Perhaps the clearest indicator of the importance the enemy placed on the Saigon Circle objective was reflected in the Communist command structure for the attacks. The entire operation was under the command of Lt. Gen. Tran Van Tra, the second-highest ranking officer in the NVA since the death of General Thanh the previous July. just prior to Christmas, Tra had shifted his headquarters from the Fishhook area of Cambodia and taken up residence on the outskirts of Saigon, at the headquarters of Colonel Tran Van Dac, the chief VC political officer for the area. They were joined there by Maj. Gen. Tran Do, the VC commander for the operation.

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The Communist command had eight major objectives for the Saigon Circle. With these objectives achieved, they believed, would come the crippling of the Saigon government, and with that, the General Uprising. A combined force of 35 battalions, organized into one NVA and two VC divisions, was committed.

Singularly or in combination, the VC and NVA units were to seize and neutralize the key command, control and communications centers inside Saigon; seize the artillery and armor depots at Go Vap; and neutralize Tan Son Nhut Air Base and the MACV command center. Further, they would seize the Cholon section of Saigon; destroy the Newport Bridge linking Saigon to Long Bin-Bien Hoa on Highway 1; seize the massive U.S. logistics center at Long Binh; neutralize the U.S. air base at Bien Hoa; and neutralize the 11 Field Forces and III ARVN Corps command centers.

Finally, they were to block any attempts by the U.S. 25th Infantry Division to reinforce Saigon from Chu Chi along Highway I and block any attempts by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division to reinforce Saigon from Lai Khe along Highway 13.

During the early hours of January 31, General Weyand sat in his Tactical-Operations Center (TOC) at Long Binh, watching the battle sites on his operations map light up 'like a pinball machine:' Between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., he ordered the nearly 5,000 American combat troops under his immediate control into action. Later that morning, he ordered his deputy commander, Maj. Gen. Keith Ware, into Saigon to take command of all the U.S. forces Weyand was sending into the city. As a battalion commander in World War II, General Ware had received the Medal of Honor. A few months after Tet, he would assume command of the 1st Infantry Division, the 'Big Red One,' only to die shortly thereafter in a helicopter crash.

As the morning of the 31st dragged on and Weyand's forces were stretched thinner and thinner, his most pressing problem turned out to be the one that was probably the most militarily insignificant: the US. Embassy in Saigon.

At about 2:15 on the morning of the 31st, a taxicab pulled onto Thong Nhut Boulevard and drove past the American Embassy. When machine-gun fire from the cab raked the front gate, the two MPs on duty, Spc4 Charles L. Daniel and Pfc William E. Sebast, slammed it shut and immediately radioed for help. The compound was under assault by a 19-man platoon of the C-10 Sapper Battalion.

Rather than assault the gate directly, the sappers went farther down along the street and blew a hole in the wall with C-4 plastic explosive. Once inside the compound, they killed Sebast and Daniel, but not before the two MPs managed to kill the VC platoon leader and his assistant. The sappers blew open the doors of the chancery with a B-40 rocket, but for some reason they never entered the building. It wouldn't have been hard, for there were only three U.S. Marines inside.

Deprived of their leader, the sappers just sat inside the compound and exchanged shots with the MPs on the outside who had responded to Pfc William Sebast's earlier call for help. Weyand, meanwhile, was under heavy pressure from his headquarters to regain control of the embassy. At 5 a.m. he sent a helicopter carrying troops from the 101st Airborne Division. They tried to land on the chancery roof but were driven off by heavy fire from the sappers on the ground. Another air insertion was attempted at 8 a.m.; this one succeeded, and soon all the VC sappers were dead.

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