. That is serious infantry stuff , clearing buildup area .... It looks like the marines are improvising from vague field manual memories , as good a method as any ! I do know Tet was a military disaster for the veit cong , Vo Nguyen Giap always affirmed it wasn't his idea , it had been pushed by the southerner commanders On the other hand , there is the Walter Crondike piece , resonating in people living room back home and credited with having changed the perception of the war http://youtube.com/watch?v=i214f5-w19w It became standard to blame the journalists for having " lost Vietnam " even though they were on the ground and waved the flag quite a lot but since It was the first war to be run by computers ,statistics and memos , beside staff officers , I would rather blame the eggs heads like Mac Namara and the Rand Corporation . .
well since were on the topic of journalists heres some more examples of journalists on the line. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iioXCs0K ... re=related
. IMHO The troops seems much more in control than in the Hue thing , better trained and motivated too , no slur on the soldiers , but the Army brass seems to have made some progress .
though tet did catch the us military off gaurd at first ,it turned into a great killing of the viet cong from which they never really recovered .unfortunately it was spun by the press as a disaster for us forces and helped turn the tide of the american public against the war .
Wierd stuff happening when I try and post... I'll try again. (PHP error, no subject specified...) ------------------ The TET Offensive was without question a watershed moment in the Vietnam war. After TET, the VC wasn't just an endangered species, they were extinct... and US troops faced only NVA regulars after early '68. During the Battle to retake Hue, there were many accounts of US Marines who refused to be evacuated when wounded. They wanted PAYBACK against what had mostly been an unseen enemy. After years of stepping on booby-traps and seeing their enemy melt back into the jungle, they were now able to kill them in great numbers and they were delighted to have the enemy in their sights at long-last. Tim
when col hackworth took over a pooly led rabble of a regiment in the delta in 67 or 68 , he instituted so many new rules and regulations ,ie. no more helo drops of stuff while in the feild ( choppers pinpoint units for the vc ) , no more sleeping on the roof of the bunkers at night ( much cooler than inside )...its said the the angry grunts raised a cash bounty for the guy who fragged and thereby removed the new col. soon enough the new training in stealth and manuver skills started to allow the G.I.S to actually, for the first time , catch the vc unawares and ambush THEM for a change ..with the turnaround in us casulties , combat success and better moral , the regiment soon came to adore their colonel with an almost religious fervor . unfortunatly , hack was too outsoken , insubordinate and unconventional to ever get past colonel and he soon retired .after service in ww2 , korea and viet nam , he was at the time the most highly decorated soldier in the us army.
