Hue 1968 – by Mark Bowden
If you only chose to read one book about the Vietnam War, Hue (pronounced “Hway”) 1968 might be the best choice available. No, the book doesn’t cover the whole war. As the title implies, it focuses on the location of the infamous Tet offensive initiated by Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese. The event, however, does an accurate job of summarizing the entire war. The battle of Hue was what made most realize that Vietnam was a losing effort. It woke up even the majority of the most jingoistic supporters and turned the tide of, not only the conflict itself, but the public opinion.
What makes this book so endearing (yet depressing) is that Bowden tells the story (literally) down in the trenches. Most of this book doesn’t focus on the bigwigs in power making decisions. Yes, we do read about some of that, but what we mostly read about are personal stories of the young people who were sent to this war with no inkling of what it was even about, and experienced a literal hell on earth. This book cuts deep into one’s emotional core. The author does such a great job in this aspect that the book would make an excellent movie if it wasn’t such a horrid, discouraging tale. There are so many anecdotes thrown in here that the reader can’t really keep track. That’s not really important though. Each story about each person resonates exactly how it should and make those who never had to experience such a horror be evermore thankful, and evermore appreciative of the hundreds of thousands of people who did have to suffer through so much.
A typical story begins with an American kid who drops out of high school in Anywhere, USA. With no real prospects for any sort of meaningful future, the kid joins the army. Next thing you know, he’s fighting overseas in a country he couldn’t even find on a map with no knowledge of why the war is even being fought. He finds himself thrown into a company of soldiers that are basically scared kids just like himself. The events of the war turn these kids into petrified, drug fueled, rabid animals who soon become immune to the senseless killings, death, and destruction that overpower their senses. It’s cliché to say that the lucky ones survived, but after seeing the many scars that would haunt these poor souls for their entire life, one almost feels as though the lucky ones were actually the ones who died. At least their soul could now be at peace.
All of these stories take place immediately before, and during, the Tet Offensive. Hue was where the main battle took place so this is where all of the action is in this book. It must be said, though, that the main difference between Hue and the stereotypical Vietnam battle is that Hue is in actual city. The houses are actual houses. They have furniture, kitchens, and television sets. Such accoutrements are a far cry from the typical battle scenes in the jungle surrounded by straw huts and rice paddies that we normally associate with when we think “Vietnam”. The horrors, the mindset of the enemy, and the cluelessness of the American leaders though, remain consistent.
We read a lot of geography within the city, but the author provides his readers with well-detailed maps so we don’t get too lost when we hear all of the unfamiliar names and locations. Again, though, the “where” isn’t important in this book. What is important is the “who” and also the “why” which, like the war itself, is never adequately answered.
So who won the battle of Hue? Again, to adequately answer that question, we must also confess that like the war itself, the immediate answer isn’t really the obvious one; or in this case, the correct one. Yes, the Americans “won” the battle in effect. After losing the city to the North Vietnamese, they recaptured the city, but what America would learn about this war is that “victory” doesn’t really happen until the enemy totally capitulates, and this is something that North Vietnam never did, nor would ever do. No matter how many points on the map that one side takes, if the other side keeps throwing in more soldiers, and young American men keep dying, eventually the public back home gets sick and says “enough”. This is essentially what ended up happening.
This seems to be yet another hard lesson that the U.S.A. would have to learn during this conflict. Throughout most of the Vietnam war, we read that General William Westmorland insists that the U.S. is winning, and his main trump card seems to always revolve around casualties and fatalities. He seems a slave to statistics, and as long as the enemy suffers more losses than his side does, he looks at this as a victory. We now know that such numbers don’t mean anything. Anytime you have over 50,000 soldiers die in a war that never seemed to make any sense nor have clear goals, it’s looked at as a colossal failure; regardless of how many enemy soldiers died in relation to ours.
So Hue was a wakeup call. It finally shifted the opinion of the majority. Before Hue, the opposition of the war was contained to a minority of hippies and left-leaning radicals. Once the story got out (there are a lot of stories in this book about journalists that covered the battle here as well, including Walter Cronkite) however, the tide began to turn.
This book was incredibly depressing, yet such stories are necessary if we truly don’t want to repeat the mistakes of our past. True, since Vietnam, The U.S. has become involved in other worthless conflicts that pretty much yielded the same results. It’s sad that we haven’t learned from our mistakes, but if you can say anything at all positive about conflicts in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan, it would be that the body bag count wasn’t nearly as high as Vietnam. Small comfort to those who lost loved ones in battle, but we can only hope and pray that there are never again any Vietnams.
