*
Fifteen days later, the Vietcong flag was still waving over the top of the Hue citadel and no one could understand how the Vietcong could withstand the siege by thousands of US marines.
Someone said that those were not Vietcong, but North Vietnamese regulars.
Anyway, after napalm, phosphorus, artillery, tanks and the continuous attacks by US troops, the Vietcong were still inside the citadel, and it looked like they had no intention of letting it go.
Someone got to the point of saying that underneath Hue there were some secret tunnels leading to the countryside outskirts of the city.
It wasn't true.
The Vietcong were standing because they were many, resolute and they were using their guerrilla skills very well, thanks to the last ten years spent fighting against the French.
Anyway, some days later the Tet offensive came to an end, and South Vietnam still existed.
The ARVN and the Americans had held up to the impact, and Saigon and Hue were free.
To those who knew a lot about the war, that was a good result.
But in the opinion of most of the US people, that was meant to be a short, easy and police-like war, because that was the rubbish the military had always said so far.
And this was the reason why, seeing such a big, brutal and unprecedented powerful attack and that the risk of a proper fall of the whole South Vietnam was real, the US read the Tet attack as an unbelievably humiliating defeat.
To the US people, it looked like the beginning of the end.
Anyway, one thing everyone agreed about: that this war that everyone had imagined as an easy and short one, was doomed to be long and difficult in reality, and surely going to cost more years of commitment and lives than anyone had ever imagined until then.
But it was too late for the military to confess it to the US public by then.
The damage was already done and the difference of point of view between the big wigs and the general public was overwhelming by then.
Any way you wanted to view the Tet facts, both Saigon and Hue had paid a very high price.
Before giving up the two cities and retreating, the Vietcong had executed five thousands civilians.