Page 107 - The Viet-Cong Tet_Offensive_1968

rifle. Two well placed rounds irnrnediately resulted in the death of
four enerny soldiers at the C ornrnufri st cornrnand post. The event was
f ollowed by a ground assault by the Ranger troops who irnrnediately
killed another three insurgents.
Governrnent troops then began a sweep of the area, visi-
ting and thoroughly searching each house. In one of these, a rnost rylov-
irg spectacle offered itself to their view : arnidst the thunder o{ war
and destruction, a Buddhist rnonk was deep in rneditation. The sol-
diers withdrew at once, respectful of the religious leader as they a1-
ways have been told to be, But the priest turned out to be a fake. He
drew out a pistol and shot, killing one of the soldiers, He then tried
to escape. He had hardly rnade three steps when another soldier an-
grily fired his gun at hirn,killing the fake rnonk and conJiscating his
pistol.

Taking advantage of the great confusion,the Viet Cong
withdrew in the direction of Ba Hat and Su Van Hanh s'.reets leaving
the area under governrnent control, A fleet of 20 fire engines was
imrnediately brought to the scene and by 1700 hours, the fire was extin-
guished. Three hundred houses had been burned to the ground. In
the rneantirne governrnent soldiers had killed ten insurgents and cap-
tured another two.
Faced with such a situation,the Governrnent of the Repu-
blic of Vietnarn (CVN) did its best to keep the population calrn. It also
issued a series of rrleasures to help stabilize the situation.
On the third day of the Year of the Monkey Pre sident
Nguyen Van Thieu went on the air requesting the population to keep
calrn and help Allied troops in re-establishing order in the cities. He
also declared rr,artial 1aw throughout the land and ternporarlly closed
down all arnusernent centers while forbidding all gatherings,

That very day, General Cao Van Vien, Chief of the Joint
General Staff of the Republic of Vietnarn Arrned Forces issued an
order of the day to a1.1. his troops,charging the Viet Cong with viola-
ting the truce order they had thernselves ordered. He also gave the
people an idea of the rnilitary situation throughout the Republic and
urged the troops to defeat the C ornrnunist plan of offensive at any
costs.

That rnorning the Cabinet al.so rnet in a special session
that resulted in a speclal condernnation of the National Liberation

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