Not since his New York Times bestseller 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.
