Tet
Offensive
The Vietnam War was a war fought between the Americans and the
Vietnamese. The commander of the United States army was William Westmoreland and
the commander for the North Vietnam was General
Vo Nguyen Giap. Towards the end
of the war we as Americans had lost over ninety thousand people and they could
not be replaced. We ended up losing
the war but there was a mean turning point to this war, it was known as the Tet
Offensive.
Once knows as the “Lunar
Holiday/Tet” the New Year festival for all Vietnamese people is now recalled
as the time so many lives were taken. It
all started August 17, 1967 when Gaip decided to have a “massive uprising.”
He started gathering together troops and supplies in the South Vietnam. Along
came the time for the offensive to come out. On January 30,1968 at mid-night 19
members of the Vietcong secretly assembled.
It was the turning point of the Vietnam War. This was an unknown attack by the Vietcong on about one
hundred South Vietnam cities and 12 US air bases.
Late 1968 the United States army and the Republic of Vietnam joined into
the South Vietnam and began growing rapidly. After a month passed there had been
a high count of Viet Gong diversionary attacks, which caused many Americans to
move farther away form the cities, and lead to further battles in the war.
Fighting was more severe in Hue,
the former imperial capital and Saigon than anyplace else. Vietcong attacked the
U.S. embassy in Saigon, killing five American people. Main battles were all
along the Eastern coast in Da Nang, Hoi An, Quangngai, Kontum, Pleiku, Quinhon,
Banmethuot, Quangtri, Khesanh, Bienhoa, Can Tho, and Vinhlong Within a few weeks
of the attacks the U.S. and South Vietnam had regained most of its land but, the
Vietcong still held on to the Hue. On February 24, Hue was retaken and 100,000
Vietnamese had lost their homes and not much was left of the ancient capital.
Westmoreland said that they had a
good plan but then made a minor mistake to let us have a positive note.
Westmoreland quoted, “ The enemy exposed himself by virtue of his strategy,
and he suffered heavy causalities.” Which
turned out to be very untrue, the Vietcong lost a little over thirty-two
thousand troops and the Americans and
South Vietnam lost about three thousand,
but they also had more troops than the Americans did to continue fighting.
Clifford the man in the secretary position of the White House said “We seem to
have a sinkhole, we put in more ---they match it, I see more and more fighting
with more and more casualties on the U.S. side and no end in sigh to the
action.”
After the Tet Offensive
had ended on February 24,1968 only over a month
later Americans showed they had a different view point on war.
Before Tet Americans were fifty-two percent for the war and the decisions
the President was making and only twenty-eight were against it.
Once the Tet Offensive was over both sides logged in a forty percent.
At a point before Tet the media was even for the war then never said
anything against it nor for it, and then once again after all the media now put
out all negative thoughts about the war in general. February polls were taken to see what people thought about
the war and how the President handled it and sixty percent did not approve of
this. The country now decided that it was one of the biggest mistakes they had
ever made to put our troops in the war. Rusk,
a man of office said, “We had good support until that point, despite the
campus demonstrations. War weariness eventually set in, and this was the
watershed year.”
That was the end of the Tet
Offensive although, it lead to other battles. The Americans stayed in the war
until 1973 when they signing a case-fire with North Vietnam and Vietcong. In
1975 Saigon falls and South Vietnam falls and surrenders to the communists. Once
the war had finally ended the Americans had more causalities then could be
counted for. This proved to
be a very sad and tragic event.