The Fog Of History

Have just reached the beginning of the sixth episode of Ken Burns's compelling documentary series on The Vietnam War. The build-up to the Tet Offensive makes for fascinating viewing, especially for this viewer whose contemporary awareness of what was happening in Vietnam back in 1968 was beginning to coalesce. I would have been eleven years old at the time and knew precious little but did realise that the Yanks faced a huge set-back and were in one heck of a mess.

It was in the summer of that year that I first felt any genuinely strong emotion related to what might loosely be termed political events with the assassinations of Doctor King and Bobby Kennedy. I distinctly recall being in the back-yard of our house at Gresham Street and reading a blow-by-blow account of the Kennedy shooting that made me very sad on account of the pointlessness of it all. (Though perhaps I should qualify this by acknowledging I'd felt sad when JFK was murdered back in 1963. It's just that there was a clarity about my mature thought aged eleven that hadn't been there in the earlier version of myself.)

Something I learnt only today - many of the North Vietnamese genuinely believed the Tet offensive would bring an end to the war with those in the South rising against the government in Saigon. How wrong they were, though exactly why I've yet to discover. I'd assumed they regarded the Offensive as being a sort of morale-booster as opposed to a game-winner. Yet further proof, if it were needed, of how little we can know for sure, except in the light of hindsight.