Watching this episode reminds one just how devastating 1968 was for America, a pivotal year for the country that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, a growing anti-war protest movement, and riots at the Democratic National Convention. It's a wonder sometimes how we fumbled our way through it all.
I was staggered by a number I heard expressed in this episode. Throughout the duration of the Vietnam War, over thirty six million sorties were flown by U.S. forces over the country!! They were used not only to pour lethal fire on the enemy, but also to drop propaganda leaflets, move military supplies, and remove wounded from the battlefield. It's impossible really to comprehend that that kind of activity was occurring in the skies over Vietnam.
The beginning of 1968 found Communist Party First Secretary Le Duan of North Vietnam laying the groundwork for a major offensive in the South. Eighty four thousand North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong were primed to attack thirty six provincial capitals and dozens of American and ARVN military bases. Six of the largest South Vietnamese cities were also targeted, including Saigon, Danang, and Hue. The 'Tet Offensive' was designed to break the back of South Vietnamese morale and bolster Communist resolve in defeating their opponents.
Militarily, the Tet Offensive wound up a huge defeat for the North Vietnamese, as fifty eight thousand of those eighty four thousand would wind up killed, wounded or captured. The reality of Tet however, contradicted everything the American public had been told about the progress of the war in the preceding months. Instead of the enemy having been weakened in the past, it proved how resilient the Communists were in replacing their dead with new conscripts to carry on the war with vicious ferocity. In effect, the Tet Offensive broke the will of the U.S. to continue the war.
Out of this episode comes one of the enduring images of the war that TV viewers in America were shocked to witness. When a Viet Cong civilian was captured and marched through the streets of Saigon, South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan took his revenge and shot the man in the head with cameras rolling. Just like the sight of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire, this image created a lasting impression in the minds of Americans that things were going so badly that the war had to come to an end. Still, it would take many more years.
Following Tet, President Lyndon Johnson replaced William Westmoreland as head of U.S. forces in Vietnam with General Creighton Abrams. Seeing the challenge to his administration from members of his own Democratic Party, Johnson made a stunning announcement to the American people - he would not run for re-election as President. I recall it as a bold announcement at the time, but you couldn't second guess his decision. Johnson knew that his chances of reelection were slim, and as we'll see in the following episode, the raucous Democratic National Convention held later in the year was upstaged by clashes between protesters and police in Chicago.
I was staggered by a number I heard expressed in this episode. Throughout the duration of the Vietnam War, over thirty six million sorties were flown by U.S. forces over the country!! They were used not only to pour lethal fire on the enemy, but also to drop propaganda leaflets, move military supplies, and remove wounded from the battlefield. It's impossible really to comprehend that that kind of activity was occurring in the skies over Vietnam.
The beginning of 1968 found Communist Party First Secretary Le Duan of North Vietnam laying the groundwork for a major offensive in the South. Eighty four thousand North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong were primed to attack thirty six provincial capitals and dozens of American and ARVN military bases. Six of the largest South Vietnamese cities were also targeted, including Saigon, Danang, and Hue. The 'Tet Offensive' was designed to break the back of South Vietnamese morale and bolster Communist resolve in defeating their opponents.
Militarily, the Tet Offensive wound up a huge defeat for the North Vietnamese, as fifty eight thousand of those eighty four thousand would wind up killed, wounded or captured. The reality of Tet however, contradicted everything the American public had been told about the progress of the war in the preceding months. Instead of the enemy having been weakened in the past, it proved how resilient the Communists were in replacing their dead with new conscripts to carry on the war with vicious ferocity. In effect, the Tet Offensive broke the will of the U.S. to continue the war.
Out of this episode comes one of the enduring images of the war that TV viewers in America were shocked to witness. When a Viet Cong civilian was captured and marched through the streets of Saigon, South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan took his revenge and shot the man in the head with cameras rolling. Just like the sight of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire, this image created a lasting impression in the minds of Americans that things were going so badly that the war had to come to an end. Still, it would take many more years.
Following Tet, President Lyndon Johnson replaced William Westmoreland as head of U.S. forces in Vietnam with General Creighton Abrams. Seeing the challenge to his administration from members of his own Democratic Party, Johnson made a stunning announcement to the American people - he would not run for re-election as President. I recall it as a bold announcement at the time, but you couldn't second guess his decision. Johnson knew that his chances of reelection were slim, and as we'll see in the following episode, the raucous Democratic National Convention held later in the year was upstaged by clashes between protesters and police in Chicago.
