Frank Bowden

This excellent telling of the battle of Hue (Vietnam, February 1968) needs to be read.

(1) What happened? (2) Lies the American government and military told itself and Americans about the Tet Offensive (February 1968) and Hue. (3) The gallant, unselfish, courageous fighting of United States Marines against forces more than three or four times their number. (4) The lies the North Vietnamese told themselves to pursue fighting in Hue. (5) The military mistakes made by the Vietnamese, South and North, and Communist Part during the offensive in Hue. (6) Mistakes of the North Vietnamese were not capitalized on by the Americans. (7) The effect on the residents of Hue during the four weeks of fighting. (8) The small forces the South Vietnamese had and went through the daily grind of fighting for four weeks.

Somehow Bowden tells of combat, of wounds and of deaths (mostly Americans): Marines, where they came from, their training, their units, companies and a few battalions, where Marines were supposed to go – target, eliminate the opposition, and whom Marines were fighting against. Suddenly, a wound or a death of a Marine, introduced and ended that story. It was combat in a small city, not in the jungle. Everyone was crammed together, ill-supported except for weapons and ammunition, no washing, no hygiene, no clean clothes. Marines asked for tanks and sometimes never had any or enough; they fought with hand-held delivery of artillery, beginning with hand grenades.

There were no drones, no surveillance devices, no way of looking and locating the enemy. There’s no GPS. Hue was an old-time battle.

This book is well-written. Reading it at once takes the reader to the year 1968 and gives readers the sense of what Hue Marines went through, as well as the North Vietnamese, during those four weeks.

The book lacks comprehensive maps, on which every location mentioned, is on a map. There is no listing of maps in the Table of Contents, and what each map represents. NOTE, these omissions help tell of the battle. Every combatant, Marine, U.S. Army, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were strangers to Hue, and truly did not know where they were: Where was one landmark or building in relation to any other landmark. Indeed, a Marine Lt. Col. took off the wall of a gasoline station, a map of the City (large distances per millimeter) to help orient him and organize his advance to eliminate the opposition.