FOR A JOURNALIST interested in history, the sweet spot is about fifty years. Enough time has gone by for a measure of historical perspective, and yet there remain many living witnesses.
While some of the key participants in the Battle of Hue have died, most are still living, and since Vietnam welcomes visiting Americans, it was possible for the first time to fully report the story from both sides. Most American veterans were pleased to share their experiences with me, and the sheer number of those interviews gave me multiple perspectives on nearly every event described. In telling the American side of the story, I am indebted in particular to five previous accounts: Battle for Hue by Keith Nolan; Fire in the Streets by Eric Hammel; The Lost Battalion by Charles Krohn (which focuses on the experience of the army’s Second Battalion, Twelfth Cavalry); The Siege at Hue by George Smith, who combines memories of his own experiences there as an army information officer attached to the ARVN First Division, and interviews Smith (a newspaperman in civilian life) conducted with a variety of others involved in the fight; and Phase Line Green by Nicholas Warr, who served as a platoon commander for Alpha 1/5 during the fight inside the Citadel. Each of these books has a narrower focus than this one, but they all provided me with a solid backstop for my own reporting.
I learned a great deal from reports that were written at the time, and even more by talking to some of the reporters and photographers who produced them, particularly Gene Roberts, John Olson, Mike Morrow, and John Laurence, whose excellent book The Cat from Hue relates some of his experiences there.
I relied on official marine and army records of the battle from the National Archives, and on documents from the archives of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi (researched for me by Dang Hoa Ho), and on analyses by Merle Pribbenow and by Lien-Hang T. Nguyen in her book Hanoi’s War. The papers of Walt Rostow and of William Westmoreland, and notes of the National Security Council at the LBJ Library at the University of Texas in Austin, were extremely useful in detailing the thinking of the Johnson administration during the weeks-long fight and in fleshing out its relationship with Westmoreland. The Library of the US Marine Corps at Quantico had oral interviews with key participants who were no longer around to answer my questions. I also drew on the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which has helpfully placed thousands of hours of recorded Oval Office phone conversations online.
That said, this book is mostly the work of a journalist, in that it is primarily based on interviews, conducted over four years, in person and on the phone, in the United States and in Vietnam. Memories are not entirely reliable, of course, even immediately after an event, and are hardly so decades later. In conducting interviews for this book I was mindful of the written records compiled at the time and personal accounts given closer to the time of the battle—in previously published accounts and in the source material for them. The sheer number of sources also works to cross-check and validate individual accounts. In most cases, the events described in this book are based on accounts from multiple sources. Where they are not, the details of individual stories line up correctly with the record of the battle and with accounts of related events. Things like the exact date and location of an event, where they could be independently verified, add credence to personal memories. Very often an interviewee would remember an incident without being able to recall exactly where and when it happened. Where I was able to fill in those missing details on my own, it boosted my confidence in the original story. Often interviewees, when prodded with additional information, are able to more fully recall their experience. Memory is imperfect though, and the account here is only a best effort at reconstructing a very complicated story. Where there is no video or audio evidence, all history has to offer are memories and written records.
My son Daniel helped me with these, enabling me to collect the stories of many more participants than I would have been able to accumulate on my own. At the National Archives I found notes from interviews Nolan conducted for his book and detailed letters written to him by various participants. The Archives also had the source material for Shulimson’s account of the battle, including documents captured from Viet Cong and NVA soldiers, and the on-the-scene reporting of Douglas Pike, who gathered material concerning the massacres of civilians by the National Liberation Front. In Vietnam, Dang Hoa Ho not only arranged for interviews on my first visit to Hue and provided on-the-spot translation, but also returned to the city twice to find and interview people on his own. Hoa also translated portions of various memoirs and histories that were invaluable to me in sorting out the Front’s plans and actions. Dinh Hoang Linh did the same for me on my second trip and also provided translations of various memoirs and articles pertinent to this story. Xuyen Dinh, who translated all of the interviews from Vietnam, also conducted an interview for me and provided invaluable insights about the others.
Where chapters or passages of the book have been drawn from interviews, the sourcing is obvious. In cases where it is not I have added a source note. I have also added notes to provide unessential but interesting details, such as to more precisely describe a weapon, vehicle, or military unit. Such names, numbers, and designations, while important to military readers, make it slow going for most of us. I have also used notes to identify a published account or recorded source.
AMERICAN INTERVIEWS
Dan Allbritton, Mike Anderegg, Jim Arend, Gordon Batcheller, Richard Baughman, Paul Becker, Steve Berntson, Roger Billings, Sam Bingham, Joe Bolt, Mel Bourgeois, Don Bowman, Frank Breth, Walter Brock, Chris Brown, Madeline Brown, Tommy Brown, Jim and Tuy-Cam Bullington, Dan Carter, Richard Carter, Conwill Casey, Ben Casio, George Cates, Terry Charbonneau, Bob Childs, Ron Christmas, Lonny Connelly, Jim Coolican, Clyde Coreil, Mike Davison, Brad Devitt, Carl DiLeo, Danny Donnelly, Mike Downs, Fred Drew, Dale Dye, Bill Ehrhart, Gary Eichler, Chuck Ekker, Bill Eshelman, Al Esquivel, Bill Fite, Carl Fleischmann, Ronald Frasier, Juan Gonzales, Brad Goodin, Alvin Grantham, Rick Grissinger, John Griswald, Myron Harrington, Calvin Hart, Rich Horner, Lewis Jeffries, Eden Jiminez, Bob Johnstone, Keith Kay, Michael Ker, Larry Kibbon, Charles Krohn, Frank Lambert, Ed Landry, Bob Lauver, Richard Leflar, John Ligato, Merril Ludwig, Art Marcotte, Dennis Martin, Tom Martin, Jerry McCauley, Jim McCoy, Chuck Meadows, Tom Mitchell, Larry Mobley, Mike Morrow, Eddie Neas, Don Neveling, Jim O’Konski, John Olson, Carnell Poole, Merle Pribbenow, Howard Prince, Bill Purcell, Hastings Rigolette, Marcelino Rivas, Gene Roberts, Damien Rodriguez, Tim Rogers, Jack Rushing, John Salvati, Dennis Selby, Jeff Shay, Bobby Smith, Ray Smith, Terry Strassburg, Mario Tamez, Selwyn Tate, Bob Thompson, Jim Thompson, Bob Thoms, David Tyree, Theodore Wallace, Bob Warren, Herbert Watkins, John Wear, Ernie Weiss, Charlie West, Andy Westin, Maury Whitmer, Steve Wilson, Dan Winkel, and Luke Youngman.
VIETNAMESE INTERVIEWS
Che Thi Mung, Cao Van Sen, Dang Dinh Loan, Doang Thanh Xu, Duong Van Xuan, Duong (middle and first name not given), Ho Ban, Hoang Anh De, Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuong, Hoang Thanh Tung, Hoang Thi No, Huang Bao, Huynh Van Don , Le Cong Thanh , Le Huu Tong, Le Ngoc Thinh, Le Thi Mai, Le Thi Thu Hanh, Le Van Hoi , Mai Xuan Bao, Nguyen Manh Ha, Ngo Dinh Diem, Ngo Quang Truong, Nguyen Dac Xuan, Nguyen Duc Thuan, Nguyen Huu Ai, Nguyen Quang Ha, Nguyen Quoc Sinh, Nguyen Thanh Tung, Nguyen Van Quang, Nguyen Van Ty, Quang Ha, Tang Van Mieu, Than Trong Dzung, Thanh Trong Hoat, Tran Anh Lien, Tran Hung Le, Tran Huy Chung, Tran Ngoc Hue, Tran Thi Thu Huong, Tran Toi, and Truong Thi Thuy Hong.
PART ONE
The Infiltration
1967–January 30, 1968
Introduction
1. Rather than try to distinguish in every instance whether the troops engaged with Americans were NVA, VC, or local militias, I will refer to them as the National Liberation Front, which is what they called themselves, or the “Front.” On occasion, where the distinction is important, I will refer to the factions specifically.
1. The Huong River Squad
2. https://cherrieswriter.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/vietnam.jpg.
3. The word nguy is borrowed from Classical Chinese 偽. It has the meaning of “fake, pretend.” When combined with the word chinh-quyen (government) to form the compound word chinh-quyen nguy, it has the meaning of a government that is supposedly independent but is in fact dependent upon an outside power, similar to the metaphor “puppet state” in English. By itself, nguy can be used to refer to soldiers or anyone who works for that government. It was used during the period of French colonialism in Vietnam when the Viet Minh also called the French Foreign Legion nguy.
4. In Vietnamese it was called: Doi Thieu nien Tien Phong Ho Chi Minh.
5. The Doan Thanh nien.
2. Thirty-Nine Days
6. The Second Battalion of the Third Regiment of the ARVN First Division.
3. Spizzerinctum
7. “Commander in Vietnam,” New York Times, March 4, 1967, p. 2.
8. William Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, Dell, 1980, pp. 304–305.
9. According to Mike Downs, in later years there would be a joke prize at the US Army Command and General Staff College called “the Westmoreland Award,” given to “the best-looking mediocre officer” of the class.
10. Excerpts from Westmoreland’s speech published in the New York Times, October 25, 1966.
11. R. W. Apple, “A Split Is Denied by Westmoreland,” New York Times, July 24, 1967.
12. “War Gains Called Very Encouraging by Westmoreland,” New York Times, November 16, 1967, p. 1.
13. Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, Doubleday, 1963, p. 372.
14. John W. Finney, “U.S. Denies Shift on Troop Policy in Vietnam War,” New York Times, June 9, 1965, p. 1.
15. Tom Wicker, “In the Nation: Into the Quicksand,” New York Times, November 27, 1966, p. 269.
16. Hanson Baldwin, “Manpower for Vietnam,” New York Times, November 12, 1966, p. 6. Johnson said the war might require as many as 750,000 men.
17. Thomas A. Johnson, “Logistics in War: Arms, Food, Soap/50,000-Man American Unit Is Largest in Vietnam,” New York Times, January 25, 1968, p. 13.
18. Roy Reed, “Gen. Abrams Gets Post in Vietnam,” New York Times, April 7, 1967, p. 1.
19. H. R. McMaster, in Dereliction of Duty (hereafter McMaster), Harper Perennial, 1997, p. 333, writes that attrition was “an absence of strategy,” one that substituted a tactical goal, killing the enemy, for any clear overarching military objective.
20. Manila speech.
21. The Miller Center of Public Affairs, The University of Virginia, Presidential Recordings Library (hereafter, “Miller Center”).
22. “No measure of success was as important to the military command as the enemy body count. Competitions were held between American units to produce the highest ‘box score’ of enemy KIAs or the best ‘kill ratio’ (the most enemy killed in relation to American casualties). Some units even awarded a few days of R&R to soldiers who had an exceptional number of ‘confirmed kills,’ and infantry officers knew their opportunities for advancement were largely dependent on the size of the body counts they reported.” Scott Sigmund Gartner, “Body Counts and ‘Success’ in the Vietnam and Korean Wars,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25, no. 3 (Winter 1995): 377–395.
23. Harrison Salisbury, “Attacks on North Disrupt Economy,” New York Times, January 1, 1967.
24. Oleg Hoeffding, “Bombing North Vietnam: An Appraisal of Economic and Political Effects,” Rand Corporation, December 1966, pp. v–vi.
25. The Effect of the Vietnam War on the Economies of the Communist Countries, CIA Directorate of Intelligence, Intelligence Report, July 1968, p. 36.
26. Don Oberdorfer, Tet! The Story of a Battle and Its Historic Aftermath (hereafter, Oberdorfer), Doubleday, 1971, pp. 92–93.
27. The Pentagon Papers, as published by the New York Times, Bantam Books, 1971, Memo #118, p. 554.
28. The Pentagon Papers, IV. C. 7.(b), vol. 2, The Air War in Vietnam: 1965–1968, “Systems Analysis Study on Economic Effects,” pp. 128–129. https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws.com/arcmedia/research/pentagon-papers/Pentagon-Papers-Part-IV-C-7-b.pdf.
29. Indeed, the administration had been advised by its own experts in 1964 that bombing North Vietnam would not work. The Johnson Report, named not for the president but for Robert Johnson of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council, concluded that a bombing campaign would not weaken Hanoi’s resolve, would not drive Hanoi to negotiate or compromise, and would not be likely to alter the military situation in the South. The report was not widely distributed and was ultimately ignored, in part because of a misguided belief in the efficacy of bombing (which was believed to have won World War II), and because President Johnson’s desire to succeed in Vietnam inclined him to listen more to his military advisers, who were full of certainty, than his civilian ones, who expressed doubts. “The elephant was great and powerful and preferred being blind.” David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (hereafter, Halberstam), Knopf, 1979, p. 358.
30. Oberdorfer, p. 93.
31. Ibid., p. 195.
32. Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” a speech at New York’s Riverside Baptist Church, April 4, 1967.
33. Pentagon Papers, Memo #118, p. 557.
34. Years later, in 1995, far too late to make a difference, McNamara wrote that the United States should have exited Vietnam in late 1963, following Diem’s assassination, or in late 1964 or early 1965. “Political stability did not exist and was unlikely ever to be achieved; and the South Vietnamese, even with our training assistance and logistical support, were incapable of defending themselves” (McMaster, p. 373).
35. The same criminal irrationality was still at work five years later, as President Nixon noted privately to his aides that years of bombing Vietnam had accomplished “zilch” and yet continued bombing and continued publicly defending the tactic.
36. Richard Harwood, “The War Just Doesn’t Add Up,” Washington Post, September 3, 1967, as reprinted in Reporting Vietnam, vol. 1 (hereafter, Reporting Vietnam 1), Library of America, 1998, p. 484.
37. William Prochnau, Once Upon a Distant War, Mainstream Publishing, 1996, pp. 171–172.
38. Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, Random House, 1988, p. 697.
39. US officials claimed that the marines had taken repeated fire from the village and had warned that they would destroy it if such shooting continued, which they did. Safer later said that the only marines injured in the operation had been shot “in the ass,” indicating friendly fire. http://www.pbs.org/weta/reportingamericaatwar/reporters/safer/camne.html.
40. Papers of William Westmoreland, LBJ Library.
41. The Pentagon Papers, Quadrangle Books, 1971, p. 555.
42. Thomas Ahern, Vietnam Declassified, University Press of Kentucky, 2010, pp. 281–282.
43. To Johnson, Asians were Asians. He complained, partly in jest, to the CIA that they ought to be able “to get some coolies from a San Francisco laundry shop and drop them over there and use them” to spy on Hanoi. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (hereafter, B&B), Fawcett, 1972, p. 512.
44. Charles DeBenedetti, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (hereafter, DeBenedetti), Syracuse University Press, 1990, p. 179.
45. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 378.
46. DeBenedetti, p. 199.
47. Ibid., p. 177.
48. Stewart Alsop, “Will Westmoreland Elect Johnson?” Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1968. Enough of the old McCarthy-era feeling remained for Alsop’s brother, the conservative columnist and war supporter Joe Alsop, to magnanimously assure a group of correspondents at a dinner in Saigon that when they were all indicted for treason for their Vietnam reporting, which they surely would be, he would speak in their defense, arguing that they were not traitors, only “fools.”
49. Thieu’s closest opponent, the dynamic and eloquent lawyer Truong Dinh Dzu, was arrested and sentenced to five years of hard labor after he complained of voting fraud. A committee from South Vietnam’s Constituent Assembly, after investigating Dzu’s claims, voted 16–2 to throw out the election results. It was ignored. James McAlister, “A Fiasco of Noble Proportions: The Johnson Administration and the South Vietnamese Elections of 1967,” Pacific Historical Review 73 (2004): 650.
50. Transcript of Westmoreland’s speech in Peter Braestrup, Big Story (hereafter, Braestrup), Westview Press, 1977, vol. 2, pp. 3–10.
51. B&B, p. 647.
52. Cable from Westmoreland to General Wheeler and Admiral Sharp, January 25, 1968, Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
53. Gregory A. Dadis, Westmoreland’s War, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 140. “These border battles also reinforced a widely-held belief that the North Vietnamese simply did not have the capacity for a countrywide offensive. Westmoreland believed Hanoi had shifted its strategic aims but possessed only limited means to achieve them.”
54. The line between North and South Vietnam was originally set at the seventeenth parallel by the Geneva Agreement ending World War II. It was decided that China would accept the surrender of the occupying Japanese forces north of that line and that France would accept the surrender south of it.
55. Miller Center.
4. The Royal Capital
56. Oberdorfer, p. ix.
57. The correct spelling of the city, now Ho Chi Minh City, would be “Sai Gon.” Because Western readers are so familiar with “Saigon,” I’m using it in this book, as well as “Hanoi” for “Ha Noi.” All other cities are spelled the way they would be in Vietnam.
58. The Phu Cam Canal widened and sculptured the An Cuu River and helps to keep the Huong from overflowing its banks. It was an enormous project, almost nineteen miles long, undertaken in the early nineteenth century by Emperor Gia Long. Many Vietnamese still refer to the canal as the An Cuu River, or Song An Cuu, and it is designated as such on many maps, partly because the word for “river” in Vietnamese is song, and the words for “canal” are song dao (literally, “river dig”), so the Vietnamese words for “Phu Cam Canal” repeats song—Song Phu Cam Song Dao, which sounds awkward.
5. Moonshine and Half-Hatched Ducks
59. Because the Vietnamese have so many surnames in common—there are at least five unrelated Nguyens in this book—I have elected in some cases, like this one, to go with the given name, Quang, which is how these individuals are commonly known.
60. In most accounts of the battle, the village’s name is cited as “Thon La Chu,” which means “the Village of La Chu.”
61. Erik Villard, “The 1968 Tet Offensive Battles of Quang Tri City and Hue” (hereafter, Villard), Center of Military History, United States Army, 2008, pp. 26–27; and Jack Shulimson, Leonard A. Blasiol, Charles R. Smith, and David A Dawson (hereafter Shulimson), U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Defining Year, 1968, History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1997, chapter 9, pp. 164–167.
62. Ao ba ba, the loose-fitting black cotton clothes, well suited to Vietnam’s climate, that the Americans called pajamas.
63. Captain Paul N. Gray, who commanded the navy’s River Patrol Force, as reported by Glenn E. Helm, “Surprised at Tet: U.S. Naval Forces in Vietnam, 1968,” Naval History and Heritage Command, http://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/tet-offensive-vietnam-1968.html. Helm calls the NVA/VC effort to prepare for Tet “one of the greatest intelligence lapses of the post WW2 era.”
64. Villard, p. 27.
6. Nhan Dan
65. Dang lao dong Viet Nam, founded in 1951, which later became (in 1976) the Communist Party of Vietnam.
66. Dang Kinh, The Famous Guerrilla General (hereafter, Kinh), Lao Dong Publishing House, 2013 (translated for me by Dang Hoa Ho), pp. 225–228.
67. It began: “‘All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.”
68. Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990, Harper Perennial, 1991, p. 172.
69. Merle L. Pribbenow, “General Vo Nguyen Giap and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan for the 1968 Tet Offensive” (hereafter, Pribbenow), Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3, no. 2 (2008): 13.
70. Ibid., p. 12.
71. Ibid., p. 10.
72. Ibid., p. 5.
73. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, University of North Carolina Press, 2012, p. 113.
74. Pribbenow, p. 15.
75. http://giaoducthoidai.vn/thoi-su/ba-chuyen-dang-suy-ngam-ve-dai-tuong-vo-nguyen-giap-3000.html.
76. Pribbenow, p. 19.
77. William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, Hyperion, 2000, p. 557.
78. “History of the Sixth Regiment (the Phu Group) 1965–2005.” Official record of the Thua Thien Hue Military Command and Party Committee. Emphasis added.
79. He would return to his duties as supreme commander in mid-February, after the offensive was a fait accompli.
80. All references to Nguyen Dac Xuan’s experiences are from my interview with him and from his memoir, Nguyen Dac Xuan, From Phu Xuan to Hue (hereafter, Xuan), Tre Publisher, 2012, translated for me by Dinh Hoang Linh.
81. Kinh, p. 234.
82. “The Tri-Thien-Hue Theater During the Victorious War of Resistance and National Salvation Against America (a draft),” ed. Kieu Tam Nguyen (hereafter, Kieu), Committee for the Final Report on the War in the Tri-Thien-Hue Theater, Thuan Hoa Publishers, 1985.
7. Andy and Mimi
83. The siege of Khe Sanh.
84. The brigade’s three battalions were the First of the Seventh, the Second of the Seventh, and the Fifth of the Seventh. Westin’s was designated 5/7.
85. UH-1s.
86. CH-47.
87. Tad Bartimus et al., War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam, Random House, 2002, p. 26.
88. Ibid.
89. The assault on LZ Colt was carried out by sappers who infiltrated the camp through its perimeter defenses, not through a tunnel. Lieutenant Craig Pinchot was killed by a grenade sitting in the same chair Westin would likely have occupied if he had not been transferred back into the field.
8. Banh Chung and Gio Cha
My interviews with Jim and Tuy-Cam Bullington.
9. Palace Soldiers
90. My interviews with Tang Van Mieu, Le Huu Tong, and others. Also Nguyen Manh Ha, deputy head of the Vietnam Military History Institute, Hanoi.
91. My interview with Nguyen Manh Ha, who heard Phieu tell the story at a party conference, to much laughter.
92. Kinh.
10. Hatred in Blood
93. Eric Hammel, Fire in the Streets (hereafter, Hammel), Pacifica Press, 1991, pp. xxiv–xxv.
94. George W. Smith, The Siege at Hue (hereafter, Smith), Lynne Rienner, 1999, pp. 57–58.
95. Kinh.
96. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, Bantam Paperback, 1992, p. 140.
97. Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
11. A Pretty Night
My interview with Jim Coolican.
PART TWO
The Fall of Hue
January 31, 1968
1. Fireworks
1. The ARVN Seventh Armored Battalion.
2. Le Minh, “Hue in Mau Than Campaign” (hereafter, Minh), Song-Huong Journal 29 (1988): 1–2.
3. My interview with Nguyen Thu.
4. Smith, frontispiece.
5. Truong Sinh, “The Fight to Liberate the City of Hue During Mau Than Tet (1968)” (hereafter, Sinh), excerpts from the journal of Truong Sinh, Hoc Tap (a Communist Party journal in Hanoi), no. 12 (December 1974): 80–93.
6. Villard, pp. 28–29.
7. Ibid., p. 28.
8. Sinh.
9. Ibid., pp. 80–93. Also Minh, pp. 1–2.
10. Sinh, p. 93.
11. Ibid.
12. NLF soldiers carried Soviet-made B-40 and B-41 rocket-propelled grenade launchers. American soldiers carried LAWs (light antitank weapons) or bazookas (World War II–era weapons that fired a 3.5-pound shaped charge). All were effectively airborne grenades, which for my purposes here will be referred to as “rockets.”
13. Minh, p. 6.
14. Villard, pp. 31–32.
15. Nguyen Duc Thuan.
16. Quang would not tell me this man’s name because, he said, the man eventually rose to a high position in the party, and his former service with the ARVN is not widely known.
17. Tran Thi Thu Van, Mourning Headband for Hue (hereafter, Tran), Indiana University Press, 2014, p. 12. Tran writes under the pen name Nha Ca and would become one of South Vietnam’s most famous writers. Nha Ca means “gentle song.” All accounts of her and her family’s experiences are drawn from this book. She and her husband, Tran Da Tu, were arrested and imprisoned by the Hanoi government after the fall of Saigon, and this book was used as evidence of her “war crimes.”
2. The Compound
18. Americans had M60 machine guns.
19. Hammel, p. 36.
20. Ibid., p. 39.
21. Smith, p. 37.
22. Ibid., pp. 34–35.
23. As noted in Shulimson: Sinh, translated from Hoc Tap, December 1974, Hue Folder, Tet Box, A&S Files, Indochina Archives, pp. 93–94.
3. A Mighty Python
24. Transcript from the National Security Council files at the LBJ Library.
25. Hoang Anh De.
26. Nguyen Ta Thanh and Nguyen Quang Ha, The Fire at the Citadel (hereafter, Thanh), translated in summary for the author by Dinh Hoang Linh, chapter 7. Thanh was an officer with the NLF who wrote this memoir years later.
27. Ibid., chapter 9.
28. Ibid., chapter 7.
29. In the North Vietnamese army, a lieutenant might command a battalion, unlike in the American military, where rank is roughly commensurate with the size of command—a battalion in the marines, under ordinary circumstances, would be commanded by a lieutenant colonel.
30. My interview with Lieutenant Tang Van Mieu. He was commander of the Seventh Battalion of the Eighth NVA Regiment. The NLF’s order of battle has been reported in a baffling variety of ways in previous American accounts, most of them wrong, including Shulimson’s official US Marine Corps history. Some of the confusion has been sown by Vietnam. Hanoi had various code names and numbers for its regiments and battalions, and frequently changed them in order to make tracking their movements difficult. To give some idea of the complexity, Dang Hoa Ho, a former Vietnamese military officer who helped me with research there, wrote: “Take the three regiments referred to today as Regiment 6, Regiment 3 (then Regiment 8), and Regiment 9. To maintain secrecy and create confusion in the adversary, they had the code names of Phu Xuan Group (Regiment 6), Song Lo Group (Lo River, Regiment 8, which was changed to Regiment 3 in 1969), and Group Quang Trung (Regiment 9). Bigger units often had subordinate units with the same code number: Regiment 8 had Battalion 7, 8, and 9; so did Regiment 9; and these subordinate units could be shuffled occasionally. Regiment 8, which later was referred to as Regiment 3 or Song Lo Group (Lo River), is typical. It was founded in 1959 as a battalion, Battalion 929. In 1965 it became a Regiment, Regiment 29 of Division 325. There were several Divisions 325, 325 B, and 325 C, engaging in battles in Quang Tri and in the Central Highland during the years 1965–1969. When it was annexed to Division 325, Regiment 29 received a new code number—it became Regiment 8 with the new code name of Song Lo. After the Tet Offensive it became Regiment 3 of Division 324. After the war the Regiment 3 was dissolved. I think the history of this Regiment alone is enough to give you a headache!”
31. Washington Post, February 1, 1968, p. A4. The report came from “News Dispatches,” which means it was assembled from wire services. Hanoi was making the same claim for Saigon, which was clearly untrue.
32. Thanh, chapter 7.
33. Xuan. This and what follows are from both his memoir and my interview.
34. Thanh, pp. 197–198 (she reports an interview she did with a dying young man she identified only as Kham).
35. Ibid., chapter 11.
4. An Afternoon of Street Fighting
36. First Battalion, First Marine Division, Company A—Alpha 1/1.
37. Indeed, Batcheller was caught in Westmoreland’s Operation Checkers, so named because it involved reshuffling marine units all over the map.
38. In this case, temporary wood frame housing.
39. Ferguson was awarded the Medal of Honor.
40. Part of Westmoreland’s Operation Checkers. Shulimson, p. 105.
41. Ibid., p. 106.
42. The marines called them Dusters, but they were not the M42 tracked vehicles in standard army use. These were trucks outfitted with the same guns as the M42.
43. M48, a larger, heavier, more modern tank than those used by the ARVN.
44. Zippos were M67 A2 tanks that, instead of the 90-mm cannon standard to the M48 A3 Patton, had a flamethrower that could project a stream of napalm 150 yards or so. It carried a drum of 250 gallons of napalm.
45. Unlike the army, which had its own medics, the marines relied on navy hospital corpsmen. They were not technically marines, although they wore marine uniforms. Some were conscientious objectors who had opted for this nonviolent way of serving.
46. “Marines Under Fire,” Kenneth N. Jordan, Sr., PublishAmerica, 2008, Kindle edition, location 4014.
47. Ibid. One of the rounds had passed through Moore’s chest, but he survived. He said later that the round missed his heart because his heart was in his throat.
48. Ligato. Gonzalez would later be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Canley would receive a Navy Cross.
49. Batcheller was awarded the Navy Cross.
50. Ligato. Fraleigh survived to undergo sixteen surgeries. As was often the case in Vietnam, men evacuated from a combat scene were never seen again by their squad mates. Ligato assumed his friend was dead until he stood up in a dark banquet room at a reunion twenty-five years later and offered a toast to his fallen buddy. “That’s me, asshole,” a voice spoke up from the darkness. “I did not die.”
5. An Idiotic Mission
51. Gravel later used the words “stupid and idiotic” to describe the mission in a personal letter to Batcheller, cited in Shulimson, p. 173.
52. Shulimson, p. 173.
53. The Sea Knight was a Boeing Vertol CH-46, known to the marines as a “phrog,” with rotors in the front and rear. It was the prime transport helicopter used by the marines in the Vietnam War.
54. Wrongly, as it happens. The guards at the prison held out until the next night.
55. Jan K. Herman, Navy Medicine in Vietnam: Oral Histories from Dien Bien Phu to the Fall of Saigon, McFarland, 2009, p. 218.
56. Lucas, twenty-one, from Jackson Heights, New York, died.
57. Kirkham, twenty-two, from Brookfield, Wisconsin, was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.
58. Meadows was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for his actions, an honor so beneath what it warranted that Downs characterized it to me as “a miscarriage of justice.”
59. Lauver received a slight wound to his calf and was flown back with the other wounded to Phu Bai. He was awarded the Silver Star for his actions that day.
60. Ligato.
61. Smith, p. 54.
62. Coolican. Murphy was posthumously awarded a Silver Star.
63. Ligato.
64. Shulimson, p. 174.
PART THREE
Futility and Denial
Wednesday–Friday
January 31– February 2
1. IR8 Rice
1. Rostow had once proposed stationing twenty-five thousand troops along the Vietnam-Cambodian border to stop infiltration by North Vietnamese troops, not realizing that in the heavily mountainous terrain a force of that size would be “completely swallowed up and ineffectual.” B&B, p. 152.
2. Rostow had written a book, The Stages of Economic Growth, a Non-Communist Manifesto, which argued that investments in poor countries that spurred economic growth would steer them naturally toward capitalism and democracy.
3. Rostow was right, in the long run, although the introduction of the new technology would not have any effect until after the war, when multiplied yields would turn the then Communist country into a major rice exporter.
4. Hedrick Smith, “US Officials Say North Vietnam Also Gained at Dakto,” New York Times, November 29, 1967, p. 14.
5. Notes of LBJ meeting with Democratic congressional leaders, January 30, 1968, LBJ Library Collection.
2. As Numerous as Ants
6. Tran, p. 16.
7. This was very likely Batcheller and Alpha Company making its way up to the An Cuu Bridge.
8. Tran wrote that the returning vehicles were “very few,” and given the location and timing of the incident, these were very likely the two trucks loaded with wounded and dead that were sent racing back to Phu Bai.
9. Excerpts from their statements were later broadcast by Radio Hanoi. Both women would be released a month later, deemed friends of the Vietnamese people. Mary Hershberger, Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War, Syracuse University Press, 1998, pp. 150–154.
3. So You Want to Go to Vietnam?
10. Foxtrot Company, Second Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment.
11. Commander, Second Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment.
12. Tom Martin says he vividly remembers this: “And the words I will never forget coming back, ‘Don’t worry Rockmat Six, where you are going there is more than you can count.’” But Mike Downs said he doubts at that point anyone knew enough about what was going on in Hue to say this.
13. Chris Brown.
14. Sea Knights were Boeing Vertol CH-46s, midsize twin-rotor choppers used by the marines.
15. Danny “Arkie” Allbritton.
16. Dan Carter. The moment is also recorded in Keith Nolan, Battle for Hue: Tet, 1968 (hereafter, Nolan), Presidio Press, 1983, p. 32.
4. Consternation Had Been Achieved
17. Charles Mohr, “Vietcong Press Guerrilla Raids; Martial Law Declared by Thieu” (hereafter, Mohr), New York Times, February 1, 1968, p. 1.
18. Lieutenant General Frederick C. Weyand, press briefing, February 1, 1968.
19. Mohr.
20. Shulimson, p. 176. He cites one of the marine pilots, Captain Dennis M. Dunagan, who delivered parts of the ARVN Fourth Battalion, Second Regiment.
21. The Second and Third Battalions of the Third Armored Regiment.
22. ARVN First Battalion, Third Regiment.
23. Shulimson, p. 175.
24. Sawada would later be captured and killed by Communist forces in Cambodia.
25. “Allied Attack Stalls in Imperial Capital,” Washington Post, February 3, 1968, p. A1.
26. Lieutenant Richard Horner was awarded the Silver Star. He recovered from his wounds and returned to Fox Company after the battle ended.
27. He died the next day at the triage center at Phu Bai.
28. One of the pictures, taken just as the tanks were moving up the street, was published in Life magazine, February 16, 1968 (hereafter, Life 2/16/68), pp. 26–27. Chris Brown’s wife, Madeline, was horrified to learn that he was in the middle of it. It showed Corpsman Gosselin and Henschel down on the sidewalk, and a row of marines crouched behind the tank. She clipped the photo and sent it to him, and Brown labeled it with the names of everyone in the picture and sent it back to her. Many years later he visited the photographer’s studio in New York and was given prints of the entire horrifying sequence.
5. Snuffies and the Most Macho Woman in the World
29. “. . . But Not in Hue/ VC Repulse Attacks in Hue, Retain Partial Control,” Washington Post, February 2, 1968, p A1.
30. Gene Roberts, “Enemy Maintains Tight Grip on Hue,” New York Times, February 3, 1968, p 1.
31. This was clearly Golf Company.
32. Papers of Walt Rostow, LBJ Library.
33. Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
34. Gene Roberts had regular access to the CIA station chief in Saigon and occasionally spent time with Westmoreland. It was his impression that the general was consistently trying to sell him a more optimistic view of the war. “When Creighton Abrams replaced Westmoreland it was clear that he distrusted the traditional up the chain of command military reporting system that had a tendency to tell the brass what it thought they wanted to hear,” Roberts wrote to me. “Abrams, I found out, invited sergeants from the field to dinner once a week or so, plied them with booze and got them to tell him what was really going on. I was impressed. I never asked Abrams about his relationship with the CIA, but my general impression was that he was not hostile to it; and liked to get as much information—even conflicting information—on ongoing operations as he could possibly get. That was not my impression of Westmoreland.”
35. Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
36. Roberts.
37. Some of this was misunderstanding. Reporters, like Roberts, had to get their stories and film out quickly for timely publishing or airing, and could not do so from the field.
38. Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Garden City Publishing Co., 1933.
39. Tran, p. 50.
40. Francois Mazure, “Cathedral Sanctuary in Hue,” Times of London, February 5, 1968.
41. Catherine Leroy, “A Tense Interlude with the Enemy in Hue” (hereafter, Leroy), Life, February 16, 1968, pp. 23–29.
6. The Chariot Is Coming
42. Company H, Second Marine Battalion, Fifth Regiment.
43. He is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, as the highest-ranking military officer to ever play in the NFL (he retired as a lieutenant general).
44. The NVA battalion failed to take full advantage of the opportunity. It melted away without attacking Echo Company.
PART FOUR
Counterattack in the Triangle and Disaster at La Chu
Saturday–Monday
February 3–5
1. Pluses and Minuses
1. Captain Jim Coolican, quoted in Richard Oliver, “Battle of the Perfume River,” Times of London, February 3, 1968, p. 8.
2. Shulimson, p. 176.
3. Braestrup, vol. 2, p. 152. This quote from Wheeler echoed peculiarly the famous warning by Ho Chi Minh to the French, delivered twenty-two years earlier: “You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.”
4. Transcript of the interview published in the New York Times, February 5, 1968, p. 15.
5. Nguyen Manh Ha.
6. Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
7. Ibid.
8. Carroll Kilpatrick, “LBJ Calls Uprising Failure; Viet Enemy Holds On in Hue; Thieu Asks Heavier Raids,” Washington Post, February 3, 1968, p. 1.
9. General Loan executed the prisoner, an insurgent team captain named Nguyen Van Lem, after Lem was caught near an open grave with thirty-four bodies. Lem had earlier killed a South Vietnamese lieutenant colonel and his family, including his eighty-year-old mother. The famous photograph was taken by AP photographer Eddie Adams, who was awarded a Pulitzer. The execution was also captured by NBC cameraman Vo Suu. The image became iconic, symbolizing the brutality and unfairness of America’s ally and the war. Adams later expressed regret for its notoriety.
10. New York Times, February 4, 1968, p. 11.
11. Times of London, February 3, 1968, p. 9.
12. Joe Alsop, “Red Raids on Cities Are Sign of Weakness, Not Strength,” Washington Post, February 2, 1968, p. A18.
13. Braestrup, vol. 2, p. 156.
14. Ibid., pp. 157–158.
15. In retrospect, this comment by the president reveals how little the White House knew or understood the machinations in Hanoi, since Ho Chi Minh was at that point a peripheral figure, ill and recovering in China, who was hardly in a position to “order” the attacks, and whose support for the Offensive was halfhearted at best.
16. Oberdorfer, p. 169.
17. Bunker included the passage at the end of a detailed, multipage rebuttal to an antiwar speech given by Senator Ted Kennedy.
18. Oberdorfer, p. 172.
2. TFP
19. Charles A. Krohn, The Lost Battalion (hereafter, Krohn), Praeger, 1993, p. 55.
20. There were also artillery units, helicopters, and a support component attached to the division.
21. Tradition trumps simplicity in the numbering of these units, so they were formally known not as the First, Second, and Third Brigades, but as the Seventh, Eighth, and Twelfth Cavalries.
22. In Vietnamese, Song Huong meant “the River Huong,” so Song Huong River meant “the River Huong River.”
23. Charles Baker, Gray Horse Troop (hereafter, Baker), Powder River Publications, 2013, p. 80; Krohn, p. 60.
24. Gerald McLain, A Vietnam Tour Through My Eyes (hereafter, McLain), Independent Publishing Corporation, 2014, p. 277.
25. Dentinger memoir: http://www.12thcav.us.
26. The Twenty-Ninth Regiment of the 325C NVA Infantry Division.
27. McLain, p. 278.
28. Krohn, p. 72.
29. Ibid., p. 74.
30. Ibid., p. 75.
3. Big Ernie
31. Shulimson, pp. 179–180; Smith, p. 95. Interview with Cheatham by the US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, October 2005, https://archive.org/stream/CHEATHAMErnest/CHEATHAM%20Ernest_djvu.txt.
32. Marine Corps Oral History Program; Vietnam Field Interview on the Battle for Hue City, September 24, 1968, Field interview Number 2511; Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham (hereafter Cheatham).
33. Fought in September of that year, it was the first of two major battles to retake the city. Communist forces overran the city twice. A force of about forty thousand marines and army infantry took it in less than a week of intense fighting, leaving 280 Americans killed and over 7,000 wounded. The Communists retook the city later that year, and another, much larger battle was fought between December 31 and January 7 by US Army, British, Thai, and South Korean troops numbering almost 150,000 men. Well over 800 allied troops were killed.
34. Cheatham.
35. Shulimson, p. 110.
36. John Laurence, The Cat from Hue (hereafter, Laurence), PublicAffairs, 2002.
37. First Battalion, First Marines.
38. Laurence, p. 19.
4. I Love Zees Fucking Marines
39. Leroy, p. 24.
40. Gene Roberts, “Attacks on Hue Fail to Rout Foe,” New York Times, February 5, 1968, p. 1.
41. Gene Roberts, “U.S. Marines in Hue Drive Wedge into Enemy Units” (hereafter, “Wedge” story), New York Times, February 6, 1968, p. 1.
42. Alvin B. Webb Jr., “Struggle for Hue Is Deadly,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 5, 1968, p. 1.
43. Gene Roberts, “U.S. Marines Seize a Third Block of Hue,” New York Times, February 4, 1968, p. 1.
44. “Wedge” story, p. 1.
45. Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973, Naval Institute Press, 1999, p. 452. DiBernardo and the other four men—Army Sergeants John Anderson, Donat Gouin, and Harry Ettmueller; and Marine Corporal John Deering—would be held as prisoners of war until 1973.
5. The Breakout
46. Krohn, p. 77.
47. My interview with Lewis “Budd” Jeffries.
48. Krohn, p. 132.
49. According to Krohn, the man was never disciplined. He was granted leave to return home when his mother died, and deserted. Krohn, p. 103.
50. Ibid., p. 105.
51. Ibid., p. 77.
52. Krohn, in an e-mail to the author.
53. McLain, pp. 282–283.
54. It accomplished this. The 2/12 Cavalry sent the ship a guidon from one of its companies as a token of appreciation.
6. Holding On to the Enemy’s Belt
55. The 804th of the NVA’s Fourth Regiment, which also included Viet Cong elements (many released prisoners) and local militiamen.
56. Hoang told me that Cheatham’s force also had a South Korean battalion and an ARVN battalion, but there is no evidence to support it.
57. Hoang Anh De.
58. Gene Roberts, “Enemy’s Soviet-Designed Rifle Slows Marines’ Drive in Hue,” New York Times, February 6, 1968, p. 17.
59. Smith, p. 96.
60. Shulimson, p. 180.
61. Hoang Anh De.
7. Jeanne d’Arc School
62. Hammel, p. 99.
8. Look at Your Sorry Ass!
63. Laurence, p. 25.
64. Ibid.
65. Keith Kay.
66. Hammel, pp. 158–159.
67. Ibid., pp. 161–162.
68. He looked to be badly wounded, but the shrapnel had missed his bones, too, and left him bloody, with shredded trousers, but otherwise not severely hurt. Another marine, John Griswold, took shrapnel in both his legs but also escaped serious injury. His wounds were enough to get him out of Hue.
69. There is a small memorial at the building today honoring the seven who were killed.
9. The Dismal Strand of Acheron
70. Shulimson, p. 182.
71. New York Times, February 5, 1968, p. 1.
72. The light cruiser with the call sign “Northampton,” which Budd Jeffries, the battalion’s fire support officer, could not identify (there was no USS Northampton in service), and the USS McCormick (a destroyer).
73. The ARVN’s First and Third Regiments, the Hac Bao, the Seventh and Ninth Airborne Divisions, and the 3/7 and 4/5 Cavalry. Smith, p. 122.
74. The ARVN Third Battalion, Seventh Regiment.
75. Charbonneau.
76. Nolan, p. 92.
77. Dante’s Inferno, Canto 3: There sighs and wails and piercing cries of woe / reverberated through the starless air . . .
PART FIVE
Sweeping the Triangle
Tuesday–Monday
February 6–February 12
1. Flags of Surrender, Flags of Fright
1. The official count from this initial wave of killings was three hundred. Kieu, p. 142.
2. A pages-long list of these targets was captured during the fighting. I found a translated copy, “Location of a Number of Objectives in Hue City,” in the National Archives.
3. Hoang Thanh Tung.
4. According Cao Van Sen, the decorated Viet Cong regular who had delivered the Alliance flag to the Citadel pole, the reprisals got badly out of hand: “It was a mistake, really. They punished many civilians who were Christians. They killed them, actually, because they considered those people traitors, who helped the ARVNs. Those soldiers were harshly criticized later . . . They were personally driven, caused by some individuals who were enraged.”
5. Interview with Nguyen Co Thanh. Mai Van Ngu (Hoa), now deceased, fled with Communist forces after the city was retaken. He was later captured by ARVN forces and imprisoned at Con Dao Island, location of the infamous “Tiger Cages.” He returned to Hue in 1975, a “hero” of the revolution.
6. Interview with Nguyen Cong Minh by WBGH, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_A871CFC59DC1460DA8775733E0AD8D15.
7. Tran, pp. 213–215. Tran (pen name Nha Ca) identifies this “Dac” as Nguyen Dac Xuan. He has denied the incident in writing and to me personally in my interview with him in Hue in February 2016. Xuan has devoted a great deal of time and energy trying to refute Tan’s accounts and others accusing him of direct responsibility for atrocities in Hue during February 1968. He admits that killings of guilty and innocents occurred, and that the purges got out of hand, but denies any direct involvement.
8. Despite his denials, it seems plausible that “Dac” and “Xuan” are one and the same. Given the implication that he participated in the murderous cruelties of those days, Xuan, today a well-regarded historian at Hue University, would understandably not want to be tied to such things. In his memoir, Xuan relates that as a youth he disliked the name “Xuan” and was reluctant to use it: “Previously, I really hated my name—Xuan. As this name often coincided with those of the girls who were servants of rich men in the city. During this historic time, I suddenly felt excited with such a strange name. I discreetly thanked my mother for having chosen the name of Quang Trung’s ancient capital, where I was born, to name me. Those thoughts flickering in my mind made me miss my footing and roll down the gravel slopes or rice-field many times” (chapter 5, p. 2). While he did not say specifically that he used his other name, “Dac,” it would be a likely alternative. In another work recounting events in this period, “A Star on the Top of Phu Van Lau,” the author Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuang refers to Xuan throughout as “Dac.” Tran is certain that “Dac” was none other than Nguyen Dac Xuan.
9. Tran, p. 214.
10. Xuan, in my interview with him (February 2016): “I wasn’t a general, I was only a civilian, but I myself considered the leaders in the events of Mau Than [Year of the Monkey] naive . . . I’m very sorry that in the war, we couldn’t avoid many mistakes . . . There is cruelty that happened due to naïveté . . . I am very sorry that in the war we couldn’t avoid many mistakes.”
11. Nguyen Dac Xuan diary, chapter 11, pp. 7–8.
12. There is no record of South Korean soldiers fighting in the Battle of Hue, although I heard this rumor many times from Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.
13. Le Cong Thanh. Khoa was his great-uncle.
14. Tran, p. 52.
15. Ibid., p. 56.
16. Ibid., p. 75.
17. Ibid., p. 77.
18. Tuy-Cam and James Bullington.
2. Something Is Wrong Over There
19. Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
20. Cable from Westmoreland to Wheeler, February 3, 1968, Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library. Emphasis is mine.
21. John W. Finney, “Anonymous Call Set Off Rumors of Nuclear Arms for Vietnam,” New York Times, February 13, 1968, p. 1.
22. Notes of NSC meetings, the papers of Walt Rostow, and the papers of William Westmoreland, LBJ Library. Over the first four months of 1968, more than one hundred thousand tons of explosives were dropped on the five-square-mile area, one of the most concentrated aerial bombardments in history, according to George C. Herring, America’s Longest War, McGraw-Hill, 1979, p. 145.
23. Presidential Papers, LBJ Library.
24. Cable from Westmoreland to General Wheeler and Admiral Sharp, February 3, 1968, Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library. Emphasis is mine.
25. Oberdorfer, p. 175.
26. New York Times, February 1, 1968, p. 26.
27. Excerpts from RFK speech, New York Times, February 9, 1968, p. 12.
28. Walter Rugaber, “Civil Rights, Strong Challenge by King,” New York Times, February 11, 1968, p. E4.
29. Presidential Papers, LBJ Library.
30. Rostow Papers, LBJ Library.
3. The Sweep
31. Shulimson, p. 188.
32. General Hughes, the overall commander in Hue, said, “If any single supporting arm is to be considered more effective than all the others, it must be the 106 recoilless rifle, especially the M50 Ontos.” Shulimson, p. 186.
33. My interview with Hoang Anh De.
34. Hammel, p. 186.
35. Shulimson, p. 189.
36. “U.S. Marines in Hue Drive Wedge Into Enemy Units,” by Gene Roberts, The New York Times, February 6, 1968.
37. W. D. Ehrhart, Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir, University of Massachusetts Press, 1983, pp. 9–10.
38. Ibid., pp. 263–264, and my interview with Ehrhart.
39. Soukup, in a letter to Nolan, July 24, 1980.
40. Ibid.
41. Shulimson, p. 185.
42. Smith would retire as a major general, Christmas as a lieutenant general, Downs as a brigadier general, and Meadows as a colonel.
43. Hammel, p. 227.
44. “Wedge” story.
45. Navy LCUs—landing craft utility.
46. These estimates were low. Army Colonel Dick Sweet’s battalion alone, which had been trapped northwest of the city, had been halved—nearly two hundred casualties.
47. James Reston, “Washington: The Flies That Captured the Flypaper,” New York Times, February 7, 1968, p. 46.
4. Staying
48. Tu Minh and Nam Long.
49. Kinh, pp. 241–243.
5. Vaught
50. Krohn, p. 120.
51. My use of the slur “gook” in presenting the thinking of marines or soldiers is based on their use of the term in interviews with me. In these instances, drawn from their own words, I am trying to capture what they thought and felt, which includes their sometimes offensive attitudes toward the Vietnamese.
52. Krohn, p. 126
53. Baker, p. 88.
54. My interview with Don Bowman, S-3, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.
55. Hammel, p. 316.
6. Fuck Him, He’s for the Other Side
56. Gene Roberts, “Marine Squad Rides to Battle on Motorcycles,” New York Times, February 8, 1968, p. 14.
57. H. D. S. Greenway, Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir (hereafter, Greenway), Simon & Schuster, 2014, p. 65. Greenway writes that he was later disappointed in himself for picking up the gun. “I am not proud of that afternoon . . . Years later, Gene and I were having dinner together in New York and he told me he thought I had done the right thing under the circumstances. But I believe it was he who did the right thing.”
58. Gene Roberts, “Hue to Danang: A Perilous Boat Ride,” New York Times, February 11, 1968, p. 1. The story is supplemented by my interview with Roberts.
7. Hell Sucks
59. Courtney was so beloved by his men that one of them, Merril Ludwig, has a big tattoo on his back in remembrance of him.
60. Instead, Smith had Courtney evacuated. He had been injured days earlier and had insisted on staying. Now Smith told him he needed to take advantage of the wound to get out of Hue “by sundown,” he said, which amused Courtney, the Texan. He returned less than a week later after Gravel had cooled off. The colonel did not follow through on the demand for court-martial papers.
61. John Laurence; notes from David Halberstam’s files (kept at Boston University) for his book The Powers That Be, and from the book itself, p. 512; and from Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite, Kindle edition, chapter 22, loc. 6290.
62. The actual battle sequences shown in the broadcast were the work of John Laurence and Keith Kay, Don Webster and John Smith, George Syvertson and Kurt Volkart, along with a number of Vietnamese crew members who assisted with sound. Cronkite apparently wrote the narrative himself, according to an interview David Halberstam did for his book The Powers That Be, with Ernest Leiser, the show’s executive producer. Laurence notes that the narration “sounds” like Cronkite. Who else, he asked, would have in 1968 still been referring to himself on the air as “this correspondent”?
63. Michael Herr, Dispatches (hereafter, Herr), Knopf, 1977, p. 73.
64. Ibid., pp. 73–74.
65. Herr either confused his buildings or was exaggerating. Hue University was not significantly damaged during the battle.
66. Herr was faithfully reporting the contemporary, incorrect MACV estimates.
67. It Wasn’t Pretty Folks, But Didn’t We Have Fun?, Carol Polsgrove, W.W Norton, 1995, page 174.
68. Smith, p. 111.
69. Laurence.
8. The High Weirdness
70. The 4.2-inch Gun Platoon, Mortar Battery, First Battalion, Eleventh Marines, First Marine Division. They were part of Operation X-Ray and were known as “Whiskey X-Ray” on the radio.
71. Peter Braestrup, “Weather and Thin Ranks Slow Marines’ Tough Fight in Hue” (hereafter, Braestrup 2/12/68), Washington Post, February 12, 1968, p. 1.
72. Cable from Bunker to Cushman, February 16, 1968, Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
73. Braestrup 2/12/68.
74. Draftees ordinarily were conscripted for two years; those who enlisted usually bought into a full four years.
75. Dale A. Dye, Citadel, a novel, Diamond Books, 1994, p. 147.
76. Nolan, p. 178.
77. Lonny Connolly.
78. West was evacuated to Phu Bai and lived. He received a Bronze Star with a V for valor, even though Smith had recommended a higher decoration. The marines did not look kindly on the fact that he had lost his tank.
79. So much so that no one later could recall the man’s real name. He was called “Scooby,” he was wounded near the end of the battle and evacuated, and none of the members of his tanker unit ever saw him again.
9. Like Men Who Fell Out of the Sky
80. Hoang Thi No fought in Hue until the twenty-sixth of February. Afterward she joined an all-female platoon of Viet Cong called Vo Thi Sau, which fought until the war ended. She returned to her village in 1975 as a celebrated member of the then famous Huong River Girls. She became a prominent party official and served in that capacity until she retired.
81. Hammel, p. 248.
PART SIX
Taking Back the Citadel
Sunday–Sunday
February 11–February 25
1. Clusterfucked
1. He would later serve as director of the marines’ Physical Fitness Academy at Quantico, which trains the Corps’s physical fitness instructors.
2. Smith, p. 129.
3. Nicholas Warr, Phase Line Green (hereafter, Warr), Naval Institute Press, 1997, p. 87.
4. Memo from Wheeler to the president, February 9, 1968. LBJ Library.
5. Warr, p. 89.
6. Ibid., pp. 91–92.
7. Ibid., p. 92.
8. Shulimson, pp. 194–195.
9. No relation to the Hall of Fame baseball player.
10. Warr, p. 109.
11. Ibid., pp. 113–128.
2. We Do Not Doubt the Outcome
12. Bernard Weinraub, “Saigon’s Authority Believed to Be in Critical Stage,” New York Times, February 11, 1968, p. 3.
13. “Hanoi Attacks, and Scores a Major Psychological Blow,” Newsweek, February 12, 1968, p. 23. Emphasis is mine.
14. Miller Center.
15. Ibid.
16. Braestrup, vol. 1, p. 190.
17. Time, February 14, 1968, pp. 1, 34.
18. “Viet-Bound Troops Get LBJ Sendoff,” UPI, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 18, 1968, p. 1.
3. Random Agents of Doom
19. Smith, p. 139.
20. Ibid.
21. Morrow would later try to take some of Trinh’s music to Joan Baez, in California, but he was turned away by the guards at her gate.
22. Herr, p. 79.
23. Ibid., p. 74.
24. Time, February 16, 1968, p. 20.
25. Halberstam, p. 512.
26. Laurence’s letter to Halberstam, June 1, 1974.
4. The First Annual Hue City Turkey Shoot
27. Warr, p. 133.
28. Ibid., p. 135.
29. Thomas A. Johnson, “Vietcong Continue to Hold Out in Central Hue Despite Marine Attacks,” New York Times, February 14, 1968, p. 3.
30. Years later Berntson could not remember the marine’s real name.
31. Shulimson, p. 205; and Smith, p. 145.
32. Smith, p. 146.
5. The Tower
33. Whitmer and Harrington.
34. Gene Roberts, “Jets Hammer at Hue Citadel,” New York Times, February 15, 1968, p. 3.
35. Smith, p. 142.
36. Thomas A. Johnson, “U.S. Marines Gain 200 Yards in Day at Hue’s Citadel,” New York Times, February 16, 1968, p. 1.
37. It was Dennis Michael, whose death is described in Part Six, Chapter 8.
6. Lefty
38. Captain Harrington was later chewed out for failing to remove Thoms from the battle after he had received wounds entitling him to three Purple Hearts.
39. Eshelman. According to Nguyen Quang Ha, a battalion inside the Citadel suffered so many casualties—150 in one day—that they attempted to withdraw that evening, only to be bombarded (Ha attributed this to a B-52 attack) so severely that the entire remainder of the force was wiped out.
40. In his interview with me, Tang Van Mieu first accused Americans of using civilians as shields and then later admitted to doing the same thing. Each side has accused the other of this practice, and while it was not the official policy of either, it is easy to imagine individual soldiers or units taking advantage of the proximity of civilians under the circumstances.
7. Why Are You Guys Doing This?
41. Thomas A. Johnson, “Hue’s Mayor Says Foe Executed 300,” New York Times, February 12, 1968, p. 1.
42. Tran, pp. 265–266.
43. Ibid., p. 279.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., p. 276.
46. Ibid., p. 268.
47. Ibid., pp. 266–267 and 270.
48. See my comments about Xuan in the Epilogue. In my interview, he said that he believed Le Quang was going to be killed, but earlier he had told me that many of those arrested were not condemned to die, but only sentenced to undergo reeducation. “Then why did you assume in this case he would be killed?” I asked him. Xuan said that because of intensive fighting and shelling, it was reasonable to assume that Le Quang would be killed, but that he did not necessarily believe it would be at the hands of his captors. It sounded to me, given the extreme gratitude expressed by the photographer, that neither he nor Xuan was concerned primarily about the danger of a random shell. It sounded to me like Xuan saved him from execution.
8. There It Is
49. “18 Days Under the Bed, He Eludes Foe in Hue,” Washington Post, February 20, 1968, p. 14.
50. Alvin B. Webb Jr., “Marines Face 9 Hue Blocks of Death, Terror,” UPI, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 18, 1968, p. 1.
51. Herr, p. 81.
52. Alvin Webb, “Fearful Price Paid for Four Blocks,” Times of London, February 21, 1968, p. 6.
53. Fred Emery, “N. Vietnamese Die Chained to Their Gun Posts,” Times of London, February 16, 1968, p. 1.
54. Nguyen Quang Ha and Le Huu Tong.
55. The Buddhist tetraskelion is an ancient symbol of good fortune. Its legs are bent in a clockwise direction, while the Nazi symbol’s legs were bent counterclockwise.
56. Felix Bolo, “White Flag That Brought Only Hail of Bullets and Civilian Deaths,” Times of London, February 22, 1968, p. 6.
57. Lee Lescaze, “Hue Marines, Bitter as They Are Brave,” Washington Post, February 20, 1968, p. 1.
58. After the war Thompson paid a visit to McGonigal’s brother in Philadelphia, who agreed that the priest had gone to Vietnam with a “death wish.”
59. Both correspondents, along with Charles Mohr, were later awarded Bronze Stars.
9. La Chu
60. Westmoreland Papers, LBJ Library.
61. Bowman.
62. Baker, p. 125.
63. Very much later, as it happens. Almost forty years later, he began having intense pain in his right knee. He went to an orthopedist, who found an AK bullet lodged in the joint.
64. Baker, pp. 130–131.
10. Checkmate
65. Smith, p. 154
66. Hammel, p. 303.
67. Lima Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, commanded by Captain John Niotis.
68. Thomas A. Johnson, “Wary Hue Civilians Live Around the Battle,” New York Times, February 21, 1968, p. 3.
69. “Vietcong Fight to the Death,” Times of London, February 16, 1968, p. 10.
70. Charles Mohr, “U.S. Marines Gain a Hue Objective, but Foe Fights On,” New York Times, February 23, 1968, p. 1.
71. Kinh, p. 244.
72. Tang Van Mieu.
73. “Hue Chief Issues Execution Order,” New York Times, February 21, 1968, p. 1.
11. The Toll
74. Shulimson, p. 21b.
75. Marine losses were 142 dead and 1,100 injured (Shulimson, p. 213). The 2/12 Air Cavalry lost 81 killed and 251 wounded (Krohn, p. 140). Krohn updated this figure in a 2008 edition saying on page ix “First, let me correct the casualty figures. During the six-week period described in the book, the foxhold strength of the 2/12th fell from five hundred to fewer than two hundred. I originally said this included 60 killed in action and more than 250 wounded. . . . I now know the KIA figure was eighty-one, not sixty.” The 5/7 Air Cavalry lost 27 killed, 203 wounded (Baker, p. 157).
76. Rostow Papers, LBJ Library.
77. Notes of the President’s Meetings, January 23, 1968, LBJ Library.
78. March 6, 1968, cable from National Security Council files at the LBJ Library.
79. Gene Roberts, “U.S. Command Sees Hue, Not Khesanh, as Foe’s Main Goal,” New York Times, March 7, 1968, p. 1.
80. Newsweek, February 19, 1968.
81. Louis Menand, “Seeing It Now, Walter Cronkite and the Legend of CBS News,” New Yorker, July 9, 2012.
82. Halberstam, p. 514.
83. Which, under President Nixon, it did.
84. Kieu: “The high command ordered that this attack [on Khe Sanh] should take place about one week before Tet 1968 (i.e., between 20 and 23 January, 1968). The attack would be launched before our nationwide attack in order to draw enemy forces away from other theaters of operation.”
85. Betty Boyd Caroli, Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President, Simon & Schuster, 2015, p. 312.
12. Why Should They Keep Fighting?
86. The notes from this interview are in the National Archives in Washington, DC.
87. Mai Elliott, RAND in Southeast Asia, Rand, 2010, p. 12.
13. Krystal Burgers and the Truck
88. Olson won the Robert Capa Award for the series.
Epilogue
1. Nixon speech, May 3, 1968, in Indiana.
2. In typical Westmoreland legerdemain (“A Soldier Reports,” page 434), he correctly reports the number of American marines killed at 142, but does not mention the 80 Cavalry troopers killed in the battles around La Chu (87). He does, however, add the estimated number of Front troops killed around La Chu (3,000) to the highest estimate of enemy soldiers killed in the city (5,000).
3. “Outlook Assessed by Westmoreland,” Associated Press, February 26, 1968.
4. Tran Van Tra, as quoted in Karnow, p. 544.
