Here comes the year of the rat. That’s what 2008 is for the Chinese and the Vietnamese. As it unfolds we’ll hear loads about the Olympics in Beijing. But past events will also feature – the 90th anniversary of the end of the first World War, the 80th anniversary of the Wall Street crash (so relevant again), the 60th anniversary of the first Arab-Israeli war from which so much of the modern world’s angsts derive, and the 40th anniversary of the May riots in Paris that angrily upended the idea of peace and love…

One is already on us.
Tet is the Vietnamese New Year, the big holiday of the year. Thanks are given to ancestors and benefactors, gifts are exchanged, families visited. Time off is taken. And in 1968, it began on February 1st.
There was no reason to think that it would be any different from 1967. The American War rumbled on. It was a largely rural guerrilla war and one that didn’t seem to be changing much. President Lyndon Johnson was telling the folks back home that the US and its allies in the South Vietnamese regime were getting the upper hand.
In Ireland an anti-war sentiment had been gathering. One meeting in Dublin’s Mansion House heard various worthies like Conor Cruise O’Brien bemoan the war and attack American imperialism. One of the speakers was Tom Barry, veteran of Ireland’s war of independence and author of Guerilla Days in Ireland, a book that had inspired both Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara.
Reminding his audience of how an Irish peasant army had stood up to the most powerful empire then known to mankind, he forecast that ‘the little men in black pyjamas’ would yet prevail.
In the southern part of Vietnam, where there’s really only two seasons a year, wet and dry, Tet is an opportunity to kick back and relax. And that’s exactly what the US soldiers had it in mind to do. Then the shit hit the fan.
That the little men in black pyjamas slipped into towns and cities in such huge numbers and entirely undetected by the unsuspecting Americans was amazing in itself. But they also smuggled in weapons and munitions and launched ferocious assaults in over 30 major cities. It was a bravura performance in both military and logistical terms…
The Americans were stunned. The Viet Cong even penetrated the American compound in Saigon, an unheard-of affront to their security and military intelligence.
Further north, they captured much of the city of Hue and held it for several weeks, holding out against artillery and air strikes and savage hand-to-hand fighting. Quite a lot of footage can be found on the internet. Search for Tet Offensive…
In the end, the campaign was halted. The Viet Cong melted away into the forests and tunnels. They lost an astonishing 40,000 fighters. But as Terence McSwiney said “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will prevail.”
McSwiney was Lord Mayor of Cork and died on hunger strike in 1920. He would have been known to Tom Barry. Both would have understood the outcome of the Tet offensive.
The Viet Cong were beaten off and lost a huge number of their most hardened warriors. Furthermore, the population didn’t rise up in support. In these senses the Tet offensive was a failure. But the Americans lost the hearts and minds of their own people, they lost their conviction that they’d win and so, in due course, they lost the war.
The conflict in Vietnam showed again how self-belief, willpower and an almost boundless capacity to endure could overcome vast financial and technological superiority. More than 7 million tons of bombs were dropped, vastly more than were dropped in World War II. Almost 2 million Vietnamese died. The Americans spent something like €140 billion. They could have bought the whole country for less.
40 years on, all is changed utterly. A new generation has been born since the war ended. History fades and globalisation rules.
We’re getting to know them. We’ve an embassy in Hanoi and Irish firms and philanthropists move through the fairs. Thousands of Irish tourists have been to visit in recent years. As yet we’re only scratching the surface, the coastal route, the scenery, the brilliant food. But we’ll go deeper in time!
If you want to talk about the war, as many Americans do, the Vietnamese will indulge you. But on the whole, they live in the present and look to the future.
Maybe it’s the Buddhist in them. Maybe it’s something else. Whatever it is, 40 years after the Viet Cong set about throwing the Americans out, the next generation is welcoming them, and specifically their money and their multinationals, back in. There’s roads and factories and apartments to be built, there’s mouths to be fed and money to be made.
Right now they’re tying kumquat trees on their motorcycles and buying presents for their ancestors. It’s Tet. But as the firecrackers snap, crackle and pop and fill the air with friendly fire and smoke, we should pause a moment to remember the little men (and women) in black pyjamas forty years ago this week. Brave, resourceful and defiant little bastards that they were, they prevailed. And they changed the
world.