Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802189245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
The author of Black Hawk Down vividly recounts a pivotal Vietnam War battle in this New York Times bestseller: “An extraordinary feat of journalism”. —Karl Marlantes, Wall Street Journal In Hue 1968, Mark Bowden presents a detailed, day-by-day reconstruction of the most critical battle of the Tet Offensive. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched attacks across South Vietnam. The lynchpin of this campaign was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital. 10,000 troops descended from hidden camps and surged across the city, taking everything but two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the siege, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city block by block, 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 viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue 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. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction

Author: Keith William Nolan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780891415923
Category : Hue, Battle of, Hué̂, Vietnam, 1968
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An excellent history of what may well have been the most savage, sustained combat the Marine Corps saw in Vietnam.

Author: James H Willbanks
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472844653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
In late January 1968, some 84,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops launched a country-wide general offensive in South Vietnam, mounting simultaneous assaults on 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and five of the six autonomous cities (including the capital city of Saigon). The longest and bloodiest battle occurred in Hue, the most venerated place in Vietnam. The bitter fighting that raged there for more than three weeks drew the attention of the world. Hue was the ancient capital of Vietnam, and as such, had been previously avoided by both sides; it had not seen any serious fighting prior to 1968. All that changed on the night of January 31 that year when four North Vietnamese battalions and supporting Viet Cong units simultaneously attacked and occupied both parts of the city straddling the Perfume River. The Communist forces dug in and prepared to defend their hold on the city. US Marines and South Vietnamese soldiers were ordered to clear the city, supported by US Army artillery and troops. A brutal urban battle ensued as combat raged from house to house and door to door. It was a bloody fight and resulted in large-scale destruction of Hue. Eventually, the Marines and the South Vietnamese forces retook Hue, but it turned out to be one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Tet Offensive, and led to a sea change in US policy in Vietnam.

Author: Nicholas Warr
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612512755
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The bloody, month-long battle for the Citadel in Hue during 1968 pitted U.S. Marines against an entrenched, numerically superior North Vietnamese Army force. By official U.S. accounts it was a tactical and moral victory for the Marines and the United States. But a survivor's compulsion to square official accounts with his contrasting experience has produced an entirely different perspective of the battle, the most controversial to emerge from the Vietnam War in decades. In some of the most frank, vivid prose to come out of the war, author Nicholas Warr describes with urgency and outrage the Marines' savage house-to-house fighting, ordered without air, naval, or artillery support by officers with no experience in this type of deadly combat. Sparing few in the telling, including himself, Warr's shocking firsthand narrative of these desperate suicide charges, which devastated whole companies, takes the wraps off an incident that many would prefer to keep hidden. His account is sure to ignite heated debate among historians and military professionals. Despite senseless rules of engagement and unspeakable carnage, there were unforgettable acts of courage and self-sacrifice performed by ordinary men asked to accomplish the impossible, and Warr is at his best relating these stories. For example, there's the grenade-throwing mortarman who in a rage wipes out two machine-gun emplacements that had pinned down an entire company for days, and the fortunate grunt with thick glasses who stumbles blindly—without receiving a scratch—across a street littered with the dead and dying who hadn't made it. In describing the most vicious urban combat since World War II, this account offers an unparalleled view of how a small unit commander copes with the conflicting demands and responsibilities thrust upon him by the enemy, his men, and the chain of command.

Author: Nha Ca
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253014328
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
“An intimate―and disturbing―account of war at its most brutal, told from the point of view of civilians trying to survive the maelstrom.” —Publishers Weekly Vietnam, January, 1968. As the citizens of Hue are preparing to celebrate Tet, the start of the Lunar New Year, Nha Ca arrives in the city to attend her father’s funeral. Without warning, war erupts all around them, drastically changing or cutting short their lives. After a month of fighting, their beautiful city lies in ruins and thousands of people are dead. Mourning Headband for Hue tells the story of what happened during the fierce North Vietnamese offensive and is an unvarnished and riveting account of war as experienced by ordinary people caught up in the violence. “A visceral reminder of war’s intimate slaughter.” —Kirkus Reviews “[A] searing eyewitness account . . . It makes for an intimate―and disturbing―account of war at its most brutal told from the point of view of civilians trying to survive the maelstrom.” —VVA Veteran

Author: Eric Hammel
Publisher: Pacifica Military History
ISBN: 1890988782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
As Vietnam’s former imperial capital, Hue occupied a special place in the hearts of the Vietnamese people. Over decades of conflict, it had been spared the terrible effects of war. But that all changed on January 31, 1968, the eve of Tet—the lunar new year, Vietnam’s most important national holiday Tet had previously been marked by a mutual ceasefire, but this time the celebrations and hopes for a happy new year were shattered. All of South Vietnam erupted in a cataclysm of violence as the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a massive military and political offensive. The American embassy in Saigon came under siege and Vietnam’s ancient capital city was captured nearly in its entirety. The only forces immediately available to counterattack into Hue were two Marine infantry companies based ten miles south of the city. For the next four weeks, as the world looked on, fewer than two thousand U.S. Marines fought street by street and building by building, with virtually no air support, to retake the symbols of Hue’s political and cultural importance. It was savage work. Ground gained was often measured in yards, with every alley, street corner, window, and garden adding to the butcher’s bill. In the end, the Marines retook the city, but scores of Americans and thousands of Vietnamese civilians died there. This pictorial is a testament to their will and their sacrifice. The Vietnam War is often pictured as a jungle conflict, punctuated by American troops fighting in rural hut-filled villages. But in the 1968 Tet Offensive, the war spilled out of the jungle into the streets of Hue City. The battle for Hue became one of the most important of the war, a month of grueling house-to-house fighting through buildings and around civilians. Marines In Hue City documents the intense urban combat in Hue with many never-before-published photographs, including more than one hundred in full color.

Author: Eric Hammel
Publisher: Pacifica Press
ISBN: 9780935553574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Fire in the Streets is the highly detailed combat history of U.S. Marine Corps units in urban combat in Hue City during the 1968 Communist Tet Offensive. The focus of the story is on small units and individual fighting men as they grapple with advancing through the unfamiliar terrain across an urban battlefield. Fire in the Streets spent many years on official U.S. Marine Corps professional reading lists as the best example of modern military operations in urban terrain.

Author: Erik Villard
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 178289361X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
[Includes 10 maps, 5 illustrations] “This monograph focuses on the battles of Quang Tri City and Hue that took place during the 1968 Tet offensive. The offensive itself, an all-out effort by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces to overrun the major cities of South Vietnam, marked the turning point of the Vietnam War. Although the attacks were costly failures in military terms, they set the United States on a path of disengagement from the war that ultimately led to the fall of Saigon some seven years later. The battles for the two northernmost provincial capitals in South Vietnam, Quang Tri City and Hue, are particularly worth examining because the enemy regarded them as key objectives, second only to Saigon, the national capital. To a large extent, the success or failure of the offensive depended on what happened there. The battles tell us much about how the enemy prepared for the offensive, why he achieved a high degree of surprise and initial success, and why his attacks ultimately failed. The battle for Quang Tri City, a textbook example of a vertical envelopment, resulted in a quick allied victory. The fight for Hue turned into a slow, grinding campaign of attrition that lasted nearly a month before the enemy was finally defeated. Together, they offer instruction on the strengths and limitations of airmobile warfare and a primer on urban fighting in a counterinsurgency environment, subjects that continue to be a major Army interest throughout the world.”

Author: John Laurence
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 0786724684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
Winner of the Overseas Press Club Cornelius Ryan Award John Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from its early days, through the bloody battle of Hue in 1968, to the Cambodian invasion. He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over. In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Mé a cat rescued from the battle of Hue, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course. The Cat from Huéi> has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. This book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.

Author: Andrew Wiest
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081479467X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
War.