One day (Marine Theodore Wallace) saw an officer casually aim his rifle and try to shoot a Vietnamese boy in the distance.
“Sir, what are you doing?” he’d asked.
“He’s probably supplying the (North Vietnamese Army),” the officer said. “What’s he doing out here anyway?”
“It’s his country!” said Wallace.
— Mark Bowden
“Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam”
As Vietnam’s 1968 Tet holiday approached, Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces there, cabled the Joint Chiefs in Washington that he had a plan. He would serenade, perhaps into dissolution, the communist forces that he was certain would concentrate on attacking U.S. forces based at Khe Sanh near the demilitarized zone:
“The Vietnamese youth is quite sentimentally disposed toward his family, and Tet is a traditional time for intimate family gatherings. The Vietnamese PSY War (Psychological Warfare) people have recently written a highly sentimental Tet song which is recorded. The Vietnamese say it is a tear-jerker to the extent that they do not want it played to their troops during Tet for fear their desertion rate will skyrocket. This is one of the records we will play to the North Vietnamese soldiers in the Khe Sanh-Con Thien areas during Tet.”