
by the attackers. This used to be the target of every military event in Saigon,
from where the intruders could broadcast their political message. Unfortunately
for the Communists, they missed the technical point. The station facility, as it
turned out, was only for recording, whereas the transmission facilities several
miles away were neither obvious nor available to the accompanying NVA radio
specialist carrying a prerecorded tape. The broadcasting facilities were well
defended and in safe hands. On a prearranged signal the link was shut down. As a
result, the Communist attackers could not make used of the recording facility
while the GVN were still able to effectively control the national radio waves
throughout the emergency. As a matter of fact, this was a very important asset
for the GVN to keep an open and continuous communication with the citizens, and
avoided.
All the intruders could do was to destroy the equipments without being able to
broadcast political message which they most wanted. The intruders were later
assaulted by a paratroopers relief team who killed them all.
Apart from the failure on the New Year Day to penetrate and seize the GVN
installations and nerve centers in the Metropolitan Saigon, the Communists
succeeded in the attacks of a few military installations on the outskirt of the
Capital. On the New Year night, they seized part of the Co Loa and Phu Dong
Camps. They failed in their attack of the Quang Trung Military Training Center,
lost heavily before they could reach the main gate.
Besides, the Communists also succeeded in making their presence and threat felt
in many residential outskirts, such as Ba Queo, Go Vap, Xom Moi, Nga Nam Binh
Hoa, Phu Tho, Ba Hat, and Hang Xanh. They mingled in with the poor and populated
suburbs, hiding behind civilians, using them as human shields.
The survivors of the failed attacks also spread out into the populated suburbs,
trying to incite people into an uprising as planned.
To prevent the Communist attempt, the South Vietnamese Air Force planes were
ordered to remain airborne day and night to give the moral support to the
civilians and to call on the civilians to evacuate from the areas occupied by
the Communists. This was a double success. The civilians took advantage of the
situation to flee the Communists into the downtown area which was safe and free
of Communist forces. On the other hand, the Communists no longer had the human
shields, became exposed and pinned down by the ARVN firepower. After suffering
heavy losses, the surviving attackers fled and the hunters became the hunted.
But before fleeing, the Communists did not forget to burn down the civilian
houses in the suburbs because nobody responded favorably to their call for an
uprising.
It took a few days for the airborn paratroopers, the marines, and the green
berret rangers to relief the capital city of Saigon. On the downside, 19,000
houses in the suburbs were destroyed by fire, 6,300 civilians dead, 11,000
wounded. On the plus side, the Communist paid a horrendous price: 5,300 killed,
415 captured, with near 2,000 individual and group weapons confiscated. The
Communist casualties were 16 times greater than that suffered by the ARVN.
In PHASE II: another offensive was undertaken by some 7,000 Communist soldiers
against Saigon and could be divided into two periods, period 1 from 5 to 12 May,
and period 2 from 25 May to 16 June, 1968. The distinct characteristic of Phase
II was that none of the GVN Installation or nerve Centers were attacked. The
Communists started first with a barrage of random rocket firings into Saigon
Capital, just for the purpose of terrorizing the population. Next, the
Communists learned well from previous lessons, chose to penetrate into populated
areas to create as much havocs and destructions of civilian properties as
possible. Period 1 of Phase II was short, and followed by period 2 when the
enemy learned from the experiences in period 1 and brought greater destruction
to civilian properties. They brought in the 101st Regiment, a specially trained
regiment in urban guerrilla warfare.
The New Communist Strategy in PHASE II.
Col. Pham Van Son, a military historian had interesting comments on Phase II and
the skills of Communist forces: (31)
“In their attempt at mounting a general offensive the Communist High Command
deployed assault troops everywhere but they soon recognized that move was a
grave mistake. Attacks can only mounted when the assaulting troops are more
numerous than the defenders. Should the contrary be true, failure would be more
apt to result. Moreover, with air support, the Communists could only hope for
victory if they outnumbered friendly troops in target areas. The only way to
achieve this was to assault them repeatedly.
“Recognition of of this truth shook Communist Commanders out of their dreams for
a speedy victory and they selected cities - especially Saigon – as the targets
of the new offensive. In their reckoning nothing would be more effective than
keeping strong pressure on Saigon for such a strategy would perforce result in
an atmosphere of growing consfusion in the political nerve-center of South
Vietnam and be a propaganda victory…
“…The intention of the enemy High Command, of course, was not to achieve big
military victories but to create a state of confusion that could lead to immense
political and economic difficulties and bring about opportunities for
overthrowing the elected government of South Vietnam. In this undertaking the
Communist High Command seemed to have relied militarily on guerrilla warfare
tactics, amended to some extent to fit the conditions of city fighting…
In the second phase,
“…enemy units,” continued Col. Pham van Son, “…fully exploit the shortcomings of
friendly security belts. Enemy presence was only discovered after they had
penetrated the city’s outlying areas. North Vietnamese troops took the trouble
of occupying such key points as big buildings, factories, churches and temples
before going on the attack in any area.
“…The composition of these groups were mostly troops that had had some rest
after a previous attempt against the big city. In principle they were to take
turns in attacking Saigon so that the V.C. military pressure might be constantly
maintained against this political center. Also, in their efforts to bring
guerrilla warfare to the cities, Viet Cong troops unable to resist friendly
pressure in one area would move to another and start the whole process all over
again.
“In adopting such a strategy the Communist High Command was to accept some
casualies in exchange for the understandably heavy losses firendly troops would
suffer in attacking the buildings Communist troops had turned into strongholds.
On the whole, the enemy did not concentrate their troops but divided them into
small squad-size groups with instruction to fight until the end…”
To sum up Col.Pham van Son analysis, during Phase I of the Tet Offensive, the
Communists strived for a quick victory, and failed badly. In Phase II, the
Communists changed their strategy into a sustained and repeated series of
guerrilla assaults to fail badly again.
The Communists had a price to pay. The Commander of Quyet Thang Regiment, named
Ba Vinh, was killed. The Deputy Commander chose to surrender. A mass surrender
of 152 soldiers from this Regiment followed suite. The 2nd Company of the 2nd
Batallion of the regiment had 4 survivors. The Dong Nai Regiment suffered more
than the Quyet Thang Regimant. The Reconnaissance Sapper Company alone had only
20 survivors. The 101st Regiment were destroyed by the Paratroopers.
In addition, Ltn Col. Phan Viet Dung, Commander of 165th Regiment, 7th Division,
and Ltn Col. Tam Ha, Deputy Political Commissar of Sub-Region I, rallied to the
Chieu Hoi Program, bringing with them valuable military intelligence information
on the Communists.
The Communist loss in their PHASE II were approximately 3,500 dead. After Phase
II fizzled, Phase III was abandoned entirely by the Communist High Command.
The Communists did not fare better in the rest of the other cities in South
Vietnam except in the Imperial City of Hue where they succeeded in deep
penetration of the Imperial Palace (Inner Citadel) and take advantage of the
fortress-like monuments to dig in for a sustained occupation and fire-fight. It
was also at Hue where the Communists successfully used a concentration of
military force and numerical advantage to overwhelm the defenders, penetrated
into the city and held their positions for almost four weeks. The Hue
battlefield was much much smaller than the Saigon theater, and the Communist
troops coming from the North attacking Mang-Ca outpost, from the West attacking
the West Gate, and from the south attacking and Bach Ho Bridge. The enemy had
fierce fighting with the Reconnaissance Company of ARVN First Infantry Division
around the Imperial Palace, overran this unit then seized this area. At 8 am,
they raised the NLF flag atop the Citadel’s main flag pole.
On the next day Communist troops invaded several populated neighborhoods and
took control of the Inner Citadel, the Dong Ba market place, the Thuong Tu,
Chanh Tay and An Hoa, then the city area on the Southern bank of the Perfume
river. With the advantage gained by the element of surprise, the enemy
consolidated his defense in the populated areas as well as in the Imperial
Citadel which basically was an extremely strong fortress. The enemy had the
upper hand and took this opportunity to seize a number of the key points inside
the Imperial Citadel.
Many sporadic attempts by friendly forces to reclaim the lost key military
points were unsuccessful. And “…The actual counterattack by friendly forces did
not begin until the fifth day of Tet...’ wrote Col. Pham van Son.
During this time, the enemy virtually controlled the civilian and populated
areas from the second to the fourth day of Tet, and, to quote Col. Pham van Son,
“…during the next two days enemy troops and agents moved about in the city
freely. They were controlling the people as if they were operating in a VC
territory.”
It was at Hue that the enemy had time to execute the terror campaign that many
units had been indoctrinated and trained for the job. The terror campaign in Hue
is the subject topic to be discussed in section III.3. further down.
For the record, the Communists brought about 7,000 men into Hue including the
5th and 6th Groups as the main thrust plus the 9th Group as re-inforcement. In
the Tri-Thien-Hue area, prior to the Tet Offensive, the Communists dissolved the
Command Office and Division Chief Office of the 324-B Division etc…then
reorganized these units into Groups, each equivalent to a regiment.
Each of these Groups has: 3 infantry batallions, one sapper (commando)
batallion, one artillery batallion, one support batallion, 8 or 9 professional
companies and a number of re-inforcing units. This means each group has a
strength of 2,000 approximately. Thanks to the ability to dig in the Imperial
Palace, they could prolong a fight from 31 January until 25 February when they
were extricated.
The Communist lost around 3,500 in Hue, roughly 10 times the combined GVN and
American losses.
The total loss throughout the Tet suffered by the Communists were between 45,000
(according to Davidson), and 60,000 (according to Col. Pham van Son).
The Reason for The Communist Failure in the Military Prong
Despite many strong points displayed by the Communist strategy, tactics,
meticulous planning and preparations, their military defeat was a good case for
study by military analysts. From further interviews of Communist defectors and
reading the many transcrypts of interviews by others, I learned a lot about the
important reasons for such a glaring failure. In addition, many knowledgeable
writers also gave in depth analysises of this topic regarding the reasons for
the failure.
The first failure of the “concerted attack” lies in the fact that it was not
“concerted”. A few targets were being attacked first followed by a few more
targers the next day, then a few more targets several days later. One of the
most important reason was that the Grand Plan was too detailed and too
comprehensive to be carried out on time like a machine. A lot of the
implementations involved communication of information to be carried on foot at
the foot soldier level. Synchronization and timing were critical to the concept
of concerted attack, and these elements were seriously missing.
The high secrecy of the campaign also costed the Communicts dearly in the
failure of coordination and synchronization.
“Concentration of force in a quick stroke” was one of the Communist major
slogans for the Tet Offensive. In military tactics concentration of force
essentially means amassing an overwhelming superiority in numerical strength to
smash a smaller force. But concentration of force coupled with a General
Offensive strategy in which forces are spread thinly over so many targets is
self contradictory and defeating the purpose of concentration. That was what
happened to the Communist battle plan. That was the greatest flaw in their core
concept. And that explained why the Communists failed in Phase I then lost their
momentum in Phase II. After a loss in moral and physical momentum in Phase I, a
much weakened momentum for Phase II followed.
Traditionally, the Communists take extreme care in concentration of force. The
Ap Bac battle in 1963 was a pronounced example, where the Communist forces used
the 261st, 263rd and 514th batallions to overwhelm and defeat the 8th
Paratroopers batallion. A ratio of 3 to 1 means a concentration of force. It was
not so in the Tet Offensive.
In Phase I attack of Saigon, the Communists spreaded their assaults in so many
places with so many diverse targets in a vast area of the metropolis, and in
effect it was like diluting a handful of salt in the ocean. They gave away their
tactical advantages.
Bon Tap Tactic. “Bon Tap” is a Vietnamese tactical expression meaning launching
the battle by marching while running on foot from a distant place to arrive at a
target and hit it without having time for battle ground preparation. The merit
of this tactic is maintaining secrecy of your battle plan and maintaining great
surprise. This is good for experienced troops who know very well the geography
and the topographic features of the target and target area.
It was not so in the case of Saigon Tet Offensive when a group assignment
required splitting up into small squads using different paths to be assembled at
a rendez-vous that could not be found on time by different units, or could be
found at all.
In addition, many different military units used to live and fight in jungles.
Once facing the urban warfare, they lost their ways in the vast city with huge
buildings and long roads they have never seen before in their life. In many
cases, they never found their targets, wandered around for several days in
different directions after losing contact with their military scouts or leaders,
ended up too hungry and exhausted to go on. Finally they had to surrender.
Sapper tactic (or commando tactic) was a special advantage enjoyed by the
Communist forces during the Tet Offensive causing much havocs and destructions
to the civilian population. These attacks on the civilian and residential areas
forced the ARVN to slow down their counter-attacks and tied down their hands in
the use of firepower. The Communists used the sapper units specially for
piercing the defense line, opening the way for their main forces thrust.
Sappers units were also used as fifth columns for generating chaotic
opportunities to help the Main force units expand the fighting theaters. In view
of these advantages, sapper tacic was employed heavily and the units were
equipped with improved, more modern lighter weapons.
On the other hand, because of the extreme used of sapper units, almost all of
them were gone after Tet.
“Cai Rang Luoc” tactic (combing tactic) in Communist terms means dispersing
their forces among the populace, taking civilian hostages, then launching the
attacks from the people houses, or setting a whole area on fire before escaping.
The ARVN had to refrain from using effectice firing or bombing. The Communists
were very successful in their objective of slowing down the painful relief
efforts by the ARVN. They left behind an ocean of destruction wherever they go
by in Saigon, Gia Dinh and Cho Lon.
III.2.ii.a. 1968’s Stratagem. Hanoi’s Political Stratagem for 1968 Tet was not
the same as for the 1959 Concerted Uprising (Dong Khoi). In the 1959’s Dong Khoi,
the fundamental requirement by the Communists was to create a Cause, a Dissident
Voice within the internal body politics of South Vietnam, even a very feeble and
modest voice, considering their total lack of a military backup. But that modest
voice was appropriate and sufficient to satisfy the strategic need of preventing
a possible military intervention by the US, and of buying time for the slow but
steady process of generating internal attraction and building up a big movement.
To sum it up the Political Stratagem during the 1959’s Dong Khoi was to admit to
be the underdog, the “oppressed people”. The above stratagem worked very well
into the thinking of the gullible audiences.
In 1968, the Communist stratagem was to satisfy the new need of proving their
power to defeat the GVN or at least to be comparable rival in strength with an
upper hand, resulting in political momentum toward establishing a Coalition
Government. In this position, they will be able to gain international support
for and the legal status in demanding an American military withdrawal from
Vietnam.
It follows from the above need that the ultimate objective of the Tet Offensive
was the Political Subversion of the Government of South Vietnam. The Communist
strived for the take-over of power through uprising actions in different cities,
seizing and destroying the nerve centers of the GVN in the Capital and other
cities. Short of that maximum objective, they tried to reach at least the
formation of a Coalition Government, a Communist code word for a stepping stone
towards a complete political victory. To achieve that aim, a number of
steps need to be taken .
III.2.ii.b. The Formation of a Second Front. After some initial successful
military attacks and an apparent ability to control Hue, the Imperial Capital of
Central Vietnam, the Communist propaganda promoted a new Political Front called the
“Alliance of National,
Democratic and Peaceful Forces”. This was also called Front Number Two, for
short. A French educated and little known intellectual, Professor Le Van Hao was
made President of the Tri-Thien Front. This organization also included a number
of students activists such as Hoang Phu Ngoc Phan and Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuong, a
number of Buddhist activists, Reverent Thich Don Hau, a Buddhist Monk, and a so
called National Salvation Council.
In the Saigon area, not until 5 May, 1968 during Phase II of the Tet Offensive
did the propaganda teams spreaded the news about the formation of the new Front
to the population in Binh Thoi, Cho Lon, along a few streets like Nguyen Trai,
Pho Co Dieu, Tran Binh Trong, and Phan Van Tri etc…
The birth of the new political front was intriguing to many people including the
high ranking Communist cadres when they learned about it in orientation
trainings. For these cadres, the “National Liberation Front” had been leading
them in the “war against American Imperialism” in the name of the South
Vietnamese people since 1960. They saw no needs for a new Front coming out of
the blue, with new names most of them never heard about. In addition the new
Organization also included a number of old names they already knew, such as
Nguyen Huu Tho, Trinh Dinh Thao, Ton That Duong Ky, Duong Quynh Hoa, Truong Nhu
Tang. The big puzzle was many of the old names were already in the old Front
(NLF). Their question was: “what is going to happen to the old National
Liberation Front? Was it going to die soon?
Their puzzle was eventually solved. The “Radio Liberation” read the news that
the Alliance advocated “a dialogue with the NLF for the achievement of
independence, the restoration of peace for the reconstruction of the country”
for the reason that the NLF had been “a patiotic force currently leading the
struggle against Americans for national salvation”.
Allowing some time to pass, at the end of August 1968, the same “Radio
Liberation” read an announcement that “The NLF agreed to cooperate with the
Alliance in the political solution for ending the war in South Vietnam and
approved the proposition for a “Four sides Peace Talk” in Paris”.
As it turned out, Hanoi created two puppets in the South, pulled the strings for
a dialogue between the puppets praising each other and finally working together
as a foundation for a third puppet, the so called PRG (Provisional Revolutionary
Government, not propelled rocket grenade). The birth of this new organization
was announced by “Radio Liberation” 6 October, 1968.
For South Vietnamese, these ghost puppets were none of their concerns. They
could not figure out how a world of gullible politicians took this puppet show
seriously, took pains and wasted time in sitting down for solemn dialogues with
the stringed puppets, solemnly signed peace agreement with the pupets that
eventually pronounced the death of South Vietnam. But that would be the story of
a seven year decent interval.
As far as South Vietnamese audience was concerned, the puppet show proved to be
a great political failure. A number of South Vietnamese might have heard about
the so called leaders of the two Fronts and the PRG, but nobody had ever seen
any of them, because a few days after Tet, these actors were on the run for a
safe place to hide. Professor Le Van Hao mysteriously disappeared from Hue
before he had the chance to be inaugurated as President of the Alliance of
National, Democratic and Peaceful Forces. People only heard gunfire but had
never seen the sight of Chairman Nguyen Huu Tho.
In other words, people only saw the General Offensive, but never General
Uprising. The “Once-in-a-thousand-year General Uprising” died before birth as
promised to the rank and file and the rural farmers. There were four main
reasons for the “miscarriage” of the general uprising:
First, the Communist infrastructure was too weak in the urban areas.
Second, the coordination between the political infrastructure and the military
forces floundered completely.
Third, the failure of the military Prong was the mechanical reason and the
Communists knew well that the military prong is the essential leverage for the
political one.
Fourth, the hatred that South Vietnamese reserved for the Communists was the
most important reason. No matter how much they dislike the war, and despite the
fact that they did not enthusiastically supported the GVN, they feared the evils
of Communism above all.
From the organization point of view, the vertical hierarchy started from high
above with proselyting section at Zone level down to provincial, district, and
finally village level. On the horizontal perspective, the provincial level was
the most important one. Each province had a proselyting unit. In My Tho for
example, the 115th section had around 30 to 40 proselyting cadres divided into
subsections each having from 2 or 3 to 5 or 6 members in charge of proselyting
activity attached to a regiment. The Communist 7th Division, for instance,
having three regiments, the 10th, 11th, 12th, had three subsections of military
proselyting service. Their function was to study the situation based on the
legally active infiltrators in the GVN controlled areas in preparation for each
campaign carried out by the regiments in question.
Each such subsection was under the direction and leadership of a member of the
Zone Party Committee, in direct coordination with Provincial Party Committee for
the objective of unified understanding of the overall situation. A subsection
could be classified as “forward subsection” or “rear subsection”. The forward
subsection consisted of legally active cadres in charge of contacting, working
on targets within the GVN rank and file, then reporting on the situation to the
rear subsection. The rear subsection evaluated the situation, made up plan of
action, then gave order of action to the forward subsection.
The forward subsection controlled the “noi tuyen” cells, or the “fifth
columnists” inside the GVN rank and file. There were three types of fifth
columnist cells:
First, the long range fifth columns consisting of Party members, the “thanh lao”
(members of the Labor Youth League) or “good” youths based on Communist
standard, having legitimate status according to GVN laws and regulation, being
financed by the “Party” to go to school. They would then proceeded to get a
diploma or degree and would become elligible to join different ARVN military
branches.
Second, “cam tinh vien” (sympathizers) or “dong tinh vien” (supporters)
consisting of GVN soldiers already “bought” by the Communists or persuaded to do
works for them. Sympathizers were those giving only moral support, or limited
level such as informant, giving some grenades, or a few dozens of bullets…Dong
tinh vien were more positive supporters, capable of actions leading to treason,
mutiny. They sleepers or inside agents likely to attack a military post, killing
military leaders on direction by Communist cadres.
Third, the least effective fifth columnists such as relatives or family members
of GVN soldiers, only gave intermediate support.
During the War of Resistance against the French, the Communist military
proselyting activities were very effective. During the 1959 Concerted Uprising
and up to 1965, it was relatively effective. From 1965 onward, the military
proselyting committed two severe errors: first, the leaders at the upper level
set too high a target to be achieved; second, the subordinates gave too rosy an
action reports just to please their leaders. That was exactly what happened to
the failure of the Tet Offensive. The proselyting failed the Military Prong, in
turn the military prong failed the political prong, and the political prong
failed Hanoi’s Politbureau.
The Communists failed in Tet Offensive to carry out military proselyting. On the
contrary, they suffered from reverse proselyting by the South Vietnamese in the
aftermath of Tet. Before Tet, the number of Communists rallying to the Chieu Hoi
program was 80,000. A few months after Tet, the number began to rise fast. But
this would be discussed in section IV.
One of the important topics that should not be missed was the terror campaign.
It was an integral and organic part of the Offensive strategy because the
Communist rank and file had been trained, indoctrinated, and practicing the
terror procedures two months before Tet.
As it turned out, Hue was the only place where the Communists successfully
carried out the “military prong” for a few weeks. During that short period of
time, the Communists had only a few days of firm control to carry out their
terror plan before GVN and US forces mounted counterattacks. With high
efficiency, within a few days, the terror teams managed to massacre the targets
they had in their records, and according to plan.
The Vietnamese Communist terror strategy used violent repressive acts against a
pre-determined group of people for a political purpose. There are three salient
points to be considered in studying Vietnamese Communist terror policy: its
objective, the targets of the terror policy, and the terror technique.
The objective of Communist terror was basically to apply a pressure to shape the
target’s behavior favorable to a Communist end result. Terrorism violence for
Communist in general, and Vietnamese Communists in particular is a war weapon, a
language, a tactic, and also a strategy in foreign policy aiming at an ultimate
purpose: making the adversary do what the Communists want him to do.
The targets of Communist terror policy are numerous, irrespective of civilian,
soldier, politician, clergy, or farmer etc. But basically there are primary
targets and secondary targets.
The primary targets of Communist terror are not always the victims. For
instance, when the Communists assassinated Mayer Tran Van Van or Dr. Le Minh Tri
in broad daylight, these two Southern political figures were merely secondary
targets. The primary targets were Inter-collegial Groups (Khoi Lien Truong) and
the Southern separatist individuals in South Viet Nam. The objective of the
terror act was to instigate the regional division between these Southern
groupings and the Northern individuals in power. The regional division was the
combustible and the ignition was simply spreading rumors that Northerners in
power were behind the attacks. The Northerner groups in power were also victims
in this case.
When Communist commandos bombed Professor Nguyen Van Bong right in Saigon, again
the victim might be just a secondary target, the primary targets were the
population at large who were subject to Communist rumors that the Government
aimed at destroying the Progressive Party (Dang CapTien) in political
opposition. Professor Nguyen Van Bong, then-Chairman of the Progressive Party,
was a strong and potential presidential candidate versus General Nguyen Van
Thieu.
When Communist security agents assassinated the civilian agents in the villages
or hamlets such as primary school teachers, or agricultural and fishery
specialists, these victims might be primary targets for the reason that they are
potential leaders in the countryside who represented the non-Communist
establishment, a challenge to the Communists. These civilians had only three
choices: running for their life, or submission to the Communists, or death.
When the Communist mines blowed up commercial inter-provincial buses killing
civilian commuters, or sending rockets into village or district schools killing
young students, the primary targets may be both the victims and the public
witnesses of the terror acts. The dead victims were punished because they dared
challenge the Communist order of school strike, or because they continued their
commercial business in defiance of the “revolution”. The witnesses may also be
considered primary targets serving the Communist purpose of propagating and
projecting the frightening pictures or stories that could overpower many people
into submission to Communist will out of fear for their own safety.
In the massacres in Hue during the Tet Offensive, the classification of targets
became more complex for the study. During the first week, the victims of terror
were considered dangerous opponents by the Communists. After some more time for
digging in, more victims were killed as secondary targets just for the purpose
of frightening others who now became primary targets. Personal revenge also
aimed at primary targets. Finally when the Communist thugs were forced to
withdraw from Hue, they killed the rest of the prisoners for the purpose of
cleaning up the evidence of their crimes. These last victims were potential
witnesses of the Communist atrocities.
The tactic used in terror acts was an important topic in the Communist strategy.
In order to satisfactorily achieve a given objective, the Communists demanded
refined tactic and technique. It was found that the Vietnamese Communists placed
high value in the terror technique through the documents on the training of
terrorist agents in the Xuan Mai School of sappers (Hanoi) and in Ba Thu Secret
Zone in South Vietnam. The term “technique” used here could be understood at
different levels.
Terrorist technique could be understood as the method of implementation of a job
to be smoothly done. In a team operation, there must be a good division of task
during training as well as during execution, such as: mechanical device
handling, explosive device handling (more dangerous), spy intelligence handling,
map drawing of operation location, etc. At a higher level, “technique” requires
the completion of a well planned terror program aiming at a clearcut political
purpose. For instance, projecting and assigning the terror targets for each
area, each time period for each sapper unit. In “the Vietcong Strategy of Terror
(p.50) Douglas Pike recounted an example of Communist terror program designed
for the area South of Phu Yen and north of Khanh Hoa in the chart below:
Target to be eliminated (TE)
Target to receive warning(TW)
UC TE TW
B-1 65 510
B-2 45 43
B-3 42 135
B-4 26 135
B-5 89 376
B-6 10 10
In Hue, the terror campaign was a simple procedures carried out methodically by
low level cadres who apparently been well rehearsing. Col. Pham van Son gave a
concise narrative of the massacre in Hue, an excellent summary of a long and
tragic story made short:
“The Communists first called people out of their homes to “political meetings”,
then classified them into different categories – civil servants, soldiers,
police and just plain citizens. Except for the last category, all the people
summoned were detained overnight at the Government Delegate’s office building on
the right bank of the Perfume River. They were allowed to go home the next
morning.
“People speculated that the enemy was starting a three-stage mass arrest and
murder scheme. The case mentioned above was a lighter one while the serious case
involved those civilians detained in Gia Hoi area which was under even firmer
enemy control. In this area the enemy succeded in carrying out all the three
stages of his sinister scheme.
“First he sealed off the occupied area, herding the people together and
classified them into categories. The just plain citizen category was told to
form civic organizations. This process was designed to help the enemy to have
tight control of the populace. Each of the organizations had a representative to
take orders from the enemy. The plain citizens were told to work normally and to
keep public order. The the enemy troops and agents came to each house
confiscating all private radio in an apparent effort to cut the people off from
the outside world. At the same time they spread the rumor that the entire Thua
Thien province and the whole country had come under their control.
“The next step they called on all national government employees, such as public
servants, soldiers and police, to surrender their individual weapons and to
report to their military place of duty in order to benefit from clemency
measures. Failing to comply they would have to face severe punishment. Large
numbers of such people turned themselves and their weapons in to the Communists
and were allowed to freely return and stay home for two days. None were forced
to do anything for the enemy. The move was apparently designed to deceive the
public.
“The third stage was the actual mass arrest and terror drive against these
former employees of the local government.
“After these two days of having been freed people were asked to attend
“political meetings” by the enemy cadremen who came to each of their homes. A
number of people never came back or were ever heard of again. The number of
“missing” increased with each passing day. These people had been murdered
somewhere in the city after reporting to the “political meetings”. They had
never suspect they would meet tragic death; nor had they been aware of the time
they were to die. Survivors of enemy agents, captured in the later stage of the
Hue battle, recounted that the victims had been told to dig air raid trenches
during the daytime. Then they were actually led to these so-called trenches in
the night to be massacred by submachine-gun fire of simply burried alive.
Apparently the victims had never suspected they were digging their own mass
graves. In many cases the victims were murdered and shoved into the graves soon
after they had finished digging.
“An estimated 1,000 people were murdered and massacred in this way by the
Vietcong in the suburbs of Hue. They had been public servants, soldiers and
those who had experienced personal feuds with pro-Commnunist elements during the
political disturbances in preceeding years. Major mass graves were later found
at the Gia Hoi high school, the Tang Quang Tu pagoda, the Bai Dau area (some 30
mass graves here alone) and Emperor Tu Duc’s tomb (another 20 mass graves). The
bodies recovered from these and other mass graves showed evidence of atrocious,
painful death. A number of bodies were headless or limbless – or both. Others
had their hands tied behind their backs. Still others were tied together in
groups of tens or fifteens, indicating that the victims had been shoved into the
mass graves and burried alive…”
Above was a very summary record of the main features of the Communist terror
campaign. There had been several accounts of this horrified events that could
not be included in this limited writing.
There should be no doubt about the following three facts: first, the terror
strategy was inherently Communist; second, the terror campaign was planned and
premeditated; and third, Communist agents performed the massacre of civilians
with cold blood and professionalism.
The Terror strategy was inherently Communist. Lenin and Stalin were teachers of
terror in their heydays in power. So were the Marxist-Leninist Vietnamese in
both North and South Vietnam. The terror campaign in the Soviet Union under
Lenin and Stalin became public knowledge and a matter of recorded history only
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A small part of the Communist strategy
of terror applied in South Vietnam was recorded by Douglas Pike. The greater
part was experienced by millions of Vietnamese ever since 1945, but not well
publicised and recorded. There were two main reasons for the above situation:
first, the Vietnamese Communists are still in control of informations; second,
there has been a collusion between the Communists and the media. (34)
The Terror campaign was planned and premeditated. There had been disclaimers
trying to say the massacres in Hue were done by over-zealous individuals
sometime as personal revenge or sometime in a situation of confusion and firce
fighting. Nothing is further from the truth. The terror campaign in Hue was a
planned and premeditated operation. The Communist directives in preparation for
Tet clearly brought out to light the following facts:
First: Communist agents had been indoctrinated for the specific job of
assassinating specific individuals according to a prepared list; second,
Communist agents were trained for the job; third, Communist agents prepared the
list of victims to be killed according to the directive quoted in section
II.4.iii.
As a final touch, Communist agents performed the massacre with cold blood and
professionalism. The circumstances in which they could perform their job were
unique because they were able to take the city of Hue. What prevented them from
achieving similar massacres elsewhere was because they failed militarily in the
rest of the country and were in no condition to realize their grand plan.
Further study of the mass graves indicated that the general classification of
victims could be identified as 20% military, 40% GVN officials, and 40% plain
civilians.(35)
Ever since the 1968 Offensive, Hue had been a mourning Imperial City for many
decades and still remains so. Hue lives in the heart of the South Vietnamese
citizens as a historical monument reminding future generations of atrocities and
cold-blood savagery ever before committed by Vietnamese against Vietnamese in
the name of whatever ideology.
The outcome of the Tet Offensive
inevitably led to a major consequence on the military balance which could be
deduced if ones had sufficient information and had been well verse in the form
of warfare in Vietnam. The political and strategic consequence, ironically, were
not so inevitable and running somewhat contrary to logic. The media played an
exceedingly important role in influencing the direction of the war, and in
concerted steps with the anti-war movement they pronounced the political verdict
and dictated the prelude to an exit and an eventual defeat.
On the one hand, the Communist forces retreated under heavy losses. On the other
hand, the GVN forces, gaining confidence in their own ability, went out of their
way in pursuit of the running Communists. This big picture explained what could
be perceived as a tipping in the balance of forces and other consequential
developments.
The Tet Offensive was a campaign in which the enemy was willing to accept
tremendous losses on a scale never before seen in the history of the Vietnam
War. The enemy suffered between 45,000 and 60,000 casualties, about ten times
the casualties sustained by the ARVN. Despite their tragic failure, the enemy
still would not give up their scheme to take over South Vietnam for two reasons:
First, the Communists could still draw on reinforcement from the North and
massive resupplies of weapons and ammunition from the Communist Block. Every
year, Hanoi could have 400,000 more young men to satisfy the arithmetics of the
war.
Second, the Communist remained hopeful that when the right opportunity came
along, they could still win by exploiting to the full the inherent political and
strategic shortcomings of the Republic of Vietnam.
But in the short term, the Tet Offensive brought about an important strategic
consequencemost unfavorable to the Viet Cong in the South. The form of warfare
the Communists had been waging began to deteriorate for three reasons: loss of
strategic and secure base areas; loss of popular support as a reaction to
blatant acts of brutality and unscrupulous betrayals of trust; and loss of the
infrastructure after the Tet Offensive
In analysing the consequences of the Tet Offensive, within the limit of this
presentation, I shall limit myself to a discussion of the situation of the
Communists in the South with regard to the four basic aspects: the devastating
depletion of their military forces, the destruction of their base areas or
“sanctuaries”, the disruption of the supply network, and the desintegration of
their infrastructure.
There were no accurate, or even remotely accurate, statistics concerning
Communist casualties. One of the main difficulties for us to collect Communist casualtiy
figures was because of the special emphasis they place on the evacuation of
their dead and wounded from the battlefield, in order to keep secret their
losses in men and material, especially during the years before the Tet
Offensive. There was an important political and psychological reason for that
internal rule. After each engagement, each retreating soldier had to pick up the
weapons left behind by their comrades to a certain location where there burial
would be taken care of by the civilian laborers.
Consequently, during the years of Communist high tide, after each attack
initiated by the Communists, the battlefield was always very carefully cleaned
up. In post-battle inspection, the only thing that remained were darkened
coagulated pools of blood but no bodies or weapons. As a result, statistics on
enemy casualties were never accurate and the number of the body counts was
always lower than the actual number of casualties suffered by the enemy.
During Tet, the situation clearly became messy, and the rule mentioned above was
poorly observed by the Communist troops in action.
In the Mekong Delta: After Tet, the situation of the Viet Cong became even more
tragic than during the pre-Tet period. In the Mekong Delta two-third of the Viet
Cong attacking forces were destroyed. A prisoner, who used to be a farmer in
North Vietnam, said that after he infiltrated into Tay Ninh in February 1969, he
was assigned to the 9th Battallion and there he saw that only about 10% of the
troops were native of the South. The rest of the battalion was made up of native
North Vietnamese soldiers.
The case of Dong Nai Regiment: this is reputed as one of the more
combat-hardened and successful units of the NLF. A first lieutenant, deputy
platoon leader of a sapper platoon in the Dong Nai Regiment, disclosed that up
to 60% of the regiment had been killed up to the end of the Tet Offensive.
Communist casualties during Tet was caused by a variety of reasons, not
exclusively through major engagements. Some were killed on their way to fetch
rice. Some sacrificed their lives escorting senior cadres. Other were stricken
with malaria. Still others fled to Cambodia, or wandered away from their units,
waiting out the day when they could return to the North, and many found their
way to defect to the Saigon government.
A captured document illustrated another aspect of losses suffered by Dong Nai
Regiment(35) due to desertion and surrender. The topic was dealt with in a secret
Circular, entitled “On Political and Idelogical Indoctrination against Desertion
and Surrender”, captured by elements of the U.S. First Infantry Division in Binh
Duong Province on September 9, 1968. After first praising the resistance forces
for “…winning the great successes ever. The U.S. imperialists and their henchmen
are being pushed to a deadlock…” the circular complained about the existence of
severe morale problems within the regiment. It claimed some “regrettable errors
in some units”: “…Their unit members skirted combat activity, feared death and
urged each other to ecape (in large groups) from their units and go to Khe Sanh,
Tay Ninh or other units (DKB unit, for instance). Such cases were usually
premeditated; the soldiers made secret preparations (plotting among themselves,
reserving food, even trying to take weapons with them…). The commander, if not
alert, would never discover these plan to escape. When captured by the enemy [
the members of these units ] were unable to suffer torture and supplied
information to the enemy. In some specific cases, some soldiers even sought to
surrender to the enemy. In the latter cases, the faulty persons were considered
traitors for they had committed a tremendous crime in that they provided
information to the enemy who took advantage of it to sabotage our agencies and
kill our compatriots and dear comrades.”
The case of the Quyet Thang Regiment was not much better. According to the
disclosure by a combat prisoner, the casualties suffered by this regiment were
almost as bad. The 2nd Company, 2nd Battalion had four survivor as mentioned
earlier. With additional assignment of eight new soldiers, it was not even an
under-strength platoon (36-40 soldiers). The prisoner confessed he was
completely demoralized while in his unit. He said the depleted unit was no
longer a fighting force and had to spend time hiding among the bushes along the
canals and only ventured out at night to go into the village to get rice
provided by local guerrillas.
The Steel Regiment Q-272, Formerly code named Q-272, was changed to the code
name F-55, and assigned to the 9th Division. It was a highly celebrated regiment
in its heydays, hence its designation as the Regiment of Steel, until it was
smashed to pieces by allied forces.
A former artillery platoon commander who defected to the GVN described the
desintegration of the regiment as follows:
“…In the Tet Offensive, after having
failed in the attack at Bay Hien Intersection (North West of Saigon), remnant of
the regiment retreated to Bo Huc, Vam Trang Trau, and Xom Giua on the Cambodian
border in Tay Ninh Province. It was an area populated by a mixture of Vietnamese
and Cambodians. The troops were clearly demoralized and there was no more
observance of discipline among the rank and file.
“…The reason for that situation was because the people had lost faith in the
Party and in the inevitable victory of the NLF as promised. They believed that
the Communists both in the North and South had exhausted their capabilities and
it became clear to them that victory was no longer possible. What matters to
them was their own survival from day to day. Before 1968, whenever there was an
order of operation, all of them would sign on to volunteer to go, but after
1968, it was quite difficult to get them to do anything. In 1969, Nam Dan, my
regiment commanding officer, assigned a company for the attack of Tapang Robon
outpost on the Cambodian border, but the company refused the order with the
excuse that the company was under strength and that most of the survivors were
either wounded or sick. Faced with that situation, the regiment commander could
only cry in despair because it was the first time that the troop’s morale had
dropped so low…”
That was the situation of the 11th Company, 4th Battalion in the Regiment of
Steel. The Company was disbanded afterward, the troops dispersed to other
companies, and a number of platoon leaders were demoted to assistant platoon
leaders and some down to privates.
These testimonies illustrated the delibitated situation of the Communist armed
forces in the Mekong Delta after the Tet Offensive, espacially their best
fighting units. The other units, particularly the medical units, both military
and civilian, were also either destroyed or routed, and the military field
hospitals of the Viet Cong had to be moving constantly under allies firepower to
avoid the sweep operations by the GVN and allies forces.
In the Third Communist Military Region, a defector, who had been a deputy
battalion commander and deputy Chief of Staff at the Military Region
Headquarter, gave an authoritative description of the general situation covering
Vinh Long, Can Tho, Rach Gia, Ca Mau, Soc Trang, and Tra Vinh:
“…Toward the end of 1967, the 2nd Infantry Regiment still had three full
strength battalions: the 303rd, the 306th, and the 309th. To respond to the
requirements of the new situation (Tet Offensive) the COSVN ordered the Third
Region to proceed urgently to form one more regiment. Because no officers and
troops were readily obtainable, the Third Region had to pull back the 306th
Battalion to the border area in the Tra Vinh and Vinh Long provinces, using it
as the skeleton for the would-be regiment, aka the 3rd Regiment, aka Cuu Long
Regiment, to be operating in the same provinces. After the Tet Offensive, the
situation became so unfavorable that by the end of 1968, the COSVN had to revert
the policy and reinforce the Third Region with a Regiment taken from the 9th
Division. That left the 3rd Regiment with only 5% native Southerners and the
rest were made up of North Vietnamese regulars.
“…From 1967 to 1969, units in the Third Region came under relentless attacks
with the intensification of the war and took tremendous casualties. Troop moral
was broken and, with the depletion of civilian resources due to the long war and
their growing mistrust of the NLF, new recruitment and training was impossible.
With no new recruits to replenish the depleted ranks in the units, the situation
was desperate in the Third Region. The Third Region sent cadres down to the
villages and hamlets to round up recruits, but even these efforts were
fruitless. The COSVN therefore had to make a sacrifice by reinforcing the Third
Region with another Region resources.
“…The combined losses of the three forces: the main forces, the regional forces,
and the guerrilla forces since the Tet Offensive amounted to between sixty and
seventy percent within the Third Military Region. During the entire nine years
of the resistance war, the situation had never been worse. In concrete terms,
the strength of the main forces had been seriously depleted:
Time Period Actual battalion
1963-1966 400 to 500 men
1967-1968 400 men at most
Tet Offensive to 1969 80 to 120 men
In other words, after the Tet Offensive, the average actual strength of a
battalion is less than a company. He continued:
“…All efforts by the regional leadership committee and the military committee to
replenish the units failed. About 30% of the troops defected or turned
themselves in to the GVN as returnees (hoi chanh vien). There were more
defectors after each battle.
“…Before the Tet Offensive, the Regiment Headquarter would move every six months
to maintain security. But since the end of 1968, it had to constantly move like
a combat unit and never stayed in one place more than seven days. Security was
no longer the primary reason. The constant displacement were necessary to evade
artillery bombardment and military sweep operations. The loss of security at the
bases also caused some disruption in the line of command, resulting in some
confusion in the coordination of the units in both the defense and the attack.
“…From the end of 1969 onward, the situation grew even worse. From then on, no
place could be called secure. In order to avoid being destroyed en masse the
Third Military Region Headquarters had to disperse the senior cadres, spread out
the political section, the staff, and the supply division to locations distant
from one another by at least a day’s march.
“…It became difficult to assemble the cadres, despite the liason service,
because they too were always moving. The liason agents would reach the
designated location only to find that the units had already left…There was a
sarcastic exchange among the senior Communist cadres: although we have
presumably liberated a lot of territory, we don’t even have a safe place to hold
a meeting.
“…During a Party meeting, a mid-level Communist cadre publicly declared: ‘We
have always cheated the people. Month after month we have promised them victory,
but these promises have turned out to be just plain lies. In meeting after
meeting, to hear what you have to say, the revolution appeared to be so strong
and victory to be so close. But as soon as the meeting is over, what you
probably get when you come out of the meeting is the earth shattering explosion
of a rocket fired by some darned helicopter pilot! Then you realize again that
the enemy is so very strong…”
Desertion in II Tactical Zone: (C) Demoralization and agitation in Binh Dinh
Province were displayed in a document captured on January 1, 1969 by a unit of
the 173rd U.S. Airborne Brigade. This report was summed up with the title: “IT
IS BETTER TO RETURN HOME AND CULTIVATE THE LAND THAN TO JOIN THE REVOLUTIONARY
ARMY” by VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 56-57.
Document No. 56 was in the form of a report on “The Status of Deserters”,
describing the serious situation in Binh Dinh where desertion took place en
masse and to the point of being uncontrollable: “…A large number of deserters
from all units in the Province returned to their homes in area 7, especially
those of H. 15 [poss Local Bn, Gia Lai Province, Unit H]. This fact greatly
affected a number of youths and older people in area 7 and caused difficulties
in the replenishment of troops for other units. The deserters made irresponsible
propaganda among the population. This impeded the recruitment of personel to
strengthen the district force.
“Recently, the district Party committee and district military command had taken
measures to recover the former soldiers and bring them to the district and to
initiate an indoctrination movement. But after a period of indoctrination, the
majority of them had no awareness of their responsibility, did not want to join
the army, and returned home. On the other hand, although being indoctrinated
several times, a number of cadres from platoon to company level still did not
understand their duties and tried all means to return home. Others refused to
sent to another unit for reinforcement or to be sent back to their old unit.
“Due to fear of hardships, sacrifice, air and artllery fire, and protracted war
and the fear of dying without seeing their loved ones, they resolutely refused
to join the army.
“At present, we have gathered a number of deserters, and we continued
indoctrinating them with a sense of responsibility and correcting their erronous
thoughts, and then we sent them to the district to strengthen the district and
provincial forces. After being indoctrinated, over 20 comrades agreed to be sent
to the district but not to the higher echelon. They added that if in any
circumstances they were sent to the higher echelon, they would desert and return
home to never re-enlist in the army. One of the comrades who had deserted
challenged his comrade-in-arms saying this: ‘If you want to arrest me, bring
your machine guns and fight with me to see whether you can get me’.
“…Now, we request that highr levels give us instructions as to replenishment of
troops because we noticed that all personel we assigned area 7 sought to return
home; for instance, recently we drew a number of troops from area 7 to replenish
H15 but in the end, even the company-level and platoon-level cadres deserted,
resulting in a large number of deserters in area 7. Thus the brothers said it
was no point drafting more people because they will desert anyway. Please advise
us on the matter.”
The report was signed by “Nghe” and dated July 13, 1968.
Another report(38) entitled “SITUATION OF STRENGTH BUILDING” described another
aspect of of the serious problems suffered by the Communist military forces: “We
also motivated the guerrillas to operate in two directions, as regulated by the
higher echelons. But they returned to their older unit after a short time of
operation or deserted mid-way on the pretext that they could not endure the
shortage of rice. Presently, the district command and district Party Committee
are faced with difficulties in their activities. The ideological indoctrinations
of the people and guerrillas gained no satisfactory results. The guerrillas
fearedfierceness of war, death, air and artillery strikes and they did not want
to be assigned as reinforcements for troops…
“…It is requested that the higher echelon supply us sufficient quantity of
foods, clothing and weapons. Clothing, nylon used as raincoats, and tents were
in rags but we could not buy them from any place. At present, only a small
quantity of rice and manioc is left. We had to buy manioc from the people. Due
to lack of food, we must exchange equipment and facilities for manioc. After
that, we went to Phu yen and An Khe to buy manioc, but there wasn’t any.
“…The shortage of food and clothing greatly affected the morale of troops. Some
of them said ‘since the army gives us no clothes, no nylon sheets and nothing
but loin cloth, it is better to return home to cultivate the land than to join
the Revolutionary Army’…”
This report was also made July 13, 1968 and signed by the same person or agency
secret name. Both reports said all about the basic problems facing the Communist
military forces after Tet, which could not be solved. Although the identity of
the writer could not be determined, he probably was a district Party committee
secretary reporting to the province committee. He knew fully well that his
higher level could not solve the problems at his level, but he wrote the report
any way to cover his rear end.
Let’s now begin with the examination of the Communist base areas in South
Vietnam, an important aspect of the whole situation after the Tet Offensive.
Up to this point the term “Viet Cong” had not been used lavishedly in this
document because it had been used incorrectly by Westerners. In Vietnamese the
term “Viet Cong” simply means Vietnamese Communists both North and South (Viet
is short for Vienamese, and Cong is short for Cong San, the vietnamese
translation of Communist). Roughly more than 99% of Westerners used the term
Viet Cong to exclusively mean the NLF and their followers in the South, at the
same time the GVN officials were too lazy or too ignorant politically to make
any effort to correct that misunderstanding
The above error stemmed from the fact that Westerners were mostly fooled by the
Communist propaganda that the NLF was an indiginous movement independent from
Hanoi. In the mean time any Vietnamese, governement officials or plain
civilians, referred to the NLF as Viet Cong simply because they are Vietnamese
and they are Communists, period. If they are not in the same boat with Ho Chi
Minh, Pham Van Dong, Le Duan , Vo Nguyen Giap or Truong Chinh, they would NOT be
called Viet Cong.
With the above clarification, from now on if the term Viet Cong is used for
short, I hope that would no longer be misleading.
With that said, the topic at this point touches on the role of Communist
sanctuaries in the context of unconventional warfare, how important they were to
the Communists, and how drastically the outcome of the Tet offensive affected
these sanctuaries.
In unconventional warfare the key strategy is to win support of the population
and not to seize territory. That does not mean that the importance of territory
should be underestimated. On the contrary, certain kind of territory are most
indispensible for the survival of the troops in an unconventional war. They are
called the secret bases, or the sanctuaries.
The degree of importance of the secret bases depends on the level of development
of the armed forces. When the Communist armed forces still remained at the
guerrilla level, the secret bases were relatively small and without much
importance. For example, in the period before the “Dong Khoi” 1959, when the
Viet Cong had only 18 guerrillas armed with 5 old rifles operating in My Tho, a
provincial capital, and even fewer guerrillas in other localities, the secret
bases were behind a river bank, the dyke of an irrigation canal, or the shrubs
which would provide good hiding places for their guerrillas or their liaison
agents. While the administration under then-President Ngo Dinh Diem only paid
attention to maintaining control of the cities and towns (as well as the more
easily accessible villages and hamlets), the remote areas among the
criss-crossing waterways, so neglected by the GVN forces, gradually became the
private domain of the Viet Cong.
The more inaccessible areas of the Viet Cong, during this period, were some of
the wooded areas such as the U Minh Forest, the Nam Can Forest, and the Cai Nuoc
Forest. During the period of the anti-French Resistance, the Upper U Minh Forest
and Lower U Minh Forest (Rach Gia and Bac Lieu provinces) were used as the base
area for the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), the Staff Headquarter for
the Nam Bo (Southern) Front, and the headquarter for the Military and
Administrative Committee for the Communist in the South. But during their more
intensified war with the Republic of Vietnam, the U Minh Forest, the Nam Can
Forest and the Cai Nuoc Forest were no longer safe for the Viet Cong, and the
COSVN had to move their headquarters to the border area north of Tay Ninh
province close to Cambodia.
These, and other secret Communist bases, made up an extremely important element
in the conduct of their unconventional warfare. Many of these bases were little
known, but several of them had achieved notoriety in the course of the war: U
Minh, Nam Can, Dong Thap, Do Xa, Luoi Cau, Ba Thu, Duong Minh Chau, War Zone D,
War Zone B (the Communist name for what was known among GVN circle as War Zone
C), Boi Loi, and Rung Sat.
In addition to base areas inside Vietnam, the Communists took liberty of
establishing their secret zones in Cambodian territory, such as the the Parrot’s
Beak (Luoi Cau), Mimot Plantation on both sides of the border, Kep, and Takeo.
Cambodia under Sihanouk was both too weak to resist Hanoi violation, and at the
same time on friendly terms with Hanoi. Sihanouk even allowed Hanoi’s deployment
of hundreds of trucks for transporting war material on Cambodian territory
between Sihanoukville and the border area of Tay Ninh.
A base area now was an area for the stationing of troops, for hidden
encampments, for the training of troops, for storing food and provisions, and
for arms depots. It was also a place from which military campaigns were launched
and to which troops were regrouped at the end of a campaign. It was the rear
area where units were replenished, battle experiences learned, new tactics
drilled, and new policies explained.
During the time period when the main forces units were still being formed, the
base area was also used by the production supply units as the place where they
could grow food for the troops. At the same time, it was in the wooded forests
of the base area where the finance services can exploit the forest resources by
collecting taxes from the lumber business, as well as from peasants tilting the
open land outside the forests. Communist tax collector can also move out from
the cover of dense foliage to collect taxes from civilian commercial buses
intercepted on the highway. These taxes are “due” since the buses are passing
through the “VietCong-controlled” zone.
At the peak of the Communist subversive activities, the Viet Cong base areas
were considered inviolable. But after 1965, the war took on a different turn,
quite unlike the war during the previous anti-Freach period. During the First
Indochina War, the most destructive weapon against the Communists were the
napalms. In the Second Indochina War (or Vietnam War, that kind of weapon was no
longer effective against the NLF war zones such as Duong Minh Chau, War Zone D
etc. This was partly due to the immensity of the area and partly because the
explosive force of the napalms were not sufficient to penetrate the deep
(sometimes as deep as 12 meters below ground) and elaborate underground networks
of the Viet Cong.
But with modern, sophisticated weapons brought into the battlefields of the
Second Indochina War, the secret bases of the Communists were no longer the safe
havens they had been before. The deepest underground trenches were no protection
against the carpet bombs from the B-52’s that at one point in the war had even
slashed away part of the Mu Gia Pass. From June 1965 until the end of the war,
War Zone D was saturated with 18 carpet-bombing raids by B-52’s, War Zone C with
6, and the Do Xa secret Zone with 7.
Following the carpet bombing, bulldozers were brought in to erase the whole
Communist underground installations including military hospitals, military
storage, equipments servicing division-size units. That was what happened during
the major operations into Communist strongholds such as Operations Junction
City, Attleboro, and Cedar Falls mentioned earlier during the years leading to
Tet Offensive.
After the tragic failure of the Communists in Tet, ARVN forces became more
self-confident, more battle-hardened and eager to take advantage of the military
momentum. Several operations were launched in pursuit of the enemy, keeping them
continuously off-balance. Despite careful planning and preparations, the
Communists lost their initiative and had to decide in the last minute to cancel
both the Winter-Spring Campaign of 1969 and the Winter-Spring Campaign for 1970.
On March 18, 1970, Prince Sihanouk learned that he had been overthrown while
vacationing in France then in May of the same year, the South Vietnamese Armed
Forces, with the assistance of U.S. forces, launched a cross-border operation
into Cambodia. The invasion took the government 9th and 21st Divisions to Kep
and Takeo while the 25th Division in the Parrot’s Beak area and the Mimot rubber
plantation. Successive operations: the Binh Tay I, Binh Tay II, and Binh Tay III
pushed deep into northeastern region of Cambodia. Despite some advanced
knowledge of the planned invasion since the beginning of the year, the
Communists suffered heavy casualties and material losses:
-9,500 total casualties
-2,000 crew-served weapons captured
-13,700 individual weapons seized
-1,700 tons of ammunition seized
-5,400 tons of rice confiscated
-15 tons of medicine seozed
The above operations pushed the Communist base areas hundreds of kilometers away
from the border zones, deprived them of the capabilities to stage surprise
attacks against the capital since the enemy’s assembly and regroupment area had
become too distant for these attacks to be successful. The result was that the
Communists were unable to stage any more campaign until 1972, except for some
scattered shellings and sniper attacks. Even the Communist’s 1972 Offensive
could be viewed as a reaction to the losses of their base areas, a situation
that required Hanoi to send large units across the Ben Hai River to engage in
conventional attacks.
The disastrous mishaps experienced by the Communist sanctuaries greatly affected
the supply networks and also the safety and the survival of their infrastructure
in the low land and delta areas as will be discussed in the next sections.
Supply or Rear services (“Hau Can” as called by the Communists) was a matter of
life and death for the Communists special warfare in Vietnam. It was a steadily
increasing necessity as the war moved from the phase of protracted fighting to
the phase of intensified fighting aiming at destroying large GVN units to
achieve a clear-cut victory. During the period of unconventional warfare, the
supply needs of the Viet Cong were food, weapons, ammunition, clothing,
equipment and medecine.
To the Viet Cong, fuel supply was not the most urgent and critical need since on
the battlefield in South Vietnam, 95% of their ground and river transportation
was carried out by manpower, by oxcarts, or by means rented or hired from the
civilian labours. On the other hand, trucks must be used for moving supplies
from North Vietnam down the jungle trails in lower Laos to the border of Kontum
province. After 1967, with the unreserved help extended by Prince Sihanouk,
another supply route was opened from the port of Sihanoukville to the Mimot
rubber plantation and other points along the Cambodian border. Hundreds of
trucks were used on that route to move the seaborne supplies for the Vietnamese
Communists. Prior to 1967, before the opening of Sihanoukville, the seaborne
supplies had to be shipped to Ca Mau or Rach Gia where they were picked up and
transported to Chau Doc and carried by porters up along the Cambodian border to
base areas in the Parrot’s Beak ( Mo Vet) and the Fish Hook (Luoi Cau) secret
base and finally to the COSVN.
Considering the above friendly situation fostered by Sihanouk across the border,
in the Ba Thu secret base area alone in Cambodia, the Communists had up to 11
regiments to ensure adequate supplies for their forces.
Each of the Communist military regions, or sub-regions (Phan Khu), was served by
a separate supply network, the size of which would depend on the local security
situation and facilities for transportation. For example, the Quang Da Region
had a very elaborate and efficient supply network because their operational
network was in a wooded region. In the general area of Binh Long, Phuoc Long,
and Ban Me Thuot, the 86th Supply Regiment was responsible for Sector H which
was the last portion of the supply line managed by Tu Vo, who was also assistant
chief of logistics for COSVN.
A brief case study of the 83rd Supply Regiment (Trung Doan 83 Hau Can) shows the
supply problems experienced after Tet Offensive. This regiment started around
1961 as a small group of about 25 members recruited in Binh Duong Province under
the code name of F-2. It gradually expanded into a full regiment and was headed
by Muoi Bi, who had a rank of major. On the organization chart, the regiment was
made up of a planning section, an ordinance section, a political section and a
supply section. There were five companies under the supervision by the ordinance
section, code name C-139, C-212, C-33, C-135, and C-335. In addition, there were
the 63rd Company in charge of security, a medical company in charge of the
evacuation of the wounded for the regular units, and a company to take care of
the maintenance of the military equipment.
As the expansion grew, the operational area of the 83rd covered the provinces of
Binh Duong, Tay Ninh, and Gia Dinh. During the active period, the purchases of
foodstuff were carried out freely and easily. The men in the finance section of
the regiment would go to Cambodia to get the money from COSVN, then they would
divide the money among the companies for the purchase of rice. Cadres from the
regiment and representatives from the combat units formed a Procurement
Committee to decide on the right prices to purchase food from the civilians. The
rice brought in this manner would be transported to the base areas by buses, by
private sedans, or by riverboats.
The means of transportation could also be rented from private owners. For
example, each oxcart would be paid 50 piasters for each bag of rice moved for a
distance of 4 kilometers. The peasants who were hired by the regiment to take
care of the transportation of the rice were “good, dependable elements” as
recommended by the Personel Office. At the disposal of the 83rd were about 40
pairs of oxen rented from private owners, in addition to the “organic units”
owned by the regiment. The 83rd Regiment had 12 pairs of oxen at Ben Chua and 7
pairs in Long Uyen.
Rice could also be shipped by riverboats from Phu Hoa Dong to Thanh An, Ben
Chua. The fares would be around 100 piasters for each bag of rice. The regiment
owned about a dozen of riverboats and could rent 9 more from owners in Binh
Duong Province.
Nguyen van Hoai, a regrouped cadre returned to the South and defected to the
GVN, disclosed that the 83rd was able to purchase up to 300 bags of rice every
day in the days before Tet (each bag weighed about 45 kilograms). Rice was
brought from diverse areas such as An Nhon Tay, An Nhon Thanh, Phu Hoa Dong, Ben
Suc, and Thanh Tuyen. The rice were transported by porters from Cho Rong, Dat Do
to Nui Cau, Kien An between Thanh Tuyen and Long Uyen. The distance from Thanh
Tuyen village to Nui Cau was about one day by foot. The rice that was
transported to Nui Cau was dispersed in the Ben Cat area from more than 150
depots which were also used for storage of other foodstuff such as fish sauce
and salt.
Once in a while, the 83rd would also purchase a small quantity of petroleum. The
unit was additionally responsible for the shipment of arms and ammunition by
oxcarts from Cambodia to Vietnam. The route would start from Katum, weaving
through Rach Bai Chim, Rach Dong crossing the Han Hao River to Rach Ong Hung and
Ben Cui.
Because of the tremendous intensification of the war, the Communist supply
network in South Vietnam and in Cambodia were gravely disrupted. After the Tet
Offensive in particular, the supply efforts of the Communists in South Vietnam
became completely neutralized because of the following main reasons:
First, as a result of people fleeing the Viet Cong-controlled zones to seek
security, the Communists ran into a situation where there was no one to purchase
rice from and no one to hire who was willing to risk death or injuries in a
cross-fire to transport the rice, if any at all could be purchased.
Second, ambushes laid with the help of the defectors took great toll on the
availability of draft animals.
Third, ports, embarkations and other points of entry were sealed.
Fourth, the GVN Pacification Program depleted a good many supply cadres.
Fifth, the use of defoliage agents had deprived the Communists of the green
canopy cover on their supply routes.
Sixth, many riverboats and vehicular means of transportation at the Communist
disposal were destroyed by artillery shelling and aircraft fire.
IV.1.iv. Desintegration of Communist Infrastructure.
Back in 1965, although the Communist base areas had been laid waste by allied
sweep operations, their infrastructure remained intact. Only after Tet was the
Communist infrastructure badly hurt and gradually reduced to the point of being
irrelevant. The destruction of Communist infrastructure represented an extremely
important strategic loss for Hanoi.
In order to regain the sympathy of the peasants and to maintain control of the
countryside, the Communists decided to temporarily set aside their policy of
class struggle and reverted to the policy of national unity with the hope of
regaining support for the war that was causing them great losses in manpower and
material. But the peasants continued to be bothered by what they learned from
the cadres coming from North Vietnam with stories of unimaginable brutalities
and injustices committed in the Land Reform program in the North.
At the same time, the policy of agricultural taxes and the issuance of national
defense bonds in the Communist-controlled zones genera-ted more and more
resentment from the rural people. They began to work half-heartedly because the
more they produced the more taxes they would have to pay. But as agricultural
production lowered, the peasants became poorer and did not have enough to eat.
This started the waves of peasants fleeing to the “New Life” hamlets in the GVN-controlled
zones. According the a former Assistant Security Chief of Dam Doi District (Ca
Mau Province), as much as 80% of the peasants living in the Communist-controlled
zones in the district fled to the “New Life” hamlets, taking advantage of the
GVN Pacification Program.
The above situation pointed to an extremely important strategic turning point
indicating that the Communist tide was beginning to ebb, that the water in which
the Communist fish had been swimming was drying up.
The Communist defeat in the Tet Offensive was a defining moment. Among the
Communist defectors, and among the peasants who fled to the GVN side, many were
those who not only lost all trust in the Communists but nurtured deep hatred
against the treacherous and deceitful NLF. As a result, the Phoenix Program had
been able to obtain precious intelligence from them. This was a paramilitary
program designed to search out and capture or eliminate Communist cadres.
Instead of waiting for the Communist assassins to come and get the civilians and
GVN officials, innocent or otherwise, the Phoenix Program brought terror to the
Communist doors, and reversed the rule of the game. Starting from 1967, and
especially after Tet, with additional 70,000 Communist defectors rallying to the
GVN, the Communist infrastructure began to disintegrate. The village chapter
Party committee lost the security protection cover normally provided by the
village inhabitants who now deserted them. The Communist cadres in the
infrastructure suddenly found themselves vulnerable – they could be ambushed,
arrested, or killed anywhere, any time. Those who had managed to get away would
not for a moment think about returning to their villages.
The contested areas became firmly pro-GVN areas, and the Communist-controlled
areas started to shrink quickly. The secure GVN-controlled areas kept spreading
farther and farther. Armed cadres from the Pacification Program were in many
places. They guarded checkpoints, laid ambushes at vital communication routes
often used by the Communists, intercepted movements of the guerrillas and supply
agents. The interdiction of supplies was so efficient that many cadres hidden
deep in safe underground bunkers had to surface and turn themselves in to the
GVN in order to avoid starvation.
In addition, some main units of Allied troops also adopted the tactic of
splitting themselves into small units of company-size or even platoon or
squad-size to stage small attacks and conduct attrition warfare against the
Communist infrastructure, keeping them on the defensive. Many of them fled for
their lives. Other surrendered to the GVN.
That was how the Communist infrastructure gradually disintegrated to a point of
being irrelevant about one to three years after Tet. This brought about a
dangerous situation that threatened the COSVN into issuing a directive dated 15
October 1968 for eliminating contacts with GVN personnel and other “complex
problems”. (39) In the contest for the population, the role of the Communist
infrastructure was to go outward, contacting the people and enemy to convert
them to the cause. The directive above showed the opposite attitude reflecting
the COSVN’s fear that their own dedicated personnel were being won over by the
enemy.
The combination of losses in military strength, major sanctuaries, the
disruption of supply networks, and the disintegration of the Communist
infrastructure represented the disastrous consequence of the failed Tet
Offensive. For serious researchers, it was quite clear that the outcome of that
offensive was a major Communist defeat, and the Allied forces won an amazing
victory. South Vietnam got a shot in the arm, and the South Vietnamese rallied
around with a new sense of confidence and conviction that they stood their
ground and deserved the right to live in freedom without Communism.
There were many who did not share the above conviction. The military
consequences as being analyzed in the preceding sections were not seen the same
through the color filters used by the media. A combination of several elements
enabled the media to drum up a Communist victory in Washington D.C., something
rarely found in history that steered the war in a new direction. A military
victory for South Vietnam had been spun into a political defeat.
The aftermath of the Tet Offensive brought about amazing political consequences,
some of them were absolutely beyond rationality and contrary to reality.
IV.2.i. Media Offensive. The media did not wait until the conclusion of the Tet
offensive to launch their own offensive well coordinated with the Communist
efforts.
“From the start of the Tet Offensive, both the press and the television networks
hammered on the theme that Tet was an American (and South Vietnamese)
disaster..”, wrote Davidson. “…Only recently has the media’s misreporting of the
Tet offensive been spotlighted.” That was years later that Davidson was talking
about.
“While misrepresentation of the Tet offensive by the print media as an Allied
defeat shook the American people, it was the television coverage which
shatterred public morale and destroyed the support for the war in the United
states…” continued Davidson.
As if anxious to exploit his personal theme of American defeat, Walter Cronkite
of the CBS made a hurried tour of South Vietnam just for the purpose of
dramatically pronouncing his “verdict” as Davidson described:
“There is an interesting epilogue to Cronkite’s broadcast of 27 February 1968.
During his preparation for the broadcast, Cronkite visited one of the senior
American field commander. After the customary briefings on American and South
Vietnamese successes, Cronkite told the general that he would not use any of the
material just presented to him. He went further, saying that he had been to Hue
and seen the open graves of the South Vietnamese civilians murdered by the NVA
troops and that he (Cronkite) had decided to do everything in his power to see
that this war was brought to an end – a peculiar and reverse reaction to an
enemy atrocity…”
Shortly after that, he pronounced on national television that Tet was an
American defeat and “the only rational way out was to negotiate, not as victors
but as an honorable people” (40)
In comparing Cronkite to Salisbury, the two persons competed equally in
dishonesty and unworthyness. On another dimension, Cronkite’s show of imperial
arrogance lowered him to the level of deranged elitism. His indifference to and
lack of indignation against Communist atrocities indicated a serious degree of
mental degradation.
Cronkite represented a whole generation of media agents who could not accept
reality because they had been brainwashed by an ideology, a kind of cult
fixation which may last for the life time of the cultist. They deserved pity
because fantasy was their reality. “…Tet was already established in the public’s
mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat”. (41) That was the
attitude at NBC when a review of media exaggeration was suggested by a field
producer.
A relatively well known American author, David Halberstam in “The Making of a
Quagmire”, played an important role in shaping the thinking of the American
readers and in preparing the ground work for the media offensive. He joined with
Neil Sheehan in advancing the theme of Ap Bac as a demonstration that South
Vietnam was bankrupt and not worth saving. His perception of the Vietnam War
might have been strongly influenced by personal obsession or tinted ideology.
During the 1991 Gulf War, there was a minor military event in which a small
group of Iraqi tanks punched through the Coalition defense line and launched a
brief attack at an abandoned Saudi Arabia outpost at Al Khafji. During this
brief skirmish, David Halberstam was interviewed on the CNN, January 30, 1991,
and he gave a magnanimous verdict: “…One hundred years later, this could become
like the Tet Offensive in 1968…”
His comment was laughable. For the ignorant, uninformed and misinformed, it does
not take one hundred years to mistake defeat for victory.
Halberstam’s comment led ones to question how much he knew about and understood
the Tet Offensive. Ones even wonder if he understood the Vietnam War at all,
although he wrote a lot about it. Beside Halberstam, there were other
intellectuals such as Slaughton Lynd, Herbert Aptheker, Thomas Hayden, David
Abraham, William Sensiba, Margaret Randall etc., (42) who represented a
“significant portion of the intelligentia”… “eager to think ill of its country
and eager to think kindly of its country’s enemy”, as George Will succinctly put
it. (43)
Eugene Ionesco, after having a visit to the United States wrote that the
American leftist intelligentia had a tendency toward “masochism” and was bent on
criticizing its country for every bad things in the world. Ionesco concluded
that in order to be popular in the presence of these American leftists, you
should never say Americans are not the most evil people in the world. (44)
There existed an amazing complementary relationship between the Communists and
the American left. Given the Communist strong tendency towards sadism in view of
what they did in Vietnam and elsewhere, it was just very natural to contemplate
a fitting marriage between masochism and sadism.
All at the expense of South Vietnam. But why that timing?
IV.2.ii. President Johnson abandoned bid for re-election. Overture for Peace
talk.
The media offensive definitely left a major impact on the direction of the
Vietnam War. President Johnson had no stomach of a war leader to go on. He
decided not to seek re-election for a second term, and he did exactly what Hanoi
and Walter Cronkite wanted him to do. He opened the way for an exit from an
unfinished job. The poor man became the first American president to have lost a
war, after being outfoxed by more cunning brains.
The timing was not inevitable and may be purely an accidental change of heart.
After watching the Cronkite’s broadcast of 27 February 1968, Johnson exclaimed:
“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America”. (45) And if Johnson has lost
middle America, he has lost the war. He has lost the Vietnam War because of his
poor handling of the Air War in North Vietnam.
This paper is not about the Air War in North Vietnam, and it’s only appropriate
to let the matter rest. What happened next was more important. Johnson’s move
implied a defining turning point in American war strategy, more toward a winding
down than further intensification. The bombing of North Vietnam came to a
complete halt as an incentive for Hanoi to sit down and negotiate. The American
overture for peace negotiation surprisingly worried China. Back in North
Vietnam, a political realignment developed regarding Hanoi’s relationship with
Peking and Moscow.
IV.2.iii. The Peking - Moscow - Washington Triangle.
Looking back at the visit by a delegation of high ranking Chinese and Cuban
military experts in March 1967, the observation made by this group was
pessimistic regarding the NLF situation in South Vietnam. It was understood that
they urged some very important action was needed to reverse the course of
events. Exactly what the Chinese told North Vietnam is still not known.
What happened was, after the failed General Offensive, Mao gave a strong
criticism directed Hanoi performance. The Tet offensive also marked the
beginning of the deterioration of relationship between Hanoi and Peking, at the
same time, a warming up of relationship between Hanoi and Moscow, China’s
archenemy.
Mao’s critics of Hanoi was focused on the matter of strategy of protracted
people’s war. (46) According to the Chinese concept, Hanoi made a grave mistake
by hastily skipping a stage in the strategy of protracted people’s war, and that
was a substantial deviation from Mao’s doctrine. Basically in Mao’s concept, the
protracted people’s war consisted of three stages in succession. In the first
stage, the balance of power is in favor of the enemy, therefore the strategy
would be defensive by the revolutionary force against the offensive by the
counter-revolutionary. The employment of guerrilla warfare to wear down the
enemy would gradually enable the revolutionary to reach what Mao envisioned as
strategic stalemate (neither side gains an upper hand yet), meaning a temporary
balance of power, or the second stage. Obviously, the second stage is the
intermediate or transition to the third stage in which the revolutionary is in
the offensive and the counter-revolutionary is in defensive. (46)
Throughout the first stage and the second stage, the revolutionary must abandon
the cities, and uses guerrilla war to hold the rural countryside, and laying
siege of the cities which are occupied by the counter-revolutionary. The latter
would try to protect their urban bases and lines of communication. During the
second stage the revolutionary would gradually move from guerrilla warfare to
mobile warfare, and this would be long and difficult. Nevertheless, the balance
of force would gradually shift in favor of the revolutionary. The key word in
Mao’s strategy is “protracted”.
It’s very interesting to recall the Hanoi Politburo episode prior to Tet in
which Vo Nguyen Giap and Truong Chinh advocated a “protracted war”, and were
duped by the Maoists as “revisionist”. But after the failed Tet Offensive, the
Maoists in Hanoi Politburo were severely criticized by Mao as going against
Mao’s strategy of protracted warfare.
The underlying reason for Mao’s criticism actually lies not in military strategy
but in the fact that the pro-Soviet faction now had the upper hand. Hanoi turned
to tow Moscow’s line of having peace talk with Washington. This gravely troubled
China. At that time, China was still isolated internationally and any strong
alliance between Hanoi and Moscow would be seen as adverse to Peking. China felt
further isolated, and as a result, vulnerable and threatened by the United
States. Deep in China’s heart, there was a strong urge to accommodate the United
States, and a strong fear of rapprochement between Washington and Moscow.
The decision to accept negotiation with the United States was made in Hanoi
without Chinese knowledge, and without discussion with Ho Chi Minh who was in
China at the time. (47) As John Garver quoted from Hoan’s memoir:
“When Premier Zhou Enlai heard this news (about Le Duan’s April statement
announcing that Hanoi would send a delegation to negotiate with the United
States), he went to President Ho, who was recuperating in Beijing, to talk with
him about the matter. It turned out that president Ho was totally unaware of Le
Duan’s statement. Before making decisions on matter of such importance Le Duan
should have gone to Peking to report to President Ho and exchange views with the
Chinese comrades.”
China decided to withdraw its forces from North Vietnam to lessen the risk of
conflict with the U.S. and enhance the chance of rapprochement with the U.S. In
1968, China cut aid to Hanoi by 20 percent and in 1969 by 30 percent. During the
period from October 1965 to March 1968, China sent 329,000 soldiers to North
Vietnam to help build, run and repair roads and bridges in the face of American
bombings. From late 1968 to July 1970, these soldiers were completely withdrawn
from North Vietnam. (48)
The departure of Chinese forces from North Vietnam did not result immediately in
a rapprochement between China and the United States but the signal was well
received in Washington. Again, it was a matter of timing. And it was the
conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in the field of
strategic nuclear missiles that modified the Peking-Moscow-Washington
relationship. It took the Soviet Union from 1965 to 1969 to catch up with the
United States in the number of ICBM, and from 1969 to 1975 to overtake and
double the American number.(49)
Another major development was the growing tide of leftist anti-war movement that
tended to paralyze the American efforts to compete with the Soviet Union.
And the key element that made things happen was the election of Richard Nixon to
the White House in 1968, leading to the Shanghai declaration in 1972.
With the growing tide of anti-war movement in the U.S., South Vietnam became
less and less important and more and more of a nuisance.
South Vietnam at least had four years of improved security until 1972.
The 1968 Tet Offensive was a tremendous lesson to learn. The lesson about the
mediawas very bitter and it may take one hundred years for South Vietnamese to
forget what the media did to South Vietnam.
The lesson about the temporary victory was bitter-sweet. The confidence gained
by the ARVN after the Tet Offensive led to another victory in 1972. The South
Vietnamese Army left a impressive mark in history.
In Sir Robert Thompson words: …”the three South Vietnamese divisions - the 1st,
the airborne, and the Marines - were the three best divisions at that point in
time in the whole of the Western world, Israel included.” (50)
The United States saved South Vietnam in 1965. It was the United States that
abandoned South Vietnam ten years later. Different time, different people, and
different situation.
The lesson about Communist barbaric atrocities is extremely painful for the
Vietnamese people. It may take a thousand years to erase that stain and pain
from Vietnamese memory.
History is still there.
(1). “REDRESSING COUNTER-REVOLUTION: THE VIET CONG SYSTEM OF PUNISHMENT”,
VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 5. Published by United States Mission
in Viet Nam, October 1967.
(2). “The faceless Viet Cong”, by George Garver, Foreign Affairs, April 1966,
vol. 44, No. 3, p. 359.
(3). “DIARY OF AN INFILTRATOR”, VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 1,
October 1967, accompanied by a copy of one page in Vietnamese.
(4).”PROBLEM OF A NORTH VIETNAMESE REGIMENT”, VIETNAM Document and Research
Notes, No. 2-3, October 1967.
(5).The term “Limited Warfare” is a Western concept of warfare, and was used by
VIETNAM Document and Research Notes to translate from the Vietnamese Communist
term “Chien Tranh Cuc Bo” meaning a war proceeded by a number of countries short
of a World War, but limited to a small geographical area, like the case of
Vietnam War.
(6). “WITHIN A VIET CONG STRONGHOLD: DELIBERATION OF THE SUPPLY COUNCIL, CHAU
THANH DISTRICT, BINH DUONG PROVINCE, JANUARY 1967”, VIETNAM Document and
Research Notes, No. 4, October 1967, with partial photocopy of the captured
document.
(7).”VIET CONG YOUTH ACTIVITIES”, VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 11,
December 1967.
(8).”OUT OF RICE, AMMUNITION, AND BANDAGE: NOTES OF A VC VETERAN”, VIETNAM
Document and Research Notes, No. 13, January 1968.
(9). “TROOP TRAINING AND COMBAT COMPETITION CAMPAIGN – An Emulation Plan”,
VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 15, January 1968. Also read “Duong Di
Khong Den” (Journey Without Arrival), by Xuan Vu.
(10). “PACIFICATION AND THE VIET CONG REACTION”, VIETNAM Document and Research
Notes, No. 12, January 1968.
(11). “REPORT FROM VIETNAM”, by Peter Sager, Swiss Eastern Institute, 1968, p.
36-38.
(12). “THE SAVING OF SOUTH VIETNAM”, by Kenneth Greenville,, Alpha Book, Sydney,
1972, p.43.
(13) “VIETNAM AT WAR”, Phillip B. Davidson (General , J-2, MACV), Presidio,
1988, p.441.
(14).”Strategy For Defeat”, by Ulysses S. Grant Sharp (Admiral, Pacific
Command), Presidio Press, 1978.
(15). “NLF THOUGHT ON PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, WORLD POLICIES.
A CADRE’S NOTES ON A HIGH LEVEL 1967 REORIENTATION COURSE”. VIETNAM Document and
Research Notes, No. 14, January 1968.
(16) “Vietnam Crisis”, by Stephen Pan, Daniel, Lyons, East Asian Research
Institute, 1966, p.159.
(17). The Congressional Record, June 7, 1965, p.A-2930-1
(18). “100,000 Rally at U.N. Against Vietnam War”, The New York Times, April 16,
1967.
(19). “Guards Repulsed War Protesters At The Pentagon”, The New York Times,
October 22, 1967.
(20). “Trouble Apostle of Victory”, VIETNAM, Spring 1989, Interview by Colonel
Harry Summers, Jr., p.27.
(21). “For the story behind the story”, from the NewsMax.com Staff, Saturday,
May 1, 2004 10:57 a.m. EDT.
(22) “Vietnam Crisis”, by Stephen Pan, Daniel, Lyons, East Asian Research
Institute, 1966, p.176-177.
(23). “NLF THOUGHT ON PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, WORLD POLICIES. A CADRE’S NOTES ON A
HIGH LEVEL 1967 REORIENTATION COURSE”. VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No.
14, January 1968.
(24). “THE NEW SITUATION AND MISSION: A VIET CONG TRAINING DOCUMENT,” VIETNAM
Document and Research Notes, No. 20, March 1968.
(25). “RICE TASSELS AND POTATO ROWS: VIET CONG GOAL FOR PRODUCTION”, VIETNAM
Document And Research Notes, No. 17, February 1968.
(26). “Strategy For Defeat”, Admiral Sharp, p.199-200.
(27). “THE DECISIVE HOUR: TWO DIRECTIVES FOR TET”, VIETNAM Document and Research
Notes, No. 28-29, APRIL 1968.
(28). “Report from Vietnam”, Peter Sager, p. 27.
A. “DEFEND ORDER AND SECURITY”, VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 28,
April 1968.
(29). ”MAU THAN TRUYEN KY”, (A Diary of Mau Than) by NHA XUAT BAN TRE 1988,
published in Ho Chi Minh City, p. 11.
(30). “MAU THAN TRUYEN KY”, pp. 108, 110.
(31). “THE VIET CONG TET OFFENSIVE, 1968”, Lt. Col. Pham van Son, Chief,
Military History Division, J5 – Joint General Staff RVNAF.
(32). Ibid.
(33). Ibid.
(34). “Why does the left shy away from atrocities in Vietnam”, Wall Street
Journal editorial on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Communist takeover
of South, 30 April, 1975.
(35). “THE VIET CONG TET OFFENSIVE, 1968”, Ibid.
(36). “ON POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL INDOCTRINATION AGAINST DESERTION AND
SURRENDER”, VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 46, October 1968.
(37). “IDEOLOGICAL DEFICIENCY AND LOWER COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS”, VIETNAM Document
and Research Notes, No. 73, February 1970.
(38). “IT IS BETTER TO RETURN HOME AND CULTIVATE THE LAND THAN TO JOIN THE
REVOLUTIONARY ARMY”, VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 56-57, April 1969.
(39). “A COSVN DIRECTIVE FOR ELIMINATING CONTACTS WITH PUPPET PERSONNEL AND
OTHER ‘COMPLEX PROBLEMS’ “,VIETNAM Document and Research Notes, No. 55, April
1969.
(40). Epstein, TV Guide,, p. 13-F.
(41). Davidson, Ibid., p. 486.
(42). Slaughton, a professor of history at Yale University, together with
Herbert Aptheker and Thomas Hayden went to Hanoi late February 1965 and used
this opportunity to contribute to the beginning of the anti-war platform by
criticizing the Johnson Administration for not agreeing to talk with Hanoi.
David Abraham, also a professor of history at Princeton University, took
advantage of his position write distorting teaching materials for political
purpose. He cut, “cooked”, and tailored reference documents to completely change
the content of teaching materials. His purpose was to prove that the capitalists
were behind Nazi Germany, and thus vindicated the existence of the
anti-capitalist system of Communism. His work was unmasked by Henry Turner, a
historian at Yale. Abraham was then dismissed from Princeton. ( Campus Report,
January-February 1986,Volume I, Number II).
Margaret Randall was an American citizen who renounced her American citizenship
in order to work with the Communist Parties of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico and
wrote books in support of Communist Vietnam. She called the United States a
monster and in 1975 declared that the American imperialism suffered a most
disastrous defeat. (Campus Report, January-February 1986, Volume I, Number II,
p. 5).
(43). “Could America have won in Viet Nam”, Atlanta Journal, May 10, 1981, by
George Will.
(44). “The Real War”, Richard Nixon, 1980, p. 6.
(45). Davidson quoted Culbert, The monitor.
(46). “THE TET OFFENSIVE AND SINO-VIETNAMES RELATION”, by John w. Garver, School
of International Affairs, Geogia Institute of Technology, October 1992.
(47). “A Drop in the Ocean”. By Hoang van Hoan, Peking: Foreign Language Press,
1988, p.333.
(48). John Garver, Ibid. p 2.
(49). The Military Balance, 1969-1970 and 1970-1980; also World Power Assessment
by Ray S. Cline (Washington D.C. Center for Strategic and International Studies,
1975, p. 57.
(50).”THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY”, Sir Robert Thompson – Grand Master of
Unconventional War, by Tom Marks, SOF REVIEW, October 1989.
