The Vietcong
launches fierce attacks in the Tet Offensive
During
1967 and 1968 the North Vietnamese
strategist, General Vo Nguyen Giap, launched the famous
Tet offensive ( taken from the name of the Vietnamese lunar
New Year in mid-February). On the Tet holiday, the Vietcong forces went
into action and launched coordinated fierce
attacks on more than a 100 cities
and towns over the length and breadth of South Vietnam. Despite
this idea of Giap to devastate South Vietnam, and his hope that the
campaign would be decisive, it failed. The Vietcong failed to capture
any towns or cities and were ultimately driven back from most of the
positions they had gained.
Vietnamese Losses of the Tet Offensive
In
the fighting, North Vietnam lost 85000
of its best troops and many political officers and secret organizers for
the guerrillas. Many more had been wounded or captured, and this fighting
had created more than half a million civilian refugees. Tet was nothing
less than a catastrophe.
US Losses of the Tet Offensive
The Americans lost 2 500 men in the Tet Offensive.
In spite of this US victory, however, by the early spring of 1968 much
of the American public had concluded that the war would not be a victory
for America.
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