>A US adviser was quoted as saying, “We usually kill the seriously wounded Viet Cong for two reasons. One is that there is no room for the enemy. The second is that when you’ve seen five-year-old girls with their eyes blindfolded, their arms tied behind their backs, and bullets in their brains, you look for revenge. I saw two little girls that dead yesterday. One hour ago I shot a Viet Cong.”
>A child ran out of a hut, grabbed a gun lying on the ground, and darted inside again. The officer told his M60 gunner, “If she does that again, shoot her.”
>During the NLF’s short rule, its cadres had systematically murdered every government official and supporter, intellectual, bourgeois, and “enemy of the people” whom they could identify, together with their families. “One can understand the hate that lets the communists strangle military types with wire and decorate the walls with the bodies, but to bury alive whole families including the children on no stronger pretext than they refused to take up arms defies the imagination.”
– Max Hastings, on the horrific (but not unique) brutality of the Tet Offensive
Op has taught me so much about some of my favorite subjects. Seriously appreciate your work.
Humanity is fun.
If anyone is looking for a good book about the Battle of Hue, check out Hue “68 by Mark Bowden. It’s written in a style akin to Black Hawk Down in the sense that he provides a great deal of context and tells the story of the battle from various perspectives.
Seeing VC with a BAR in 6 is a trip
Great photos, OP!
Yeah you never want to fight a land war in Asia.
The Tet offensive ultimately made the war much shorter despite being an operational failure up to that point American news had been telling the people back home that victory was around the corner. Going from that to seeing 80,000 VC (who they thought were on the edge of annihilation) take nearly 100 towns in several days shattered that image.
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>A US adviser was quoted as saying, “We usually kill the seriously wounded Viet Cong for two reasons. One is that there is no room for the enemy. The second is that when you’ve seen five-year-old girls with their eyes blindfolded, their arms tied behind their backs, and bullets in their brains, you look for revenge. I saw two little girls that dead yesterday. One hour ago I shot a Viet Cong.”
>A child ran out of a hut, grabbed a gun lying on the ground, and darted inside again. The officer told his M60 gunner, “If she does that again, shoot her.”
>During the NLF’s short rule, its cadres had systematically murdered every government official and supporter, intellectual, bourgeois, and “enemy of the people” whom they could identify, together with their families. “One can understand the hate that lets the communists strangle military types with wire and decorate the walls with the bodies, but to bury alive whole families including the children on no stronger pretext than they refused to take up arms defies the imagination.”
– Max Hastings, on the horrific (but not unique) brutality of the Tet Offensive
In the first phase of the Tet Offensive, the VC lost [20,000 fighters ](https://www.thetimes.com/imageserver/image/%2F51ffbc8f-214d-4979-83c2-b7b6fa570cbf.jpg?crop=5127%2C7724%2C0%2C8&resize=1771.5&format=webp&quality=9)killed in action. Another 30,000 would die in further offensives throughout the year. Combined with wounded, disease cases (mostly malaria) and desertions, the Viet Cong would cease to be a national fighting force due to its enormous losses.
The ARVN lost 6,000 dead, while the Americans lost [4,000 dead ](https://vwam.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/MP1-1.jpg)in the first phase. [The civilians lost the most](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/02/20/opinion/20Vietnam-web/merlin_133998905_b2f04dcf-0040-496d-a06f-a7ddb1548dd2-superJumbo.jpg). Hue was the worst, where NLF cadres committed horrific (but not unique) massacres against the city’s population with a death toll of 6,000.
Op has taught me so much about some of my favorite subjects. Seriously appreciate your work.
Humanity is fun.
If anyone is looking for a good book about the Battle of Hue, check out Hue “68 by Mark Bowden. It’s written in a style akin to Black Hawk Down in the sense that he provides a great deal of context and tells the story of the battle from various perspectives.
Seeing VC with a BAR in 6 is a trip
Great photos, OP!
Yeah you never want to fight a land war in Asia.
The Tet offensive ultimately made the war much shorter despite being an operational failure up to that point American news had been telling the people back home that victory was around the corner. Going from that to seeing 80,000 VC (who they thought were on the edge of annihilation) take nearly 100 towns in several days shattered that image.
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