A piece of the 1968 attack on the US Embassy in Saigon

This fragment of the original granite wall surrounding the US Embassy compound in Saigon was collected and preserved by Kenneth Moorefield, who served as a military adviser during the 1968 Tet Offensive. He later returned to South Vietnam as a diplomat in 1973 to serve as Special Assistant to Ambassador Graham Martin. The granite block bears the marks of the attack on the embassy on January 31, 1968.

Attack on the US Embassy in Saigon

During the Cold War, tensions erupted between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies in proxy wars around the world. In Vietnam, diplomats served alongside the US military to stop the spread of communism.

In the early morning of January 31, 1968, as the Vietnamese people celebrated Tet, the lunar new year, communist Viet Cong forces launched coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam. The US Embassy in Saigon was a target that day. A Viet Cong suicide squad took control of part of the compound and held it for about six hours before they were killed or captured. The attack on the embassy shocked the American public, who believed the United States was winning the war.

Thousands more Americans and Vietnamese would die before the last US combat troops left Vietnam in 1973. In April 1975, the US Embassy in Saigon was evacuated when the Viet Cong took the city.

Fragment of granite wall, US Embassy, ​​Saigon

On January 31, 1968, during the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong attacked the US Embassy in Saigon, damaging this granite piece on the embassy’s ground floor.

It is a tangible reminder not only of the sacrifice of the soldiers killed during the attack, but also of the courage and serenity shown by the embassy staff. It also reminds us of the dangers faced by the Marine Security Guards who protect our global diplomatic missions today.

This piece is on loan from Ambassador Kenneth P. Moorefield, who served as military adviser during the offensive. In 1973 he returned to Vietnam as Special Assistant to the US Ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin. He served until evacuated in April 1975.

Moorefield continued his long career in the US Departments of State and Commerce, eventually serving as US Ambassador to the Republic of Gabon and the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe.

In the late 1990s, Moorefield returned to Vietnam as director of the US Foreign Commercial Service in Hanoi. Before he left in 1998, he was gifted this piece of granite from the site by a friend who was a contractor working on the demolition of the old US Embassy in Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City).