Not since his New York Times best seller Black Hawk Down has Mark Bowden written a book about a battle. His most ambitious work yet, Huế 1968, is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam.
By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which “the end begins to come into view”. The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke. Part military action and part popular uprising, the Tet Offensive included attacks across South Vietnam, but the most dramatic and successful would be the capture of Huế, the country’s cultural capital. At 2:30 a.m. on January 31, 10,000 National Liberation Front troops descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. By morning, all of Huế was in Front hands save for two small military outposts.
The commanders in country and politicians in Washington refused to believe the size and scope of the Front’s presence. Captain Chuck Meadows was ordered to lead his 160-marine Golf Company against thousands of enemy troops in the first attempt to reenter Huế later that day. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II.
With unprecedented access to war archives in the US and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple points of view. Played out over 24 days of terrible fighting and ultimately costing 10,000 combatant and civilian lives, the Battle of Huế was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. In Huế 1968, Bowden masterfully reconstructs this pivotal moment in the American War in Vietnam.
the book is painfully accurate about what it was like to be in Vietnam Reading this book made me uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. I was a young marine and part of the volunteer group that first went into Hue at the beginning of the battle. My outfit was 2/1, then at Con Thien, so I was only in Hue at the beginning and took no part in the serious fighting that came later.
Great book about the greatest battle After his best-selling book “Black Hawk Down,” the author has outdone himself with this comprehensive history of the single greatest battle of the Viet Nam War. It is not only first-rate military history, it is superb reporting as well, with many original details of the fight that do not appear in previous accounts (“Phase Line Green,” “The Cat from Hue,” etc.). Bowden gives us the unvarnished truth about the colossal bloodbath that sent hundreds of U.S. Marines, their…
If You Only Ever Read One Book About Vietnam 5 Stars