TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Year in the Provinces
***
Hue
Hue City differed from DaNang in a significant way: It
wasn’t garrisoned by U.S. Forces. Unlike Saigon, it wasn’t a
major commercial center; no Mekong river. Hue had a river
that went no where, and an airstrip with no flights out.
What it did have was the old imperial court, and its modern
appendages, a university, a law school, and a med school.
With them, and with its history as Vietnam’s imperial capital
(home of the Nguyen Dynasty) came a courtly, formal notion
of behavior and manners. Women would not speak to a
man to whom they had not been formally introduced.
With thoughtful consistency, General Walt presumed
there were few hearts and minds to be won in stuffy old Hue
by packing it with nineteen year old Marines. Phu Bai, with
Marines aplenty, was a comfortable thirteen miles away.
What Hue did have was the headquarters of the 1 st ARVN
Division, commanded by Vietnam’s most able general,
MajGen Truong. At Tet every bit of the immediate­action
drill that befell U.S. and VN forces everywhere else in
Vietnam fell immediately to South Vietnamese units in
Hue.
Hue posed inherent disadvantages. First is that when
a NVA unit popped out of the jungle at the Song Bo river and
headed east toward Hue, they had (by actual count) roughly
forty­five minutes of heavy breathing in crossing one klick of
abandoned paddies before they were safely into a no­fire
zone of villages. From there it was a quick seven or eight
klicks to town. The city was properly an old fortress of
French (Vauban) design with six feet deep walls perched
behind the Perfume riverbank. So from jungle to town it
was a quick jaunt, and once there, hellishly difficult to pry
anyone out.
As everywhere, Giap had promised a popular uprising in
Hue, but he also hoped to profit from the lack of an
American garrison in town. He supposed the ARVN would
be quickly isolated and be unable to communicate. Giap’s
geographical advantages were real, and he was aided by the
unfortunate circumstance that 3 rd Recon, that had screened
Hue for several years, had the week prior displaced to
Quang Tri. The U.S. Army was still unpacking. True, they
were arriving in ever greater numbers, but they were as yet,
strangers. Nevertheless, Giap’s assumptions, once again,
proved false.
***
NVA battalions poured into Hue. Tet was a battle aimed to
bust loose the populace from Saigon and its allies.
However, in Hue itself little to nothing was expended in the
direction of Americans; every round got sent toward the 1 st
ARVN division headquarters. Sure, Americans would show
up, but not before the NVA was dug in.
The Tet holidays was a time of stand down, there
being a formal cease­fire. General Truong had checked into
a hospital to see if anything new had fallen off since his last
visit, and from a second floor window of the hospital he
noticed men running toward it wearing uniforms not of his
army. Oh, he’d heard noise of gunfire, but he presumed it
was soldiers adding to the Tet fireworks. No duffer, out he
A‐40