Combat· Vietnam War
Battle of Hue
The Battle of Hue was the longest and bloodiest urban battle of the Vietnam War, fought when North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces seized most of the old imperial capital during the Tet Offensive and the Marines were committed to retake it.
Thrown into a kind of fighting they had not seen since Korea, the Marines battled house to house through the modern southern part of the city and then into the walled Citadel on the north bank, clearing fortified buildings one at a time against a determined and well-prepared enemy. The combat was slow, brutal, and close, the Marines relearning the costly techniques of city fighting amid rubble, snipers, and tenacious defenders, while the occupiers carried out massacres of civilians in the captured city. After weeks of fighting the Marines and their allies cleared Hue and raised the colors over the Citadel. The battle stood as a defining ordeal of the Tet Offensive.
Record no. 682