A Marine of the 1st Marine Division is seen here armed with a M1A1 Thompson sub machine gun during the Battle of Hue City, one of the many areas the Viet-Cong and NVA attacked when they launched the Tet Offensive, this photo was taken February of 1968. The M1A1 was not a standard issue weapon by this time period, but was categorized as being “Limited Standard” or “Substitute Standard” weapon, this categorization going as far back as the 1950’s as the M3A1 “Grease gun” was the standard issue sub machine gun for the US military and stayed that way all the way up into the 1990’s, still seeing service in the Tank Corp. during the First Iraq Invasion. During the Battle of Hue City, it was common for Marines and Army troops to raid ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) weapon arsenals, because the attack was so sudden and unexpected, there was a lack of weapons to arm all the remaining US troops in Hue City. Weapons left over from World War Two and the Korean War were often given to ARVN troops as a supplement to the standard M14 and M16 rifles given to US troops during the Vietnam War.
Sgt. Dale A. Dye, War Correspondent attached with 2nd Bn, 3rd Marines describes the fighting at Hue City.
“We organized ourselves in a line and tried to sweep southward, but people were getting shot up and we were running into ambushes and having to clear houses so that line just never really held all it could; it really turned into a meat grinder.
In the jungle you tend to see fleeting shadows and you see muzzle flash, but you rarely see the bad guy. You rarely see the enemy. But that wasn’t the case in Hue. I mean, you saw those guys; you saw them put the rifle on their shoulder and shoot at you. You see them everywhere. We were using every one we had, and anything else we had. We needed a flow of replacements for wounded or killed. The new guys still had their airline boarding passes in their pockets.
I’ve never seen more shell-shocked and just plain exhausted troops anywhere in my life. There just never seemed to be an end to it. The more we killed, the more we found. It was so grinding, so exhausting, that the only high you got, really, was the fact that you were alive for the next 15 minutes. It was, I guess, the one battle that still haunts me because you saw so many things. I don’t think it was because I was naïve; I think it was because it was that brutal.”
The Battle of Hue City began on January 30 and ended on March 3, the fighting was very intense, engagement distances happening as far away as a few hundred meters to only several feet away. The Viet-Cong and NVA began the attack on Hue with what is called the "Massacre at Hue”, at first the VC and NVA were targeting teachers, political figures and anyone who worked within the South Vietnamese government, not only killing them but also killing their families as well. Soon this turned into simply targeting any civilian who wasn’t sympathetic to the VC or NVA, resulting in 2,800 – 6,000 civilians being killed. Estimated vary because mass graves were discovered after the attacks and many bodies went unidentified or missing because of eyewitness statements saying they saw more or less people being killed or buried. The Battle of Hue ended with US and ARVN troops recapturing the areas lost to the VC and NVA, only to have the Communist forces recapture Hue once more in 1975. Casualties for ARVN troops were 452 killed and 2,123 wounded, US casualties were 216 killed and 1,584 wounded. NVA and VC causalities vary between sources, the PAVN (Peoples Army of Vietnam, NVA) Department of Warfare states that 2,400 were killed and 3,000 were wounded from January 30 to March 28. But, a NVA document captured by ARNV troops stated that 1,042 NVA troops were killed in the city and several times that were wounded. MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) states that 5,133 NVA were killed.
In the end, contrary to what is said and portrayed in media at the time and still to this day, the Tet Offensive of 1968 was a failure for the NVA and VC. The NVA and VC had been planning this attack for years in advance and had a network of underground tunnels and systems of supply to preemptively place weapons and ammunition all over South Vietnam for the attack, they were expecting this offensive to take US and ARVN forces by such surprise that US forces would be forced to retreat and leave South Vietnam, giving it up to Communist forces.
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