Barnes had just arrived the day before, an eighteen-year-old private from Battle Creek, Mich. 'William Barnes, who had gone out to try and drag him back, had been shot in the head and killed instantly. But most of the Americans in combat were in their late teens or early 20s, the Vietnamese soldiers even younger.Īt one point, Bowden writes, a wounded marine lay in the street. His account reminds us, over and over, that Vietnam was a war fought, on both sides, by young people. One of his gifts is sketching portraits of individuals, giving the reader in just a few words a vivid sense of their lives - and then, all too often, a jarring view of their deaths. The last time the Corps fought a big urban battle had been in Seoul in 1950, a grinding fight that lasted for almost a month and killed more than four hundred and fifty marines.'īowden's descriptions of the battle are packed with facts about tactics, weapons and troop movement, and as breathtakingly compelling as the best fiction. Col Ernie Cheatham, one of the commanders in Hue) nor his marines had ever fought in a city, nor had they been trained for it. One constant difficulty was the urban setting of the battle, Bowden notes.

After another day of fighting he would have just seven - one hundred and twenty-three wounded, seventeen killed.'

Its leader 'had started his assault with one hundred and forty-seven men. Just one example: A few days into the battle, a company of marines attacked a Catholic chapel held by the North Vietnamese.

What's more, North Vietnamese leader and icon Ho Chi Minh had grown up there, within the walls of the Citadel, the imposing fortress that enclosed the former royal palace and many of the city's neighborhoods on the north bank of the Huong, also known as the Perfume River. It was a former imperial seat and the major center of learning and worship.' As a center of Vietnamese culture, its significance transcended the divide. With a population of about 140,000, it was the third-largest city in South Vietnam. 'Hue,' Bowden writes, 'was a city of both practical and symbolic importance. It began during Tet, the new year celebration that is central to Vietnamese culture. The battle of Hue was part of the Tet Offensive, a surprise attack by the North Vietnamese on hundreds of targets large and small throughout South Vietnam. What sets Bowden's account of the battle apart is his skill at moving from the macro - the history of the war, the politics surrounding it, the tactics of the battle - to the micro: the individuals, American and Vietnamese, who fought it and tried to survive it. withdrawal in 1975, which reverberates still in our politics. It was a battle that brought about major shifts in the war and in the American public's attitude toward it that led inexorably to the U.S.

The title refers to Hue (pronounced Hway), a city in what was then South Vietnam, and to the year in which an epic, nearly monthlong battle took place there.

Huế 1968 by Mark Bowden