THE WEEKENDER: Outnumbered 20 to 1

By Clyde Black

To all my Vietnamese friends, Happy New Year!  This time of the year brings many thoughts and memories to my mind.  Vietnam Vets know this time of the year as, TET.  The Vietnamese New Year.  In America the utterance of TET brings back the brutal televised images of the Battle of Hue during TET 1968!  I’m going to try to point out some things about this that you may not have thought about before.  People ask me if I was in Vietnam during TET.  My answer is yes and I was there for 3 of them.  You see, there was a TET offensive every year!  I didn’t participate in the battle at Hue City but there was serious fighting everywhere else.  Hue City is the fight that got all the attention by the media, changed the course of the war and changed news reporting forever.

Walter Cronkite was a renowned news reporter who really got into the Battle of Hue and decided to announce, in his opinion, that the war was unwinnable. He therefore went from becoming a reporter of the news to an opinion based news commentator.  That opened the door creating celebrity instead of factual reporting of the news.  In fact, after TET 1968, the North Vietnamese were crushed and had the politicians allowed us to follow their limping army back to the north, we could have crushed them.  They were defeated but Cronkite and others reinforced the political left’s arguments that we should not be there.

For me, TET 1969 brought the worst fighting.  I was a young Marine with the 3rd Bn.  7th Marine Regiment in a valley west of DaNang with areas called Charlie Ridge and Happy Valley.  In 1969 the North Vietnamese wanted to attack DaNang like they had attacked Hue the year before.  Outnumbered by perhaps as much as 20 to 1 we stopped them outside DaNang.  They never reached the city so the news of the American victory never reached the public.  It was one of the greatest Marine Corps victories ever but nobody knows about it! The war had become so unpopular that nobody wanted to hear about the win!  The news “commentators” were at the bars in DaNang trying to write their next “anti” article instead of reporting facts.

So I think of all my fellow vets during TET every year.  Glad you survived TET and made it home whichever year you were there.  In TET 1969 my unit had 75% casualties reported.  Many simply didn’t go to the Doc because the wounds were minor and actually 2 Docs (Navy Corpsmen) had died trying to save wounded Marines.  Should you stand for the flag?  I think so.  God, please continue to bless our country.

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