Thirteen years after the North Vietnamese government’s Resolution 15, in January 1959, set in motion the armed struggle to conquer South Vietnam, North Vietnamese Army (NVA) General Vo Nguyen Giap believed he had found the elusive ‘center of gravity’ he had been searching for. Four years earlier, with the Tet Offensive of 1968, he had thought it was the relationship between the South Vietnamese people and their government. But the ‘Great General Uprising’ he had counted on never materialized, and his Viet Cong (VC) guerrilla auxiliaries were annihilated in the process.

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But this time it would be different. Since that debacle, the United States had begun a process of what it called ‘Vietnamization’ — i.e., turning the war over to a rearmed and equipped South Vietnamese military while the Americans gradually withdrew. Beginning in 1969, U.S. Army and Marine combat divisions began leaving Vietnam. By 1970, both Marine divisions had departed, and by 1972 American in-country strength had fallen from a peak of 550,000 to some 75,000. The only U.S. Army ground combat units left in Vietnam were the 196th Light Infantry Brigade and the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). U.S. Air Force and naval units had been drawn down as well.

It appeared that a classic center of gravity had been created — the relationship between South Vietnam and its American ally. Not only had the majority of U.S. military forces been withdrawn but American congressional and public opinion had shifted dramatically against the war, and the chance of U.S. reintervention appeared to be nil. All that remained was for the NVA to administer the coup de grace.

And that’s what their Operation Nguyen Hue was designed to do. Better known as the ‘Eastertide Offensive,’ it dropped all pretense of guerrilla war. Instead, it was a three-pronged multidivision NVA cross-border invasion, well supported by tanks and heavy artillery. General Giap committed six NVA divisions to the attack in I Corps in the northern portion of South Vietnam. Another three NVA divisions were ordered to strike in II Corps in central South Vietnam, and yet another NVA/VC three-division force would attack in III Corps north of Saigon.

For the I Corps attack, the elite 308th Division, a veteran of Dien Bien Phu, and the 304th Division were poised to move into Quang Tri province while the 324B Division had the follow-on task of attacking the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) positions of the 1st Division west of Hue City. In the weeks before the invasion, the NVA was busy setting up an extensive anti-aircraft network around their staging areas north of the DMZ (demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam) to protect their vulnerable second echelon forces and logistical trains from expected U.S. airstrikes. In February 1972, the NVA in the DMZ fired more than 50 Soviet-made SA-2 SAM missiles, shooting down three U.S. F-4s.

On March 30, 1972, the three NVA divisions crossed the DMZ into the northern part of South Vietnam, to be joined, by the end of April, by an additional three divisions. Facing them was the recently activated 3rd ARVN Division, composed of a combination of other ARVN units and local forces. The 3rd Division was generally responsible for the defense of Quang Tri province, and two of its three regiments, the 56th and 57th, had been activated less than six months before, with only the 2nd Regiment, recently transferred from the crack 1st ARVN Division, having any real combat experience. The two newer regiments occupied a series of hilltop strongpoints and fire support bases immediately south of the DMZ overlooking all the main access routes. Preceding the attack, NVA long-range artillery and rockets rained on all of the outposts of the 3rd Division. As bad luck would have it, two of the 3rd Division’s regiments were in the process of exchanging positions at that exact time, and as the salvos of NVA artillery started to come down, they caught thousands of ARVN soldiers in the open. The three NVA divisions, supported with tanks and self-propelled artillery on a scale never seen before in Vietnam, crossed the DMZ along the Ben Hai River and drove south into Quang Tri province.

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