Forty years ago this week, as twilight fell over the Republic of South Vietnam, I was lying on a stretcher in the rain outside a military hospital on a base near Hue. There were so many casualties that day that we had to wait our turn for overworked and overwhelmed doctors to attend to us.
The surgeon who eventually operated on me was furious - furious that he had been told to treat Americans first, leaving our South Vietnamese allies out in the rain.
It was the Tet Offensive, the turning point in the war. For it was Tet that brought the United States to sue for peace, and President Lyndon B. Johnson to give up running for another term. Negotiations dragged on and on, and seven years later it was all over.
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