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House To House: Playing the Enemy's Game in Saigon, May 1968
Republic of Vietnam, May 1968: The battles of the Tet Offensive were over, and the Paris Peace Talks were about to begin. Yet, the battlefield situation remained tense. Shocked by the intensity and massive scale of the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive, allied commanders kept waiting for the other shoe to drop in the aftermath of the lunar New Year’s nationwide attacks against South Vietnam’s urban centers.
Just days before the opening of the peace talks, that other shoe finally dropped. While they had no chance of securing victory on the battlefield with their second wave of urban attacks, the communists expected to wreak substantial psychological damage, making apparent to the American public, if not to the U.S. military high command, the folly of fighting a foe that was seemingly immune to combat losses.
The second wave of attacks became known as the Mini-Tet Offensive. The name was a misnomer as far as the intensity of the combat was concerned. Although the communists concentrated on fewer targets than they had during Tet, Mini-Tet was the costliest two-week period of the Vietnam War in terms of American casualties.
Saigon was the Mini-Tet’s primary target. In addition to penetrating the Cholon section of the capital, the enemy attacked the capital city’s southern suburbs of District 8. In response, four battalions from the 9th Infantry Division were dispatched from their Mekong Delta battlefields to clear out the invaders. What resulted was a brutal house-to-house street fight.
Tenacious Viet Cong guerrillas dug in like termites, building bunkers inside and between houses, and knocking holes in adjoining walls so snipers could steal unseen from one building to another. There was no provision for retreat; the Viet Cong were on a suicide mission.
On the other side were equally tenacious American infantrymen who had to adapt themselves to city fighting after previously operating in the rice paddies of the Delta. The battle for southern Saigon lasted a week; the U.S. Army’s only prolonged urban combat of the entire Vietnam War.
The battle ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the soldiers of 9th Infantry Division. They had fought with raw courage, earning numerous decorations, including four Distinguished Service Crosses, in the course of pushing the Viet Cong out of District 8. However, in fighting that eerily foreshadows American combat in Iraqi cities, the engaged battalions destroyed the neighborhoods they liberated. This destruction, and the attendant civilian casualties, resulted in an official investigation of the 9th Infantry Division for its sledgehammer application of artillery and air strikes within the capital of South Vietnam.
Just days before the opening of the peace talks, that other shoe finally dropped. While they had no chance of securing victory on the battlefield with their second wave of urban attacks, the communists expected to wreak substantial psychological damage, making apparent to the American public, if not to the U.S. military high command, the folly of fighting a foe that was seemingly immune to combat losses.
The second wave of attacks became known as the Mini-Tet Offensive. The name was a misnomer as far as the intensity of the combat was concerned. Although the communists concentrated on fewer targets than they had during Tet, Mini-Tet was the costliest two-week period of the Vietnam War in terms of American casualties.
Saigon was the Mini-Tet’s primary target. In addition to penetrating the Cholon section of the capital, the enemy attacked the capital city’s southern suburbs of District 8. In response, four battalions from the 9th Infantry Division were dispatched from their Mekong Delta battlefields to clear out the invaders. What resulted was a brutal house-to-house street fight.
Tenacious Viet Cong guerrillas dug in like termites, building bunkers inside and between houses, and knocking holes in adjoining walls so snipers could steal unseen from one building to another. There was no provision for retreat; the Viet Cong were on a suicide mission.
On the other side were equally tenacious American infantrymen who had to adapt themselves to city fighting after previously operating in the rice paddies of the Delta. The battle for southern Saigon lasted a week; the U.S. Army’s only prolonged urban combat of the entire Vietnam War.
The battle ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the soldiers of 9th Infantry Division. They had fought with raw courage, earning numerous decorations, including four Distinguished Service Crosses, in the course of pushing the Viet Cong out of District 8. However, in fighting that eerily foreshadows American combat in Iraqi cities, the engaged battalions destroyed the neighborhoods they liberated. This destruction, and the attendant civilian casualties, resulted in an official investigation of the 9th Infantry Division for its sledgehammer application of artillery and air strikes within the capital of South Vietnam.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2006
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About the author
Keith William Nolan
12 books15 followersKeith William Nolan was an American military historian, focusing on the various campaigns of the Vietnam War. Nolan obtained a history degree from Webster University. Nolan pioneered and excelled at his own special brand of military history: the excellent combining of in-depth interviews with those who took part in the fighting and deep research into the official records. That, along with a fluid writing style, added up to ten (eleven, counting one he co-authored) of the best books on Vietnam War military history. Keith Nolan died of lung cancer in February 2009 at the age of forty-five.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 4, 2014
Keith Nolan's House to House: Playing the Enemy's Game in Saigon, May 1968 is simply an extended combat narrative without historical perspective. It's a long catalogue of personal accounts of fighting in and around Saigon during the so-called mini-Tet offensive of May 1968. Many of the accounts are fascinating, brave and tenacious actions were commonplace, but the book lacks context. It doesn't cross my threshold into Three Star territory.
September 1, 2016
Said it before and I'll say it again - Nolan is the premier Vietnam War historian. This work focuses on the engagements in the wake of Tet '68 - the so-called Mini-Tet. Although the National Liberation Front (i.e. Viet Cong) did not seriously hope to overthrow the regime in Saigon, as it had just a few months previously in the Tet Offensive, but it came dangerously close in some instances. Moreover, the NLF did succeed is reaping demoralizing chaos and destruction, and craftily baiting the U.S. and ARVN to use heavy firepower in dense, urban combat, thus inflicting horrible civilian losses so counter-productive in a counter-insurgency operation. One South Vietnamese official quipped, "The Viet Cong have no Air Force of their own, so they use ours." Saigon was lightly - but heroically - defended while Westmoreland remained distracted. A must read for Vietnam War scholars and those interested in the lessor known but still crucial saga of Mini-Tet.
October 19, 2008
Keith Nolan is peerless when it comes to capturing the chaos of war.
February 7, 2011
Excellent account of the mini-Tet in Saigon and roll played by my old division (9th Infantry). Very graphic, but powerful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews