HUE: 1968: A TURNING POINT OF THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNAM: MARK BOWDEN

A long, maddening and depressing look at the pivotal battle of the Vietnam War.  Only the grunts, their courage and willingness to face death day after day is to be admired.  The rest is just crazy, especially the Generals like Westmoreland who are out of touch with the soldiers in the bush. He and LBJ do not come off well. Both believed their bull shit, refusing to see the truth.

What makes this book essential is the fact that Bowden gets first-hand accounts from not only the Marines who took back Hue but the Viet Cong, who planned the takeover and fought to keep it. Once Hue was taken, easily by the Viet Cong, it was hell trying to recapture it.  But the Generals underestimated the Viet Cong, wanted it done for political reasons even though they had no understanding of what it would take to recapture the city.  The battle, which took close to a month, was basically suicide for the Marines, who had to take one room, one building, one street at a time, as the enemy fought to the last man, refusing to give up.

So each day, the mostly young Marines were marched to another street, knowing that it might be their last battle.  The courage it took to face this situation day after day mostly went unremarked until much later.  The book does a good job of keeping the pieces in place, the Marines, their Colonels,  the battle plans, then the Generals, and LBJ.  And, of course, many brave journalists were embedded with the Marines and told their story.  And through it all, we get insight into what the enemy was planning, what they were thinking, and why they refused to quit.

By the end, I was a bit tired or overwhelmed with the absurdity of war, the Marines who died in order to take over another street. And it did not stop for a month.  It's clear now that this was the pivotal battle of the war, the beginning of the end.  Even though the Marines recaptured the city, the final outcome was clear.  It was just a matter of when the Generals and politicians would accept what the public already knew.  We were not going to win this war and it took five more years before we left!

Estimates suggest that 5000 citizens were killed, 2800-5000 Vietcong and 668 Marines, with 3700 wounded.  This battle is often compared to the Marines taking of Fallujah in 2004.