End of Innocence  

   He was 9 when his family set out to celebrate Tet, 
the Lunar New Year, 50 years ago this month.
                                                                            ---->    They drove north from Da Nang to visit his grandparents in Hue. Nguyen Qui Duc's father was a regional governor. Whenever they went to Hue, they stayed in a government guesthouse, a beautiful mansion.

   On January 30, 1968, they heard fireworks. No, it was the Tet Offensive, when communist soldiers and guerrillas by the tens of thousands invaded cities and military bases all over South Vietnam.

   About 2 in the morning soldiers entered the mansion, arresting his father and herding women and children into a neighboring basement. Until that night, the civil war had been nowhere near young Nguyen, whose memories we relay from Smithsonian magazine. 

   The offensive was short-lived, a failure, with some 40,000 casualties among the attackers, but news of it began to turn Americans against the war. 

   However, in Hue, the former imperial capital, the battle continued for 26 days. Nguyen was trapped in a violence that claimed at least 5,000 attackers and more than 600 Americans and South Vietnamese fighters. 

   Several days into it, he and his family, without father, were freed and sent to a refugee center in the city. On February 24, defenders recaptured the Citadel. 

   Months later, after they returned to Da Nang, news came about mass graves in Hue. Citizens became terrorized by the thought of a communist victory in the south - more massacres, more people buried alive. 

   It would be even worse than Tet '68. 

Tomorrow: Franklin Graham preaches in Hanoi