The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had launched the Tet Offensive of 1968 upon Hue and dozens of selected sites all over South Viet Nam. The offensive had been planned for weeks, and the infiltrators had brought in artillery pieces, small arms, and ammunition in small hidden lots with great patience. Communist soldiers had surreptitiously infiltrated into the city along with holiday festival traffic. Once in the city, they shucked their disguises and donned their military uniforms.

The miserable weather became worse, offering further aid to the attackers. The temperature dropped to fifty degrees, and a strong monsoon downpour drenched the town. Heavy ground fog hid the movements of the two attacking regiments [7500 NVA and VC in eight battalions] as they overran the city. The invaders started a campaign of slaughter of Hue’ civilians in a prearranged manhunt, killing defenseless citizens named on extermination lists.

A huge Viet Cong flag was mounted over the Imperial Palace the first morning of the offensive. The brilliant red, blue, and gold NLF pennant fluttered over the palace day after day to taunt the men and women trapped inside the limited protective walls of the Citadel.

Frantic radio messages brought marines from Danang. They were transported in limited numbers by helicopters at first, and then their units were able to enter the city over bridges that the NVA engineers had not had time to destroy. They did not even have a map of the city until a grunt obtained one from a battered Shell gasoline service station. By nightfall of the first night of fighting, the marines were methodically and painfully locked in door to door combat in the early efforts to dislodge the determined communists. In the dark and secret, the murders proceeded. It was a scene form Dante’s Inferno.

The NVA troops were being reinforced by fresh soldiers rushed unimpeded down the myriad paths of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and from the villages and farms. They pulled out all the stops and committed all of their assets, hidden and open. The hit squads continued their daily work of murder along with the commitment to the hot battle raging from building to building, street to street, and neighborhood to neighborhood. Every time the ARVN forces attempted to move out of the Citadel, they were driven back.

The weather was atrocious and continued to work in the NVA’s favor. Visibility was minimal; and the marines could not advance more than a few blocks. The orders to the ARVN troops were to stay put and to keep their casualties to a minimum.

By February ninth, the tenth day of fighting, General Ngo swallowed his pride and requested assistance from the US Marines who were, themselves, locked in a deadly struggle for survival, let alone advancement. The marines advanced on the northeast wall of the old Citadel fighting furiously as they went. When they entered the narrow streets in front of the wall, the Citadel tower, house windows, doors, sheds, and ditches erupted into a hell storm of gun, rocket, and grenade fire. The marines could do nothing but duck into the protection of civilian homes. They drove out the terrified citizens and helped themselves to the few belongings that had not been taken by the wave of communist soldiers who holed up in the homes before driven out by the marines.

The fighting around the Citadel continued unabated for a full four days. Navy cruisers fired heavy artillery that made a noise like a freight train coming in; and they and the 106mm recoilless rifles fired by the marines on the scene slowly pounded the tower, most of the ImperialCity, the Citadel, and the emperors’ tombs into varying degrees of rubble. Irreplaceable architectural treasures already badly damaged in the First Indochina War were destroyed. Finally, the communists retreated.

The counter-attack started after the battle of the Citadel was over. It took a month of hunting, fear, surprises, and killings to drive out the last of the PAVN and VC forces from the city and surrounding countryside. Five thousand of them were killed in battle. When it was all over, 216 Americans were dead, 1,364 were seriously wounded, 384 ARVN regulars had been killed and 1,830 seriously wounded, and 6,000 civilians were dead, In the investigations during the aftermath of the offensive, it was determined that at least 3,000 defenseless civilians had been murdered over and above those who had perished in the crossfire.

There were men, women, and children; age and sex were no protection. Some of the victims were killed simply because they had been witnesses to the atrocities. Fifty percent of the venerable old city of the Nguyen Lords was destroyed leaving 116,000 homeless. Hue lost its innocence, its security, its treasured old buildings, and its belief that it was exempt from the war. In the days that followed, there was a climate of bitterness, hatred, and fear that was almost palpable.

City Mood Change

Ordinary activities of Hue closed down for months while stunned citizens wearily tried to clean up and to rebuild their shattered city and lives. Sewage, water, electrical, garbage, and police services were nonexistent for a time. The cafes no longer blared jazz music. There were no prolonged circuitous intellectual discussions. The students conversed in hushed tones about their ultimate exposure to reality. There were no more illusions. War had come to Hue; no place was safe, or sane, or had promise for the future. A profound depression settled over the old city.

Phoenix Retributes for Tet Offensive

And there was retribution. From its vaunted blacklist the Phoenix program cranked out scores of names of VCI, and the PRUs all over South Viet Nam went after them with a coldhearted vengeance. Phoenix accounted for twenty thousand killings in the next two and a half years. The US counter-attack was the personification of brutality on the remnants of the VC not already cut to pieces in their desperate and militarily unsuccessful Tet Offensive. 1968 was a year that would live in infamy and would result in the virtual destruction of COSVN fighters in any kind of useful force. By 1969, nearly the entire war was conducted by regular NVA. The communist forces lost, during the Tet Offensive and its aftermath, 40,000 KIA, 5,000 disabled, and 3,000 captured.