On January 31, 1968, the night the Tet Offensive began, Sally Vinyard thought the noise she heard outside her villa in Saigon came from firecrackers. She had been in Saigon as a civilian employee of the US Navy for a year and had experienced Tet 1967. So she ignored the booms and went to sleep. The next morning, Vinyard and her husband, John, who worked in Army intelligence, heard an announcement on the radio that Saigon was under attack. At first, they treated it like a lark, thinking they were getting a free day off for no good reason. The radio report advised listeners to stay indoors, but it was not until three or four days later that Vinyard knew what was happening. Her husband went to work the next day, and she did not hear from him for several days after that. Many of the city’s phone lines had gone out, and so she had no idea if he had even made it to his office. Meanwhile, he was trying to call Sally’s office but could not get through. A few days into the offensive, a bullet struck the wooden shutters on the outside of the Vinyards’ villa while Sally was out in the courtyard. They had lost electricity, and inside the villa it was stagnant and stale without the fans going, so she had stepped out to get some fresh air.