Two of a series of stamps issued by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) in 1969 marking the previous year's Tet Offensive by the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam. The stamp at left marks the battle of Khe Sanh and shows an NLF (Vietcong) mortar team facing a U.S. soldier in a trench. Hundreds of U.S. soldiers were killed defending Khe Sanh, but thousands of NLF attackers died. The stamp on right shows the unsuccessful attack on the American Embassy in Saigon in the heart of U.S.-controlled territory.
The Tet Offensive was meant to be a general uprising against the U.S. and its puppet regime in the south; while it was a propaganda victory for the NLF, militarily they suffered significant losses, and historians view the Tet Offensive as a moment of transition with the NLF being replaced by the North Vietnamese Army as leader of the fight for liberation of their country.
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