The Beginning of the End in Vietnam: An Account of the Battle of Hue, by the Author of ‘Black Hawk Down’

By LINDA ROBINSONJULY 4, 2017

A gruesome 24 days: Wounded Marines on a converted tank used as a makeshift ambulance during the battle of Hue. CreditPhotograph by John Olson

HUE 1968
A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
By Mark Bowden
Illustrated. 610 pp. Atlantic Monthly Press. $30.

Mark Bowden, the author of the best-selling “Black Hawk Down,” applies his signature blend of deep reportage and character-driven storytelling to bring readers a fresh look at the 1968 battle in the Vietnamese city of Hue. This compelling and highly readable narrative relies significantly on first-person accounts from American servicemen and Vietnamese soldiers, guerrillas and civilians. Bowden was able to report on the Vietnamese with the help of two translator-researchers and a Vietnamese colleague at the University of Delaware, where he is writer in residence.

As Bowden notes in his comments at the end of “Hue 1968,” “for a journalist interested in history, the sweet spot is about 50 years,” because many witnesses are still alive and enough time has passed to permit historical perspective. In the case of Vietnam, a half-century may have been required for emotions to cool sufficiently for Americans to see Hue, and the Tet offensive of which it was a part, in dispassionate terms. The offensive may have failed to spark a popular uprising across South Vietnam, as North Vietnam’s Communist leadership had hoped, but it did constitute a huge, well-executed surprise attack that laid bare the claims of the American military commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, that nearly a half-million United States troops and the South Vietnamese Army had the upper hand and that victory was only a matter of time.

Those claims were based on the now infamous “body count” ratios whereby the higher rate of Communists’ battlefield losses was said to presage their impending defeat. If America learned nothing else in this searing experience, it was that war is an innately human endeavor and not a science, demonstrated by the fact that motivated, well-organized fighters sustained higher casualties for years and still prevailed. The significance of Hue — a gruesome, 24-day battle — is summed up by Bowden as the moment when many Americans stopped believing their government’s rhetoric about the war. Indeed, one month after the battle, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election, and Westmoreland was dumped shortly thereafter. Sadly, it took another agonizing seven years and tens of thousands more casualties for America to extract itself from Vietnam.

The willful ignorance of the top American commanders in Vietnam shocks even today. The regional commander at Phu Bai, Gen. Foster LaHue, along with Westmoreland, refused for days to acknowledge that North Vietnamese regulars, Vietcong guerrillas and local Communist militia had seized control of the city and were inflicting severe casualties on the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) troops and the Americans. Westmoreland’s persistent failure to mention these critical facts in reports to the Pentagon, the White House and press briefings should have been grounds for immediate dismissal. Bowden renders the grunt-level view of this reality with painful clarity: Junior officers futilely attempted to dissuade their superiors from issuing suicidal orders to proceed into enemy-laced streets where snipers lay in wait. Ordered to advance, the fighters were accompanied by other personnel who darted into the fire to retrieve wounded bodies, only to be cut down themselves. Were it not for reporters on the ground, like Gene Roberts of The New York Times, the truth of Hue would never have gotten out.

At great cost, the Americans and the ARVN did finally wrest the city from the insurgents’ grip. Bowden shines in recounting the actions of Americans like Jim Coolican, a dedicated Marine adviser to the Hac Bao, an elite Vietnamese unit, who sensed the impending assault, played a major role in the initial defense of the small command compound in the city center and then rejoined the Hac Bao through the remainder of the grueling battle.

Another Marine, Ernie Cheatham, comes through as a larger-than-life leader, a former N.F.L. lineman who was sent belatedly to rally the companies of his battalion as they were getting chewed up in Hue. He stayed up late reading pamphlets of older wars on the eve of battle to teach himself and his men the mechanics of close-in urban warfare, and then scavenged improvised equipment to enable them to fight through city blocks held by the enemy. One of their best friends was the Ontos, a light-armored tracked vehicle armed with six 106-millimeter guns, originally meant to be an antitank weapon. Its design exposed its crew to fire whenever they had to crawl outside to load it, and its fearsome backblast rocked the small vehicle, but it proved invaluable in breaking through the thick masonry of the French colonial buildings.

As heroic as these deeds are, Bowden does not neglect the uglier aspects of war, including racism, substance abuse and atrocities committed by both sides. Attitudes about civilian casualties were cavalier by today’s standards; for example, Cheatham considered all civilians remaining in his sector to be collaborators. Bowden goes to some lengths to document and recount the many civilians trapped inside the kill zone as Americans moved block by block. His subjects include servicemen who readily share their misdeeds, among them a soldier who confessed that he and his squad accepted a pitiful woman’s offer of sex in exchange for cans of the troops’ C-rations to feed her starving family.

The book focuses on the grunts who did the fighting, mostly the Second Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, but also on the Army battalions under the command of Cols. Dick Sweet and Jim Vaught. They stumbled, unsuspecting, into the headquarters of the National Liberation Front north of Hue, where they had been sent with inadequate artillery and air support. Many of the battles were grim affairs, and they came to a head as the Marines fought to take the last towers of the city’s Citadel and lower the flag that the N.L.F. had hoisted over Hue. The fighting for Hue had ground on for almost a month, costing more casualties than any other engagement in the war. Bowden attempts a detailed accounting, arriving at an estimate of over 10,000 combatants and civilians killed.

A few flaws mar an otherwise stellar book. The stories of the Vietnamese pale in comparison with the dramatic stories of American soldiers. This is perhaps inevitable. Not only did Bowden have to rely on translators, but he also spent less time in Vietnam. However, he does introduce us to Che Thi Mung, a young village woman who reconnoitered American positions in the months preceding the assault, led North Vietnamese soldiers into Hue and fought bravely as the Americans closed in. We also meet Nguyen Van Quang, a student in Hue who was recruited and groomed as a member of the underground and future political leader. Bowden recounts but does not delve deeply enough into the N.L.F.’s roundups and summary executions of nearly 3,000 residents of Hue.

And a reader may begin to experience fatigue, since the power of the narrative is diluted by too many stories, and stories that are not fully told or connected. One has the feeling that Bowden wanted to cram every bit of research into his book.

All that said, “Hue 1968” is a meticulous and vivid retelling of an important battle. It brings an old war to life for young Americans, and perhaps it will prompt a wider reflection on how to apply the lessons of Vietnam to our wars of today.

VIRGIL GHEORGHIU

Thứ Ba, 4 tháng 7, 2017