A Pyrrhic Victory Is Defined, Per Merriam-Webster, As “A

The Vietnam war, also called the Indochina War , may be said to have started in 1957 when Communist-led rebels began mounting terrorists attacks against the government of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The rebel forces, commonly called the Vietcong, were later aided by troops of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). American combat personnel were formally committed to the defense of the South in 1965. An agreement calling for a ceasefire was signed in January 1973, and by March the few remaining U.S. millitary personnel in Vietnam were withdrawn. However, the war between the two Vietnamese sides persisted inconclusively for two additional years before South Vietnamese resistance

Thousands of soldiers and other military assets were moved to the isolated base of Khe Sanh, away from arguably more useful bases throughout the rest of the country. When viewed on its own, the strategic military advantages of a victory at Khe Sanh were relatively inconsequential. “Khe Sanh had little impact on the outcome of the Vietnam War. Seen in this context, and given the intentions of the participants at the beginning, Khe Sanh was an overall failure for both sides” (“The Battle of Khe Sanh”). The true significance of the battle at Khe Sanh is the fact that it laid the groundwork for the Tet Offensive, and thus for the psychological turning point of the war.

In the spring of 1967, the North Vietnamese army, also known as PAVN, changed tactics. They decided to attempt to open up a new battlefield along the South Vietnamese border in order to lure U.S. forces into an environment favorable to the North Vietnamese. They planned to use guerilla tactics to ambush the American troops and inflict heavy losses. In accordance with this strategy the PAVN sent a reinforced regiment to the Khe Sanh area. The regiment consisted of the “95C Regiment, 325 Division, plus a battalion from the division’s 18C Regiment.” (Willbanks 116) The first encounter between the PAVN regiment and U.S. forces occurred in April of 1967. A U.S. marine patrol was ambushed on one of the hills surrounding Khe Sanh. When a rescue patrol was dispatched to retrieve the ambushed marines, they suffered heavy losses due to their M16 rifles jamming en masse. When news of this accident was relayed to Congress it sparked a wave of congressional hearings and army modifications to improve the reliability of the M16.

“No other battle of the entire war produced a better count or kill ratio then that claimed by the Americans at the battle Khe Sanh”, (Pisor, 1982). On the Morning of January 21 1968, the Marines of Khe Sanh Combat Base woke to fighting and bombardment in one of the longest and most intense battle of the Vietnam War. It was the first of a seventy-seven day battle that later is titled as the Tet Offensive. The People’s Army of North Vietnam began a massive artillery strike on their combat outpost. Six thousand United States Marines, together with their Vietnamese allies struggled to hold off four Battalions of Northern Vietnamese soldiers. This battle would later prove what our artillerymen already knew: there is no-obstacle, or force that

and South Vietnamese enjoyed a much stronger position than the French had In addition to all of helicopters and cargo planes that could resupply and reinforce the Marines, they could rely on the heavy bombing capacity of the B-52 fighter planes, which dropped loads close to 100,000 explosive bombs on the hills surrounding Khe Sanh over the course of the battle. Although U.S. officials expected a full scale attack by North Vietnamese forces on the base, it never came (Impact of Khe Sanh). In March, Westmoreland ordered Operation Pegasus, a joint Army, Marine and ARVN ground advance that relieved the base and ended the battle by mid-April, after the 77

The civilians retaliated by aiding the Viet Cong eventually joining them. This continued over the span of the war thereby creating an ever-increasing number of People fighting against the Americans.

The Vietnam War and active United States involvement in the war began in 1954, although the ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades. It wasn’t until 1965 that President Johnson, with the support of the general public, decided to deploy US combat forces to battle in Vietnam. Eventually, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and soon military leaders were calling for 175,000 more men by the end of 1965 to help aid the struggling South Vietnamese army. Disregarding

In 1961 the worst war ever fought by America had just started. The Vietnamese of the north also known as the Viet Cong had invaded the south to take control of the entire country. America and other democratic countries felt the spread of communism to this country would be a stepping-stone for other communistic countries around the world, also known as the Domino Effect. America, as cocky as they were, invaded Vietnam to help the southern Vietnamese. Although America is one of the most powerful countries in the world, it extremely underestimated the dedication of their enemy. Backed by China and the USSR, the Viet Cong were a determined and very tough enemy. The Vietnam War as a whole was a terrible act by the US government. Vietnam was

North Vietnamese forces under the command of Senior General Van Tien Dung began their final attack on Saigon, which was commanded by Gerneral Nguyen Van Toan on April 29th, with a heavy artillery bombardment"

On March 29 in 1973, the last American troops left Vietnam, leaving thousands of missing behind. The same day, a few hundreds of war prisoners were released in Hanoi. Within a couple of months, the war between the North and the South was restored and it was soon apparent that the communists are more unified and have a military dominance. In Cambodia and Laos, where the fights were not so strong, the communist victory also seemed unavoidable. In March 1975 the northern Vietnam commenced a complete military invasion in the South. Southern president Thieu asked Washington for help, but the democratic majority in the Congress refused and on March 30, the Americans could watch on TV how North-Vietnamese tanks enter Saigon, which was soon renamed to Ho-Chi-Min’s town. Scenes in American embassy in Saigon, where thousands of scared Vietnamese fought for places on board of last American helicopters were a sad ending of the biggest American foreign policy catastrophe.

In earlier years, the occasion had been the event for a casual agreement in South Vietnam's long-running clash with North Vietnam and their comrade southern partners, mockingly known as Viet Cong. In mid-1968, on the other hand, the North Vietnamese military commandant General Vo Nguyen Giap picked January 31 as the event for a composed hostile of shock assaults went for softening the stalemate. Giap accepted that the assaults would result in Armed force of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) strengths to fall and incite discontent and defiance among the South Vietnamese populace, driving them to ascend against the administration in Saigon. Furthermore, Giap accepted the union between South Vietnam and the United States was temperamental; he trusted the offensive would drive the last wedge in the middle of them and persuade American soldiers to surrender their resistance of South Vietnam. After midnight on Wednesday January 31, the North Vietnamese propelled the Tet hostile at Nha Trang. About 80,000 North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong made part in this wide move, taking the fight from the wildernesses to the urban areas. The offensive would bear on for quite a long time and is seen as a noteworthy defining moment for the American state of mind toward the

Preceding Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination was North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive against the United States which “signified the beginning of the end of U.S involvement in the Vietnam War” (CNN). Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, “was a holiday during which the North and South had previously observed an informal truce” (CNN). However, on January 31st, 1968, a “coordinated attack by Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese targeted 36 major cities and towns in South Vietnam” (CNN). Despite the heavy casualties, “North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region” (“Tet Offensive”). This attack was a crucial turning point in the war because the ambush resulted in Americans withdrawing their support of the war. Before the offensive, the U.S.

“In August of 1964, in response to the American and GVN espionage along its coast, the DRV launched a local and controlled attack against C. Turner Joy and the U.S.S. Maddox , two American ships on call in the Gulf of Tonkin” (Brigham 2). This resulted in the United States government giving Lyndon Johnson the ability to make war under the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. President Johnson then gave orders to perform air raids on Northern Vietnam pushing the United States further into the war. Compared to 1962 when only 9,000 soldiers supported the South Vietnamese, by June 1965 82,000 soldiers occupied the country. The number only continued to rise exponentially, and by 1966 370,000 soldiers had been sent in to prop their South Vietnam allies. President Richard Nixon withdrew American soldiers from Vietnam and as part of the “vietnamization” of the war. Over and 60,000 American soldiers had been lost in a war to preserve the status quo, not to win.

These attacks were not has accuracy as they hope it could be by dropping napalm on the entire area hoping to hit your targets. Many innocent civilians died during these attacks, which only helped to increase the resentment towards the military officers. Military strategies like Operation Rolling Thunder were implemented to try to limit the impact of guerilla warfare, where they bomb the region but at same time seriously limiting the United States chancing of win the war because it look like the United States was aggression and conquest nation. Its look like United States was more concerned with fighting the rebels than protecting the South Vietnamese people. Who they claimed to protect but at the same time three million people were killed and

United States Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had spent millions of dollars to aid the non-communist South Vietnamese. Before 1964 thousands of American military advisers were training and assisting the South Vietnamese army. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to bomb North Vietnam put the United States in the center of the longest war in the nations history. The Vietcong (North Vietnamese) grew more aggressive after the incident at the Gulf of Tonkin. On November 1964, they attacked the American base at Bien Hoa and destroyed five B-57 jets while damaging twenty more. Since the increase of tension with the Vietcong continued, draft calls had increased substantially in the United States and American casualties were being felt across the country.