Fifty years after a turning point in the Vietnam War, the country’s communist government is stamping out public discussion of painful memories.
Ngoc Dai, a 23-year-old soldier in the People’s Army of Vietnam, was fighting the Americans near the besieged Khe Sanh combat base when his unit received elating orders. They were to emerge from the jungle, “liberate” the old imperial capital of Hue in central Vietnam and stir up a nationwide popular uprising. It was January 30, 1968, three years after President Lyndon B. Johnson had ordered 125,000 American troops to Vietnam to ward off a communist takeover of the south, and the rest of Southeast Asia. Dai and his comrades saw things differently: With nationalistic pride, they were on a mission to reunify Vietnam, launching the surprise assault on South Vietnamese and American troops now known as the Tet Offensive.
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