The Communist military leadership used the 1967 Christmas cease-fire to good advantage. Senior commanders used the truce to reconnoiter their assigned objectives. On Christmas Day, Colonel Nam Truyen, commander of the 9th VC Division, slipped into Saigon with forged papers identifying him as a student returning home for the holiday. Once inside the city, he made a thorough tour around the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base, one of his primary targets.

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By December 15, 1967, the U.S. command had turned over sole responsibility for the defense of Saigon to the South Vietnamese military, a gesture of confidence in the growing reliability of the ARVN. The main task of securing Saigon was assigned to the 5th ARVN Ranger Group, supported in turn by the 2nd Battalion, 13th Artillery, the only U.S. combat unit remaining inside the city itself. Meanwhile, 39 maneuver battalions from the US. II Field Forces (an organization essentially the same as a corps) were earmarked for a campaign against the VC and NVA base camps near the Cambodian border. By the time of Tet, only 14 US. and Free World maneuver battalions were scheduled to be inside the so-called Saigon Circle, a 29-mile zone around the capital.

Lieutenant General Fredrick C. Weyand, commander of 11 Field Forces, didn’t like the pattern he was seeing. His troops in the border regions were experiencing too few contacts, and enemy radio traffic around Saigon was getting heavier. On January 10, 1968, Weyand (a former intelligence officer and future chief of staff of the U.S. Army) went to see his boss, General William C. Westmoreland, with his concerns. He convinced Westmoreland to allow a shift of some of 11 Field Forces’ combat power back inside the Saigon Circle. (When the attacks did come, 27 maneuver battalions were back inside the Circle. Weyand’s call on Westmoreland may well have been the single most decisive decision of the entire battle.)

By late January, intelligence estimates placed 20,000 to 40,000 NVA troops around Khe Sanh. General Westmoreland was now convinced that the enemy would violate any Tet truce. Still believing that the main enemy effort would be in the north, he requested the US. and South Vietnamese governments to cancel the cease-fire in the ARVN I Corps tactical zone.

The initial blow fell at Khe Sanh on January 21. From that point until the city attacks erupted at Tet, the attention of the entire US. military and the national command structure was riveted on the far-flung Marine outpost. The press started making comparisons between Khe Sanh and Dien Bien Phu; Khe Sanh became an obsession for President Johnson, who had a scale model of the battlefield installed in the White House Situation Room.

When the main attacks on the cities finally came, Giap’s plan didn’t exactly go off without a hitch. The secrecy of his buildup cost him something in coordination. At 12:15 on the morning of January 30, Da Nang, Pleiku, Nha Trang and nine other cities in the center of Vietnam came under attack. The assaults were premature-units in the Viet Cong’s Military Region 5 had jumped off one day too early. General Westmoreland’s intelligence chief, Brig. Gen. Phillip B. Davidson, told him to expect the same thing country- wide by the next day. At 9:45 that morning, the Allies canceled the Tet ceasefire for the remainder of the country. At 11:25 all U.S. units were ordered to full alert. The maneuver units inside the Saigon Circle were ordered to take up blocking positions around Saigon and around the nearby Long Bin-Bien Hoa military complex. An element of surprise had been lost.

At 1:30 in the morning on January 31, the presidential palace in Saigon was attacked by a 14-man platoon from the Viet Cong’s C-10 Sapper Battalion. By 3:40 a.m., Hue, far in the north, was under attack. The Tet Offensive was in full swing.

Before the day was over, five of six autonomous cities, 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and 64 of 245 district capitals had been attacked. Except for Khe Sahn, Hue and the Saigon Circle, however, the fighting was over in just a few days. But even after the first full day of nationwide fighting, the Allied command still didn’t have a clear picture of what was happening. In a press conference late on January 31, General Westmoreland was still maintaining that the attacks on the cities and Saigon were diversions for the main effort at Khe Sanh and the DMZ, instead of the other way around.

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