Overview

A comprehensive military history report, Staying the Course describes the twelve-month period when the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies embarked on a new and more aggressive strategy that shook the foundations of the South Vietnamese state and forced the United States to reevaluate its military calculations in Southeast Asia. Hanoi's general offensive-general uprising brought the war to South Vietnam's cities for the first time and disrupted the allied pacification program that was just beginning to take hold in some rural areas formerly controlled by the Communists. For the enemy, however, those achievements came at a staggering cost in manpower and material; more importantly, the Tet offensive failed to cripple the South Vietnamese government or convince the United States to abandon its ally. As the dust settled from the Viet Cong attacks, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered his military commanders to press ahead with their current strategy unchanged apart from some short-term tactical adjustments and a modest increase in the U.S. troop deployment. His decision to stay the course seemed to bear fruit as the allies repaired their losses and then forged new gains throughout the summer and autumn of 1968 despite two more Communist offensives, each one proving to be weaker than the last. Even so, the allied situation at the end of this period appeared to be only marginally better than it had been in late 1967; the peace talks in Paris had stalled, and American public opinion had turned decisively against the war. Contents: Part One * Opening Battles * 1. A Question of Momentum * 2. Opening Moves: Battles North and West of Saigon * 3. Protecting the Heartland * 4. Operations in the Mekong Delta * 5. Across the Central Highlands * 6. Defending the Central Coast * 7. Reinforcing I Corps * 8. The Gathering Storm * Part Two * The General Offensive Begins * 9. Tet Unleashed * 10. Saigon Embattled * 11. Mekong Firestorm * 12. Fighting in the Northern Provinces * 13. Reverberations * 14. The Allies Strike Back * 15. To Khe Sanh and the A Shau * 16. The General Offensive Renewed * 17. Mini-Tet in Saigon * 18. A Summer of Attrition * 19. Thwarting the Third Wave * 20. An Evolving War The vast majority of American men and women who went to Vietnam did so in the uniform of the U.S. Army. They served their country when called, many at great personal cost, against a backdrop of growing uncertainty and unrest at home. This book, the twelfth volume of the U.S. Army's official history of the Vietnam War, is dedicated to them. To many Americans, the war in Vietnam was, and remains, a divisive issue. But nearly fifty years after the end of major U.S. combat operations in Vietnam, well over half the U.S. population is too young to have any direct memory of the conflict. The massive American commitment

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9781723919381

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