Tet Mau Than Offensive 1968
Dr Tran Xuan Dung, M.D. Major
Just after midnight on the eve of the lunar New Year,
Sounds of firearms were heard in nearby Nha Trang.
The civilians wondered what was happening
In the direction of the Naval Training School.
Explosions also occurred in Ban Me Thuot.
Then in Kon Tum, followed by Hoi An,
Pleiku, Da Nang, Qui Nhon.
And the blood in the civilian homes coloured the green New Year cakes red.
Though it was Tet, the festive mood was no more.
Due to the continuous shooting by the Viet Cong.
And over by the yellow blossom tree,
A now handless girl wept heartachingly.
The Viet Cong had gathered secretly, preparing their attack.
They infiltrated four tactical zones.
They first assaulted in the Second Corps
And the following day, continued attacking the rest of South Vietnam.
The Viet Cong reached the capital: Saigon.
They had three targets in mind:
The national radio station, the presidential palace
And the US embassy.
Beginning with their firearms,
They then launched B40 rockets.
The palace rear gates were soon destroyed;
Armed with machine guns our guards responded...
Along Nguyen Du Street, they dashed from tree to tree.
Their blood wetted the tree trunks
And the enemy bodies
Littered the street, and their weapons lay scattered.
A car approached the US embassy,
Its occupants fired at the walls,
In the side wall a hole soon gaped,
Through which the enemy tried to charge.
Five US Marines were standing guard,
And fired to defend, to repel.
The Viet Cong fell, one by one.
Calm was restored after six hours.
Masquerading in combat police uniforms,
They numbered an entire truckload.
They aimed to occupy
The national radio broadcasting station.
A radio technician was bold
And refused to air the Communists' programs.
Not knowing how to broadcast it themselves,
They vented their frustration on the equipment.
In camouflaged fatigues
The Airbourne troops arrived
To change the situation
And soon the invaders' corpses lay scattered in the station.
In Tan Son Nhut Airport,
The enemy approached three battalions at a time.
Attacking simultaneously from East,
West and North, Their rockets commencing the attack.
Flares suspended in the sky brightened the spring night,
The airport's minefields could not halt their advance.
Control of the airport teetered
For the outposts were lost and the enemy continued their advance.
Two Airbourne Companies of the eighth battalion,
Demonstrating their well known bravery,
Stopped the enemy advance, fighting well into daybreak.
The Viet Cong withdrew and hid in a nearby textile factory.
Control of the airport now restored,
Helicopters and fighters soon took off
To search and destroy.
The target? The textile factory.
Different places in the capital
The Viet Cong tried to occupy.
They invaded the Joint General Staff Headquarters.
One building was lost, the situation was precarious.
The Viet Cong outnumbered the guards,
And attacked from all sides.
The Marine Task Force B from Cai Lay
Was airlifted back to save Headquarters.
The “Sea Tigers” were tenacious fighters
And reversed the situation within hours.
The NVA's regiment “101”
Withdrew towards the Binh Loi bridge.
Whilst in Go Vap it just so happened
That the Artillery headquarters was invaded by the enemy.
But the artillery men removed all essential parts,
So the Viet Cong could not use our cannons.
Their attack on the naval base did not meet with success,
They failed to seize the boats moored in the deep,
And their reinforcements could not cross the river.
Defeated, they knew not where to run.
In many districts the enemy had penetrated deeply.
They searched civilian homes
To kill the relatives of men in uniform
And to shoot all government officials.
In Phu Tho, Racecourse, Bay Hien junction
There was fighting everywhere. In Minh Mang district,
In Cholon, at police stations,
And in Gia Dinh the trouble lasted for many days.
At Binh Loi bridge the fighting continued,
Marines were stationed to block both ends.
Two sweltering nights then ensued.
Finally the Marine Task Force B humbled the Viet Cong.
In Tran Hung Dao Street, black smoke darkened the sky,
For the Viet Cong had burnt civilian homes and their innocent owners too.
The air reeked of the burning smell of human flesh.
As the Marines and police fought back, the enemy moved into the alleyways.
A Viet Cong was caught, and the people were pleased,
Their pity was only for those just killed by him.
His cruelty to innocent civilians made General Loan's blood boil
And he took out his gun to mete out justice.
The Viet Cong's body was flung backwards,
Blood spurted forth from the deadly wound.
All Viet Cong deserve such a death
And first of all, Ho Chi Minh.
New Year's in the Imperial City,
Tinh Tam lake was blanketted in fog.
At three in the morning enemy artillery hammered,
Their 122mm rockets thundered.
The Viet Cong attacked the Perfume River's north bank,
Then they advanced to the west gate of the citadel.
Their battalions assaulted simultaneously,
And managed to cross its thick walls.
The “Black Panthers” were waiting for them
At the east end of the airstrip.
One of the Viet Cong Battalions were repelled,
And they retreated in the direction of some houses.
As for the other Viet Cong battalion,
They were occupying a camp
Before being dislodged by the “Black Panthers”
Who now added this to their long list of victories.
Both banks of the Perfume River were in danger,
The city was in enemy claws.
Three regular NVA regiments
Fanned out about the citadel and its environs.
The Viet Cong drove on towards the Imperial Palace,
Which they easily occupied.
Stranded and outnumbered, the Ist Infantry Division Headquarters
Hung in and braved all enemy fire.
It was impossible to imagine that it was actually Tet,
Given the amount of suffering to which these city dwellers were subjected.
City streets were transformed into battle grounds,
And white rice cakes were a sticky blood red.
The natives of Hue bore tragic visages,
And one morning, as the heavy fog lifted,
They saw the sight of the Viet Congs' flag adorned with yellow star
Flying above the citadel: it was the harbinger of death.
Around the citadel was a moat,
Inside it, numerous walls,
Interlacing paths and alley ways,
The palace itself, its gardens, and those of the inhabitants.
All this was ideal for hidden troops,
A perfect labyrinthine complexity.
Meanwhile the enemy built trenches and bunkers,
Meanwhile they had not been able to quash the 1st Infantry Division.
The Viet Cong tried to control the citizens.
They opened the prisons, releasing some thousands of criminals.
They persuaded military and government officials to surrender.
Their voices reverberated from megaphones.
The NVA searched each house thoroughly
And shot innumerable inhabitants on the spot.
Those suspected were led away to be tortured,
Death rained down on every household.
The fighting was ceaseless,
The 3rd regiment was called in to reinforce.
The situation was dangerous, but the morale of the infantrymen remained strong
Meanwhile, the 1st Infantry Division still tried to hold out.
The communists forced the civilians to participate
In all their political propaganda,
Like attending meetings and raising communists banners,
And spying on each other.
Not all civilians reported to the communists,
Anxious for their destiny, they hid within their homes.
Elderly women were felled by bullets,
Rats nibbled at the swollen corpses of babies.
After controlling Hue for five days
They entered Phu Cam cathedral.
Some hundred Catholics were captured
Until now, where they are buried remains unknown.
People were randomly killed
They stabbed, and shot, and decapitated.
Petrified, a woman hid under a staircase
Nursing a dead baby in her arms.
More than half of the Imperial City was brought to its knees,
The ARVN tried to liberate district by district.
The allied forces helped in the southern half,
And all under the depressing drizzly weather.
Schools and homes were shelled,
Flying bullets, and screeching artillery shells rained down.
Torn flesh, bodies flung high,
Stones and bricks fell, bones were crushed.
The 1st Infantry Division was finally reinforced,
And the tide turned in the favour of the ARVN.
Three Airbourne Battalions: the 2nd, the 7th, and the 9th
Were deployed, and all fought fiercely.
Military corpsmen, aided and medevacuated,
The wounded soldiers gave each other priority in being treated.
All wounds were equally painful, they reasoned,
It was all in the name of serving the nation.
The Imperial Palace long since invaded
Now housed NVA field headquarters.
As it was surrounded by thick strong walls
It posed quite a challenge for the ARVN.
As the dreadful days passed,
Perfume River languished and lost her beauty.
As the southern bank slowly recovered
Displaced people searched for their mothers, mothers looked for their children
The emaciated population - dispirited souls,
Dug and pushed aside bricks and rubble to find family
But only found hair glued fast by blood to scalps and
Bodies so far decomposed, the faces were unrecognisable.
Hoards of rats - overjoyed, ran and
Cried shrilly as they nibbled on the human flesh and bones.
Here and there skulls lay shattered against the walls,
And a New Year banner still dangled from the roof.
Meanwhile, Marine Task Force “A”
Battled in close combat within the citadel.
In “tiger-striped” uniforms they stormed,
The flagpole would before long fly another flag.
And then an encouraging piece of news for our fighters:
The NVA field commander had been killed
And with him had died the communists' fighting spirit,
And sooner or later the rest of the NVA too would be no longer.
About 100,000 civilians were homeless,
They lived in the ruins of their homes,
Schools and cathedrals were swamped with refugees,
There were no blankets, no rice, but destitution was in abundance.
Ladderless, the Marines still tried to recover the citadel,
Trying to reach the ramparts, they stood on each other's shoulders,
Under the rain of enemy fire, their battlecries reverberated.
The flagpole was heroically recaptured.
Enemy bodies, torn and a slippery red lay like litter,
A melange of skin, bones, earth and bricks.
The survivors fled to Van Thanh,
In the now damaged city of Hue, the noise of firearms finally ceased.
Brigadier General Ngo Quang Truong had been awaiting the moment
To demand that his men raise the flag,
The “Sea Tigers” were surprised by such an inappropriate request,
But to bicker seemed so trivial, and the Brigadier's will was done.
Flinging their weapons high, the fighters shouted for joy,
The gunsmoke had not yet cleared,
But the communist flag had already been lowered
To be torn and trampled underfoot.
Everyone waited with baited breath for that moment
When the South Vietnamese flag was jubilantly raised.
Its brilliant yellow hue flapped in the breeze,
The soldiers cheered, the civilians shouted in happiness.
But tears still streamed...
People looking hopelessly for family still,
Discovering instead the mass graves
Of those massacred by the NVA.
An elderly woman stood by the grave - her legs buckled
When she caught sight of her child as the bodies were unearthed.
Someone leapt in, catching sight of something familiar.
Another clasped the shoe of a loved one and wept.
The bodies lay, indifferent to the cries and shouts
They lay in different positions; but they had all met with the same fate.
Relatives tried to identify them,
Some succeeded, others ironically not so “lucky”.
6,000 innocents slaughtered
Some lay crumpled, others fully extended.
One corpse lay legless,
Others boasted crushed skulls, swollen abdomens full of maggots.
5,000 of the enemy had been killed,
But somehow the butchering of innocent civilians overshadowed this fact.
But in the eyes of the civilians, before their anger be somewhat alloyed,
Revenge should be visited upon the enemy at least ten-fold.?
The ARVN also suffered losses for the nation,
400 had laid down their lives,
1,800 had been wounded,
To save the civilians, to gain victory.
In the Mau Than Offensive,
The enemy had attacked the four tactical zones in the same way,
Commencing first by shelling with artillery,
They backed this up with the advance of their regular and sapper units.
A hundred thousand homes destroyed,
41 cities attacked,
Ten of them severely damaged,
Civilian deaths too high...
The grief unfolded for the
14,000 civilians killed,
And for the heartbreaking condition of the wounded,
Who numbered a painful 25,000
Dr Tran Xuan Dung, M.D, Major
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