The Tet Offensive: A Battle that Changed America

by Horace Coleman

 

I was in "the Tomb (the Tan Son Nhut Officers Open Mess)." My battle buddy--Joe "Beaucoup Kilo" Flake and I were eating breakfast after a 14-hour night shift.

We were both scope dopes (air traffic controllers / intercept directors) and both short timers. I was going to rotate on 15 Feb; Joe had even less time left.

As we ate, I think we'd bounced a couple of corks from champagne bottles off the ceiling as we celebrated having lost so much "height" and the Christmas we'd missed by being on shift that holiday. And, the aerial invasion of Vietnam that hadn't happened then. No lie, GI!

The intel boys had decided we were going to be fighting MiG 21s throughout Vietnam on Christmas Day. We'd gone to the classified Air Force version of Jane's All the World's Aircraft to get the data we'd need to know to help the fighter jocks fight those birds. There wasn't much in the leather bound Air Force manual beyond a picture and short sentences that basically said MiG 21s flew real high and real fast.

Some time after Christmas but before New Year's Day, Time magazine carried an in depth feature on that plane. It had more hard data than my outfit had access to. Combat altitude, fire control system lock on range. Stuff like that.

We hadn't finished eating when the PA system blurted out "All troops report to your duty stations!" We left in a hurry.

We were at the radar "shack" in a couple of minutes. The balloon was up. APCs and tanks were rolling through base streets. Fighter bombers were taking off and dropping their ordnance at the end of the runway they'd just left.

There were fire fights in the Foreign Cemetery and other outlying areas of the base. Some hot--to-trot young airman with an M-16 climbed up one of the radomes and started whanging away at who knows what. The MPs thought he was a VC and ate him up while blasting the height finder radar so badly it was knocked out of commission.

Our unit's CO wouldn't issue weapons. He posted guards with rifles-but no ammo. When I was in the boonies of IV Corps I was issued an M-16 and a .38. All I had in Saigon was my personal "suicide" piece: a .25 automatic--which I'd left at home.

Getting killed while fighting is one thing. Being slaughtered is another. The birds I worked with on pre planned and ad hoc missions carried and delivered high explosive bombs, machine guns, cannon fire, CBUs and napalm.

If I intercepted an unidentified flying object with a fighter and the bogie turned out to be unfriendly, I was authorized to tell the pilot to fire. If you can't trust me in a chaotic war zone with a rifle, train me better or send me home.

Wild stuff was happening every where. A Cobra helicopter flying over Cholon saw some uniformed Vietnamese with weapons and opened up on a group of ARVN field grade officers, killing all of them.

The U.S. Embassy was besieged. Our ground troops were trying to repel the attacking VC as unarmed embassy staff fled to the roof. I was told to guide a chopper with a load of weapons and ammo to the embassy. The bird was from an outfit newly in country, was unfamiliar with the Saigon area, and never got high enough to show up on radar.

I gave its pilot street directions, trying to use landmarks I knew but had never seen from the air-a large Catholic Cathedral, the Saigon Zoo, the Presidential Palace-broad streets like Trung Minh Ky. A Vietnamese Air Force Sergeant with a Saigon street map and English as bad as my limited pidgin Vietnamese tried to help.

The chopper finally found the embassy-and got shot down.

Before Tet you could easily tell something was up. B-52 strikes kept getting closer and closer to Saigon.

When things calmed down a little, I wrote short letters to my parents and my wife letting them know I was all right but might not come home when I had expected. My MOS was always short handed and who knew what might happen.

I was in the Passenger Terminal at Tan Son Nhut waiting for my Freedom Bird when I was paged on the PA. "Sorry GI," I thought but didn't feel let down. I really hadn't expected to rotate on time.

When I found out all that was wanted was a junior officer to deliver a pouch of classified documents to Travis AFB, my flight's destination, I was relieved. My bird left at night and was going to refuel in Guam before going to its West Coast destination.

I'd never made a night flight in Nam before. The plane was full of silent soldiers. Every one kept their recent memories and future dreams to themselves. As the plane climbed out, you could see parachute flares, fire fights, bomb blasts, and artillery shells impacting. It was like some painter or poet's vision of one of hell's lower circles.'

When the pilot announced that "We have now passed the point of no return. We are closer to Guam than Nam" a loud cheer broke out. Every one on board knew that now, what ever happened, they wouldn't die in Nam.

When I landed at Travis AFB, I cleared a cursory customs inspection and turned over the pouch I'd been shepherding to an officious young officer from Air Force Security Services. I finally looked at the label on the pouch. "Oh," I said, "Giant Dragon."

"How do you know about that?" he asked in disbelief about the film from U2 spy planes that flew high altitude missions over North Vietnam and Southern China. I said "I'm an air traffic controller from Tan Son Nhut; I used to flight follow them."

Big deal. The North Vietnamese knew about them. The Chinese and Russians did too. Flight following them as they spiraled down from operational altitude was a safety precaution to make them aware of any planes in their vicinity until they got low enough to land.

Should I have told him about the sergeant from my old outfit that told me about the in country hop he'd been on when the pilot "accidentally" landed in Cambodia during a time when the U.S. wasn't officially there? "Oops! I wasn't supposed to be here today!" the pilot said.

How about all the unauthorized, unscheduled, un logged missions that airborne Forward Air Controllers, fighter / bomber pilots and air traffic controllers routinely put together?

Naw. Let people keep thinking there really are secrets. There's only restricted access to information that usually and eventually spreads beyond people who think they've controlled and contained information and knowledge.

I met some of the Ohio State graduate students my wife had befriended while I was in Nam after I got back. I remember the low rent dinner party we went to. While every one else stuffed their faces, I was the only one who paid any attention to the TV newscast showing scenes of fire fights on Saigon streets I'd walked only a few days ago.

The orders to my new duty station had disappointed me. Maine? I wanted California! Actually it was a blessing. A good place to unwind a little. Semi rural. Beautiful country and seascapes. Nice people. My first child was conceived there.

The U.S. powers that be won all the major battles of Tet-eventually. It also learned that it wasn't going to be as easy as they thought to win what was-at least to the Vietnamese factions involved-primarily a civil war.

The U.S. had the advantage of weapons and technology. The VC and North Vietnamese had better knowledge of the terrain, the culture, the history and the people. Time's tide flowed, at that moment, against colonialism, neo colonialism and client states.

Once Vietnam was reunified, it fought the Khmer Rouge to stop mistreatment of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia and to solidify that border. It fought a short border war with the Chinese. Vietnam is now a country with most of it's population born after "the American war." It has its inequities and injustices. It will transform itself at its own pace. It will never be "perfect." What country is?

The U.S. has taken its experience and knowledge and moved on, pushing new, and old, rivers.

There's a Vietnam era GI saying about "the American war" that goes "I wouldn't take a million dollars for the experience I had. I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars."

Shortly after I returned to the states, Lyndon Johnson announced his intent not to stay in power. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed.

Boston raged about school integration. Affirmative Action helped more white women than any one else. Disco died. Suburbia grew. We went to the moon. Computers got desk topped size and smaller. And the wheel keeps turning. Sometimes in ruts. Some times in new lurches. And, every once in a while, in new paths.

Often I wonder: Will America grow up while, or after, "We're #1?" Will we ever learn to "embrace the suck" we can't avoid?