We’re coming up in a few months to the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. The Tet Offensive was a combined military action and civilian uprising throughout South Vietnam, orchestrated by the North Vietnamese, and intended to win the war in a single stroke. The most dramatic of these actions was the capture of Hue, the cultural capital. The battle to retake Hue, fought over 24 days of bloody street fighting with the loss of 10,000 combatant and civilian lives, was the bloodiest battle of the entire Vietnam War. This new account of the battle has been written very much from the point of view of the people on the ground – Bowden relies significantly on first-person accounts from American servicemen and Vietnamese soldiers, guerrillas and civilians. The Tet offensive, and the battle of Hue, were a tipping point in the war – the American debate moved from winning the war to working out how to leave. Mark Bowden will probably be familiar to some listeners who have read his earlier books like Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. This new book lives up to his reputation: it’s a classic narrative about he role of grit and the individual soldier in urban battle.
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