Page 49 - The Viet-Cong Tet_Offensive_1968

was f ound by Police.

The interrogatlon of prisoners in the ensuing days was
to reveal that in quite a few instances war rnateriel was hidden in
truckloads o{ 6and and kept under sand rnounds until H-hour, when
it was easily retrieved. In other cases Viet Cong city workers hid
their deadly instrurnents in coffins and buried thern in various strate-
gically located cerneteries. As the rnornent arrived for going onto the
offensive,they dug thern up and used the cerneteries as gathering points
for operating tqoops,

The enerny High Cornmand also had hundreds of cadres in
each township. Each of these had his own rnission, as part of the great-
er scherne. Let it sirnply be said that C ornrnunist infiltrators knew
exactly where to go when they arrived in town, how to enter into con-
tact with their cornrnanders, and what to do while awaiting H-hour,
More particularly, sapper troops were told to prepare carefully for
the corning battles a6 the Cornrnunist High Cornrnand was conwinced
that the outcorne depended to a great extent on the perforrnance of
these elite tr oops.

As Tet appr oached ,thou s and s of Viet Cong soldiers open-
ly entered the cities disguised as civilians and arrned with fake iden-
tification papers of alL sorts. These Viet Cong were feted- by locaI
sympathizers and Comrnunist repreaentativeB and were taken to their
respective targets for on-the-spot studies prior to attacking ihern.
A reconstruction of the Viet Cong plan of battle indicated
the following three principles guiding their efforts everywhere :

I. Targets selected fot the initial phase of the carnpaign
rnu6t be key rnilitary and adrninistrative installations where the Corn-
rnunist High Cornrnand can rely on sapper units, either previously
inJiltrated or kept on city fringes, to conduct the attack. These units
rnust be well equipped with 8.40 and B.4I individual rocket launchers
and autornatj.c riJles of the AK farnily. They hoped to overcorne possi-
ble resistance speedily by use of surprise attacks'
2. While sapper troops were attacking f rorn within,ad-
ditional pressure would be brought to bear on the Allies frorn the
outside, especially in the form of artillery bornbardr,.;ents. The attack
on Saigon, however, was rnade an exception with the assailants re-
fraining frorn ueing their big guns against this populated area.

3. In addition to the military prong of the attack,the

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