In 1967, the North Vietnamese planned an ambitious offensive designed to take advantage of the Tet truce of 1968 and completely overwhelm their enemy in a series of lightning attacks across South Vietnam. Saigon was a prize that the North Vietnamese wanted badly, figuring the occupation of the South Vietnamese capital would go a long way toward ensuring a communist victory. The offensive began in late 1967 with a series of battles along the Cambodian/Laotian borders designed to draw American troops away from the cities.

In Saigon the South Vietnamese government had requested that ARVN troops be put in charge of the city’s defense, and on 15 December Gen. William Westmoreland complied by withdrawing all American fighting units from the city. During the Tet holiday the only troops in the city were 1,100 American MPs under the command of Brig. Gen. Albin F. Irzyk, commander of Headquarters Area Command (HAC), and the ARVN units, which were mostly at half strength due to leave granted for the holiday. To take advantage of this vulnerability, the North Vietnamese planned a set of attacks designed to take and hold key Saigon facilities with the goal of eventually capturing the whole city. For weeks they sent soldiers into Saigon disguised as Tet celebrants or tourists and smuggled weapons into the city hidden in trucks full of produce and Tet supplies or in coffins in fake funeral processions, everything poised to be ready for 31 January.

The communists ran into several problems. First, news of the offensive reached Lt. Gen. Fred Weyand, Commander of II Field Force, in early January. He urged Westmoreland to cancel the Tet leave, heighten the alert status across the country and, more importantly, move some units away from the border battles and back to the cities. Second, the MPs in Saigon transformed themselves into combat infantrymen during the initial Tet assaults, while the ARVN units, despite their low strength, performed admirably holding their own against the communist troops.