House Damaged in War

It may have been late March 1970 when I saw this closed-up, French-built home.  I took the snapshot because it was peppered with bullet holes.  It was like someone had aimed a machine gun at the house and then sprayed it like a water hose.  It made me wonder what happened.

I suspect the house was shot up during the Tet Offensive in January 1968, a little more than two years before I arrived in Vietnam.  Marauding North Vietnamese soldiers probably opened up on the house for spite on their way to a  Saigon target.

The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military operations performed by the North Vietnamese.  They hit more than 100 town and city targets all over the country simultaneously.  It rattled American and South Vietnamese forces who were taken by surprise.  They quickly recovered however and drove the North Vietnamese back.  The offensive ended up being a major defeat for the North Vietnamese.

 Well, whoever lived in the house during that onslaught in 1968, if that is what happened to the house,  did not want to spend another day there by the looks of the unkept grounds and the shuttered windows.