Status
Available
Collection
Publication
NEW YORK ATLANTIC MONTHLY 2017
Description
In mid-1967, the North Vietnam leadership had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke. Part military action and part popular uprising, the effort included attacks across South Vietnam, but the most dramatic and successful would be the capture of Huế, the country's intellectual and cultural capital. At 2:30 a.m. on January 31, the first day of the Lunar New Year (called Tet), ten thousand National Liberation Front troops descended from hidden camps and -- led by locals like eighteen-year-old village girl and Viet Cong member Che Thi Mung -- surged across the city of 140,000. By morning, all of Huế was in Front hands save for two small military outposts. The American 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 in the first attempt to reenter Huế later that day. Facing thousands of entrenched enemy troops, he reported: "We are outgunned and outmanned." 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 United States 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 twenty-four days of terrible fighting and ultimately costing more than ten thousand combatant and civilian lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate over the war was never again about winning, only about how to leave.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Stbalbach
The Battle of Hue, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war, was characterized by intense urban fighting by Marines who were not well trained for urban combat and as a result they improvised tactics and weapons as they went. It was the inspiration for Full Metal Jacket, for example the
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scene with the sniper who left victims alive in the street as bait actually occurred. Like most everything about Vietnam it was cruel and surreal. It was a civil war inside a civil war, inside a cold war, a war of civil rights and generational conflict. Bowden does an excellent job placing it into broader context politically. His thesis is that the battle led directly to LBJ declaring he would not seek reelection for a second term, and Walter Cronkite's now-famous report the war was not winnable, which for the first time made opposition to the war acceptable. The book is long and I found the first half a slog. Once the battle is fully in motion it's a montage of scenes and people that together enforce the chaos and relentless fighting. This is a good book for understanding the battle and the war. Show Less
LibraryThing member LamSon
This was a very good look at one of the most pivotal battles in the entire Vietnam War. Note to publisher: next time, include the index in the book.
LibraryThing member jwrudn
At the end of January 1968, the beginning of the Tet holiday, the North Vietnamese army (NLA) and Viet Cong (VC) launched simultaneous attacks on cities in South Vietnam including Saigon. They had thought that the people would rise up to support them and this would lead to the overthrow of South
Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, describes the battle by following the experiences of the Marines and, to lesser extent, the Vietnamese, who fought it. I had trouble keeping the many participants straight but that made the book no less compelling. It is long, 539 pages, excluding notes, but once I started reading I could not stop. The book is not for the faint of heart: casualties were heavy and deaths to civilians were many; descriptions are often gruesome. The fear, miserable conditions, stench and exhaustion are palpable. In the end, both sides claimed victory, but the battle changed the way Americans thought about the war in Vietnam.
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Vietnamese government. This did not happen and the attacks were mostly suppressed after a few days. However, in Hue, the NLA and VC had managed, in the weeks preceding Tet, to amass 10,000 troops in and around the city without detection. In the early morning of January 31, they over ran the city securing it all except for two small outposts. Vastly outnumbered, the outposts hung on and thus begins a grinding month-long campaign to retake the city. The failure of high command to recognize the number of disciplined, well-trained NLA troops led them to insist repeatedly that the Marines attack against superior odds.Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, describes the battle by following the experiences of the Marines and, to lesser extent, the Vietnamese, who fought it. I had trouble keeping the many participants straight but that made the book no less compelling. It is long, 539 pages, excluding notes, but once I started reading I could not stop. The book is not for the faint of heart: casualties were heavy and deaths to civilians were many; descriptions are often gruesome. The fear, miserable conditions, stench and exhaustion are palpable. In the end, both sides claimed victory, but the battle changed the way Americans thought about the war in Vietnam.
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LibraryThing member muddyboy
A graphic and tremendously well researched book on the battle for the city of Hue which the author sees as the crucial turning point (the Tet Offensive) that will seal America's fate in the Vietnam War. Both sides misjudged the attack - the Communists believing the citizenry would rise up and
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support them and the American leadership misjudging the abilities and commitment of the North Vietnamese. If there is a villain it is General Westmoreland that feeds President Johnson and the American people over optimistic information throughout. A great study. Show Less
LibraryThing member jigarpatel
A monumental effort. The first Vietnam analysis I have found which reflects the three parties to the conflict: the National Liberation Front; South Vietnamese and Americans; and the civilians caught in the crossfire.
LibraryThing member RajivC
This book by Mark Bowden is an absolutely stunning one. I am not familiar with the details of the Vietnam war, and this book brings the crucial battle at Hue to life.
It brings it to a life that makes the horrors of war immediate and very real to all of us. The writing is vivid. While he does write
Through the telling of the tale of American bravery, we come across some heroic characters and are reminded of the perfidy of politicians of all hues.
A bullet wound, as one soldier mentions, is not a neat round hole that we see in movies. It is mangled limbs, shattered lungs, skulls blown off. War is shitting in the trenches, not bathing, shaving, living in constant fear that the next minute will be your last.
The men who fight are the ones who deserve glory and respect. They are, sadly, expendable.
This is a brilliant book.
It brings it to a life that makes the horrors of war immediate and very real to all of us. The writing is vivid. While he does write
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from an American perspective, he does show considerable respect for the Vietnamese. Through the telling of the tale of American bravery, we come across some heroic characters and are reminded of the perfidy of politicians of all hues.
A bullet wound, as one soldier mentions, is not a neat round hole that we see in movies. It is mangled limbs, shattered lungs, skulls blown off. War is shitting in the trenches, not bathing, shaving, living in constant fear that the next minute will be your last.
The men who fight are the ones who deserve glory and respect. They are, sadly, expendable.
This is a brilliant book.
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LibraryThing member juju2cat
Although none of us who have never engaged in combat can begin to imagine what terror war holds, this was distinctly written to give us a very good feeling for it. Men (some just boys) sent to war to fight communism which is an ideal cause but we became mired down with political egos and government
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bungling. I still feel great anger that so many years ago my small town lost two terrific guys to this mess. This was written with a great deal of care and compassion and I thank the author for enlightening me and perhaps offering solace to those who did come home. God Bless. Show Less
LibraryThing member breic
> the high command still had not accepted the fact that Hue was in enemy hands
> Westin got a letter from Mimi that really pissed him off. Thirty guys from his unit had been wounded. He was in constant danger. He was living in a fucking hole in the ground. And Mimi was worried about him fooling
> Even as the fight stretched into its third week, Westy [General Westmoreland] persistently downplayed it. Hue was rarely even mentioned in his daily dispatches to Washington, and when it was, it was only to say that the enemy was about to be crushed—on February 4 it was “in the next few days”; on the ninth it was “several more days”; on the twelfth it was “a couple of days”; and on the twenty-first it was “by the end of this week.”
> Over the roughly four weeks of fighting, more than 80 percent of the city’s structures were either destroyed or sustained serious damage
> the Front engaged in a systematic effort to find and punish those allied with the Saigon regime, just as that regime undertook its own reprisals when the battle ended—no one has offered an official count of those victims. A conservative guess of those executed would be two thousand. This brings us to a combined civilian death toll—those killed by accident and those put to death—of about eight thousand
> When you add the numbers of combatants killed to estimates of civilian deaths, the final toll of the Battle of Hue numbers well over ten thousand, making it by far the bloodiest of the Vietnam War. Over six months, the shellings and bombings in and around Khe Sanh accumulated a comparable total, perhaps even more, but no other single battle came close.
> “On one hand the military has said we had quite a victory out there …, on the other hand, they now say that it was such a big victory that we need one hundred and twenty thousand more men.”
> A month after it ended, President Johnson decided not to seek reelection, and Westmoreland would shortly thereafter be removed as its commander. Richard Nixon was elected president eight months later mendaciously promising not victory, but a secret plan to bring the war to an “honorable end.” The secret plan prolonged the conflict seven more years, spreading misery and death throughout Indochina.
> The bombing of Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia destabilized that neutral country, leading to the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 and the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge, which would be responsible for the deaths of millions of Cambodians in ensuing years.
> it achieved complete tactical surprise, despite Westy’s claims otherwise. Conversely, it represents perhaps the worst allied intelligence failure of the war. That’s true of the entire Tet Offensive, and particularly true of the attack on Hue. Hanoi spent months amassing an army around the city without attracting notice. And although it is true that after three weeks of heavy fighting the enemy was driven off, it was the impact of the initial blow that resonated most loudly.
> Bringing the war to city streets deeply undermined the faith of middle-of-the road Vietnamese in President Thieu’s government. Nonideological citizens—read, most citizens—were concerned primarily with survival. They wanted to be on the winning side when the war ended. Tet lowered the odds on Saigon as the safer bet
> The professional soldiers in particular were puzzled by my focus on this one event, when their careers were spent fighting so many battles—some had fought also against the French, the Chinese, and the Cambodians. It brought home to me how much the Vietnamese perspective on modern history differs from America’s. To them Hue, the entire American War, was just one chapter in a much longer story.
> Westin got a letter from Mimi that really pissed him off. Thirty guys from his unit had been wounded. He was in constant danger. He was living in a fucking hole in the ground. And Mimi was worried about him fooling
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around with other women.> Even as the fight stretched into its third week, Westy [General Westmoreland] persistently downplayed it. Hue was rarely even mentioned in his daily dispatches to Washington, and when it was, it was only to say that the enemy was about to be crushed—on February 4 it was “in the next few days”; on the ninth it was “several more days”; on the twelfth it was “a couple of days”; and on the twenty-first it was “by the end of this week.”
> Over the roughly four weeks of fighting, more than 80 percent of the city’s structures were either destroyed or sustained serious damage
> the Front engaged in a systematic effort to find and punish those allied with the Saigon regime, just as that regime undertook its own reprisals when the battle ended—no one has offered an official count of those victims. A conservative guess of those executed would be two thousand. This brings us to a combined civilian death toll—those killed by accident and those put to death—of about eight thousand
> When you add the numbers of combatants killed to estimates of civilian deaths, the final toll of the Battle of Hue numbers well over ten thousand, making it by far the bloodiest of the Vietnam War. Over six months, the shellings and bombings in and around Khe Sanh accumulated a comparable total, perhaps even more, but no other single battle came close.
> “On one hand the military has said we had quite a victory out there …, on the other hand, they now say that it was such a big victory that we need one hundred and twenty thousand more men.”
> A month after it ended, President Johnson decided not to seek reelection, and Westmoreland would shortly thereafter be removed as its commander. Richard Nixon was elected president eight months later mendaciously promising not victory, but a secret plan to bring the war to an “honorable end.” The secret plan prolonged the conflict seven more years, spreading misery and death throughout Indochina.
> The bombing of Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia destabilized that neutral country, leading to the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 and the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge, which would be responsible for the deaths of millions of Cambodians in ensuing years.
> it achieved complete tactical surprise, despite Westy’s claims otherwise. Conversely, it represents perhaps the worst allied intelligence failure of the war. That’s true of the entire Tet Offensive, and particularly true of the attack on Hue. Hanoi spent months amassing an army around the city without attracting notice. And although it is true that after three weeks of heavy fighting the enemy was driven off, it was the impact of the initial blow that resonated most loudly.
> Bringing the war to city streets deeply undermined the faith of middle-of-the road Vietnamese in President Thieu’s government. Nonideological citizens—read, most citizens—were concerned primarily with survival. They wanted to be on the winning side when the war ended. Tet lowered the odds on Saigon as the safer bet
> The professional soldiers in particular were puzzled by my focus on this one event, when their careers were spent fighting so many battles—some had fought also against the French, the Chinese, and the Cambodians. It brought home to me how much the Vietnamese perspective on modern history differs from America’s. To them Hue, the entire American War, was just one chapter in a much longer story.
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LibraryThing member TomMcGreevy
A well written history of the battle for Hue, during the Tet Offensive, in the Vietnamese war. It focuses on the American participation, largely ignoring the ARVN role. Well worth reading.
LibraryThing member markm2315
A balanced account of the 1968 battles in Hué constructed in the author's style from many first person accounts on both sides and from trapped civilians. Perhaps because of the hectic nature of the battle, the multiple simultaneous areas of action, and the number of people involved, the story can
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get confusing. The maps are helpful, but you will need a magnifying glass to see them on the Kindle. The sometimes chaotic nature of this assemblage is brought home in chapter 13, where Bowden starts to end his story with the longer and uninterrupted story of Alvin Bert Grantham. I found it to be the best and most moving part of the book. There is also an excellent epilogue with a laudably clear view of the whole battle and its consequences. If you are interested in leadership, this account has many fine examples of the best and the worst, from a corporal thrust unexpectedly into a battlefield leadership role to Westmoreland and LBJ at the top. Show Less
Awards
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — History — 2017)
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction (Longlist — Nonfiction — 2018)
Christian Science Monitor Best Book (Nonfiction — 2017)
Notable Books List (Nonfiction — 2018)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2017)