DEATH IN THE IMPERIAL CITY

U.S. MARINES IN THE BATTLE FOR HUE 

31 JANUARY TO 2 MARCH 1968

COLONEL RICHARD D. CAMP JR., USMC (RET)

MARINES IN THE VIETNAM WAR COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
is pamphlet history, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in the Vietnam War, is published for the education and training 

of Marines by the History Division, Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia, as part of the U.S. Department of Defense 

observance of the ftieth anniversary of that war. Editorial costs have been defrayed in part by contributions from members of 

the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.

Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

Director of Marine Corps History

Dr. Charles P. Neimeyer

Commemorative Series Historian

Paul Westermeyer

Senior Editor

Angela J. Anderson

Commemorative Series Editor

Jason Gosnell

Visual Information Specialist

Robert A. Kocher

2018

PCN 2018931011

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ublishing

ISBN 978-0-16-094403-1

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90000
Within the context of the Vietnam War, the 

battle for Hue City stands as an example of urban warfare and how the U.S. military and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam were able to 

secure victory in the face of severe odds. This commemorative begins with an overview of the city and its geographical, 

political, and cultural importance to the region. According to 

Buddhist myth, the picturesque city of Hue, the provincial 

capital of Thua Thien Province and the former imperial capital of Vietnam, sprang to life as a lotus flower blossoming 

in a puddle of mud.* Hue is located on a bend of the Huong 

or Perfume River, a major waterway running from the western foothills to the sea. The river provides an excellent supply 

route from the South China Sea only seven kilometers 

northeast of the city. The mountain slopes of the Annamite 

Chain (or Giai Truong Son) begin an equal distance away 

and the Laotian border lies another 50 miles farther west. 

In between the mountains and the border are the A Shau 

Valley and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the major North Vietnamese infiltration and supply route to the south. The narrow 

25-mile long A Shau Valley, known as Base Area 114, served 

*Some of the content in the following work was originally published in 1997 

by Jack Shulimson, LtCol Leonard A. Blasiol (USMC), Charles R. Smith, 

and Capt David A. Dawson (USMC) in U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Defining Year, 1968.

as an arm of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and provided an important sanctuary from which Communist forces could launch 

their attacks on the population centers along the coast. The 

Annamite Chain presented a formidable obstacle that prevented allied forces from penetrating into the interior of the 

country except by helicopter. 

Hue was an important religious and intellectual center 

for the Vietnamese people. Its residents enjoyed a tradition of civic independence that dated back several hundred 

years. The Buddhist monks who dominated the religious and 

political life of the city viewed the struggle between North 

and South Vietnam with aloof disdain. They advocated local 

autonomy and traditional Vietnamese social values that led 

to a distrust of the central Saigon government and its American allies as well as Communism. In both the 1963 Buddhist uprising and the 1966 Struggle Movement, the monks 

from the Hue pagodas and the students and professors at 

Hue University provided the informal leadership that rallied 

the residents against successive Saigon regimes.**

Despite the war, Hue retained much of its prewar ambience. “I was taken with the beauty of the city,” Marine Corps 

**Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Da Nang and other 

northern cities. They formed an organization called the Military-Civilian 

Struggle Committee (a.k.a. Struggle Movement) to support LtGen Nguyen 

Chanh Thi and express opposition to the Saigon government.

Death in the Imperial City | 1
2 | Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

Captain James A. Gallagher recalled. “It was a magnicent 

place. It exuded culture. It had the French inuence.” e 

city had escaped the worst ravages of war. Even though the 

enemy mortared it from time to time, and saboteurs from 

the Hue City Sapper Unit occasionally committed acts of terrorism, a large enemy force had never appeared at the gates. 

Nevertheless, considering the city’s cultural and intellectual 

importance to the Vietnamese people, it was only a matter 

of time before the Communists tried to make it their prize.

e city was divided into two sections. e Citadel, a sixsquare-kilometer fortress constructed in the rst two decades 

of the nineteenth century and modeled after the Forbidden 

City in Beijing, China, stood on the north bank. Within its 

walls lay formal gardens and parks, private residences, market 

places, and pagodas. It was built in the shape of a diamond, 

with its four corners pointing to the cardinal directions of 

the compass. Stone walls that were 20 feet thick and from 

25 to 30 feet high encircled the Citadel, as did a wide moat 

lled with water. 

e Perfume River ran a parallel course a short distance 

from the southeastern wall, oaering extra protection from 

that quarter. Ten gates pierced the massive city walls. Four 

of the portals, made of elaborately carved stone, were on the 

southeastern side, and the remaining walls had two gates 

apiece. A shallow canal cut through the heart of the Citadel, winding a crooked course from the middle of the southwestern wall to the middle of the northeastern wall. A pair of 

culverts blocked by barbed wire connected the interior city 

canal with those outside. e southeastern section of the city 

included the imperial palace, a walled and moat-ringed compound covering nearly a square kilometer.

South of the Perfume River lay the newer section of the 

city, a bustling residential and business community that contained numerous public buildings, including the prestigious 

Hue University, the province headquarters and its associated jail, the main hospital, and the treasury. “Many of the 

instructors from the university . . . and most of the Europeans 

lived on that side of the city,” Lieutenant Colonel Ernest C. 

Cheatham explained. “Consequently, the buildings were all 

European or American style.” 

Southern Hue, half the size of the Citadel, also was 

known as the Triangle. Its irregular shape was bounded on 

the south by the Phu Cam Canal, on the east by a stream 

known as the Phat Lac, and on the northwest by the Perfume 

River. e Bach Ho Railroad Bridge and the Nguyen Hoang 

Bridge linked the modern city to the Citadel. e six-span 

Nguyen Hoang Bridge, near the eastern corner of the Citadel, was the main thoroughfare for vehicles and pedestrians using Highway 1. e An Cuu Bridge, a modest arch on 

Highway 1 that conveyed tra®c across the Phu Cam Canal, 

was the only other bridge of military importance in southern Hue. 

Allied Troop Disposition

American

e 3d Marine Division (3d MarDiv) was in the process of 

shifting north from Quang Nam and ua ien Provinces to Quang Tri Province. At the same time, the 1st Marine 

Division was redistributing its forces in the corridor between 

Phu Bai and Da Nang. is overall redeployment of Marine 

forces was about three-quarters complete when the North 

Vietnamese oaensive began. Task Force X-Ray, under the 

command of Brigadier General Foster C. LaHue, did not 

assume responsibility for the Phu Bai area, including Hue 

City, until 15 January 1968. LaHue, who had been serving 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A188251 

The gate to the inner wall of the imperial palace was photographed during a tour of the city as part of a cultural development program. Taken in February 1967, long before the 

battle, this image shows the elaborate entrance and part of 

the surrounding wall in the Citadel. 
Death in the Imperial City | 3

as assistant division commander in Da Nang, barely had 

enough time to become acquainted with his new tactical area 

of responsibility (TAOR), let alone come up to speed on the 

fast-developing Tet situation.* Once activated, Task Force 

X-Ray moved its headquarters to Phu Bai, taking over the 

3d MarDiv command post. e task force would eventually be responsible for all of ua ien Province, with LaHue 

*Named for the Vietnamese New Year, the Tet oaensive began in the early 

hours of 31 January 1968 with simultaneous attacks by approximately 85,000 

North Vietnamese troops on military installations and South Vietnamese 

cities.

coordinating eaorts with Briagdier General Ngo Quang 

Troung and his 1st ARVN Division. 

General LaHue’s Task Force X-Ray controlled two 

Marine regimental headquarters and three infantry battalions—the 5th Marines, under Colonel Robert D. Bohn, 

had the 1st and 2d Battalions; and the 1st Marines, under 

Colonel Stanley S. Hughes, had only the 1st Battalion 

in the Phu Bai sector. All the units were new to the area. 

Colonel Bohn arrived on the 13th, while Colonel Hughes 

did not reach Phu Bai until 28 January. e 1st Battalion, 1st 

Marines, under Lieutenant Colonel Marcus J. Gravel, made 

1ST ARVN

DIVISION

HEADQUARTERS

CENTRAL MARKET

AIRSTRIP

IMPERIAL

PALACE

CITADE L

UNIVERSITY

STADIUM

POLICE STATION

USMACV

COMPOUND

PROVINCIAL

HEADQUARTERS

PRISON

STEAM/POWER

PLANT

H U E R I V E R

HOSPITAL

0 1 1

2

MILES

1

1

561

WATER WORKS

Fleet Marine Force-Pacific (FMFPac) Headquarters 

This map illustrates the situation at the conclusion of Operation Hue City. 
4 | Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

its move from Quang Tri about the same time.* His Companies C and D reached Phu Bai on 26 January, Company 

B and Headquarters Company came three days later, and 

Company A deployed on the 30th. Captain Gordon D. 

Batcheller, the Company A commander, remembered that 

while most of his troops were at Phu Bai on that date, two of 

his platoon commanders mistakenly stayed at Quang Tri and 

the third was still at a division leadership school.

e American presence in the city was minimal at approximately 200 U.S. servicemen, mostly noncombatants. ey 

were assigned to the Armed Forces Radio and Television 

Service, Detachment 5, to the 135th Military Intelligence 

*roughout this work, the longer, formal style of designating Marine 

Corps units will be used, such as Company C, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 

Note that “1st Marines” in Marine Corps parlance refers to the 1st Marine 

Regiment.

Group Regional Team, as advisors to the Republic of Veitnam National Police, and to U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (USMACV). ere were a number of U.S. 

government employees, construction workers, and missionaries scattered throughout Hue in hotels, rented houses, and 

churches. e Communists had identied who they were, 

where they worked, and the location of their billets long 

before Tet began.

Approximately 100 U.S. Army advisors and administrative personnel, as well as a few U.S. Marine Corps guards, 

were headquartered in the lightly defended USMACV compound a block and half south of the Perfume River on the 

east side of Highway 1, just across from the university. In e 

Siege at Hue, George W. Smith describes the compound as 

“rectangular in shape, about 300 yards wide and 200 yards 

deep. It was surrounded by a six-to-eight foot wall, except at 

Adapted by Marine Corps History Division 
Death in the Imperial City | 5

the main gate, which was blocked by a 10-foot-high chainlink fence. Adjacent to the main gate was a heavily sandbagged security booth manned by at least two Marines who 

checked all tra®c. . . . e entire perimeter was topped by 

barbed wire, trip ares, and a dozen or so [M18] Claymore 

mines placed atop the walls at critical spots.” 

A rotating group of staa personnel from the compound 

was stationed at Brigadier General Ngo Quang Truong’s 

Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) headquarters 

day and night. Other advisors accompanied South Vietnamese units throughout the countryside. A small group of Army 

technicians manned a radar station a few hundred meters 

to the east of the USMACV compound. Dozens of Army 

technical specialists and military intelligence personnel were 

staying in the Huong Giang Hotel several blocks to the west. 

Finally, a small detachment of U.S. Navy personnel was stationed at a boat ramp just north of the advisory compound. 

 e 1st and 3d Brigades, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), and the 2d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile), operated out of a series of rebases and landing zones 

between Phu Bai and Quang Tri City. e nearest U.S. Army 

unit to Hue was the 3d Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), which operated from Camp Evans, 27 kilometers 

northwest of the city on 26 January. 

South Vietnamese

Despite Hue’s size and importance, the city had relatively 

few defenders within its limits. On the eve of Tet, the greater metropolitan area contained fewer than a thousand South 

Vietnamese troops on active duty. Most of the garrison was 

on leave to celebrate Tet, either at their homes in the city 

or elsewhere in neighboring districts. e headquarters of 

the ARVN 1st Infantry Division, commanded by Brigadier 

General Truong, made its home in the walled Mang Ca military compound, a small fortress that occupied the northeast 

corner of the Citadel. Apart from the headquarters staa and 

a handful of support units, the only combat units in the Citadel were the division’s 36-man Reconnaissance Platoon and 

its reaction force—the elite, all-volunteer, 240-man Hac Bao

(Black Panther) Company.

General Truong had a sense of unease as the Tet holiday began on 29 January. Although his intelligence staa did 

not think the enemy had the capability or the intention of 

launching a major attack against Hue, the general was painfully aware of the city’s vulnerabilities. His division was tough 

and battle tested but stretched uncomfortably thin throughout I Corps. Two battalions of the 3d Infantry Regiment 

were west of Hue, one on a routine sweep mission and the 

other undergoing training at the Van anh divisional training center, while the remaining two battalions were searching 

for the enemy near the coast southeast of Hue. e 1st Regiment was stationed at Quang Tri City, 50 kilometers to the 

Ngo Quang Truong was born on 19 December 1929 to 

a well-to-do family in the Mekong River Delta region of 

Kien Hoa Province (now Ben Tre). Following the Vietnamese practice, his family name was Ngo and his rst name was 

Truong; Americans routinely addressed the Vietnamese by 

their military title and rst name, which was why he was so 

widely known as General Truong. After graduation from My 

o College, he went to military school in u Duc and was 

commissioned into the Vietnamese National Army in 1954. 

Ngo spent the next dozen years in an elite airborne brigade, 

and in 1966 became commander of the 1st ARVN Infantry 

Division in Hue. 

“He did not look like my idea of a military genius: only ve 

feet seven, in his midforties, very skinny, with hunched shoulders and a head that seemed too big for his body,” General 

Norman H. Schwarzkopf remembered. “His face was pinched 

and intense, not at all handsome, and there was always a cigarette hanging from his lips. Yet he was revered by his o®cers 

and troops—and feared by those North Vietnamese commanders who knew of his ability.”

In 1967, Ngo’s division attacked and destroyed the NVA 

and Viet Cong infrastructure in ua ien. After the battle, 

he was promoted to brigadier general. By 1968, Ngo was 

leading men into some of the bloodiest battles seen in Vietnam, particularly the battle for Hue City, which led to a special promotion to major general. Later in 1970, Ngo replaced 

Major General Nguyen Viet anh as commander of IV 

Corps.

Brigadier General 

Ngo Quang Truong
6 | Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

northwest, and the 2d Regiment was another 12 kilometers 

farther up Highway 1 near Dong Ha. 

e Van anh divisional training center, with a two-gun 

detachment of 105mm howitzers, was located three kilometers southwest of the Citadel on the north bank of the Perfume River. e Tam ai military camp, headquarters of 

the South Vietnamese 7th Cavalry and home to a troop of 

M41 Walker Bulldog light tanks, was located two kilometers south of the Perfume River and just west of Highway 1. 

An engineer battalion camp sat about two kilometers to its 

southwest. A military training facility for Montagnard hill 

tribesmen, the Le Loi transportation camp, and an ordnance 

depot, all of which were lightly guarded, was located inside 

the Triangle. Finally, a handful of Vietnamese Regional 

Force companies and Popular Force platoons were scattered 

throughout the villages and hamlets that surrounded the city.

On 30 January, General Truong canceled all leave and 

ordered his units on full alert. He directed his division’s reaction force under the command of First Lieutenant Tran 

Ngoc Hue to send three platoons south of the river to act 

as security for the provincial headquarters, the power station, 

and the prison. Two other platoons were split up and dispatched to guard the gates to the Citadel. e deployment 

left Lieutenant Hue with one platoon and his headquarters section (about 50 men) to guard the division command 

post. Truong also sent Lieutenant Nguyen i Tan’s 36-man 

Reconnaissance Company on a river and area surveillance 

mission approximately ve kilometers southwest of the city, 

the most likely avenue of approach. 

Elizabeth Jane Errington and B. J. C. McKercher stated 

in e Vietnam War as History that “the chief of the National Police called several of his close friends to a secret meeting. 

He told them that he had reliable information that the city 

was going to be attacked by a strong enemy force the next 

day. His advice to his friends was to gather up their families, 

get some water and provisions, and stay in hiding until the 

assault was over. . . . e police chief reportedly disappeared 

during the ghting in Hué.”

At 2200 on 30 January, Regional Forces troops stationed 

in a village a less than a kilometer north of the An Hoa 

Bridge observed what appeared to be enemy gures moving 

in the dark. e territorial soldiers opened re and radioed 

a warning to General Truong’s headquarters. Just before 

midnight, Lieutenant Tan’s Reconnaissance Company spotted a long column of North Vietnamese emerging from the 

darkness and heading for the Citadel. Following Tan’s report 

of the incident, Truong immediately dispatched a light 

observation aircraft from the Tay Loc aireld, but the pilot 

did not spot the enemy formation because of overcast skies 

and returned to base.

North Vietnamese

In early October, General Tran Van Quang (a.k.a. Bay Tien), 

commander of the Tri-ien-Hue Military Region (B4 Front), 

received a secret order directing him to mount a general oaensive and uprising to liberate Hue during the Tet holiday. e 

order caught Quang by surprise because “in both character and 

scale, such an oaensive was very diaerent from the one which 

our Region Party Committee and Military Region Headquarters had been planning.” Quang requested more time to prepare and recommended that the oaensive should not begin 

until April or May. His request was denied. “Hanoi has made 

the decision and the orders are clear—we have no choice but 

to carry them out,” Quang noted in a statement in 1986. 

e North Vietnamese created a special logistical and 

administrative zone known as the Hue City Front to manage 

the upcoming battle. e new combat headquarters, staaed 

by high-ranking o®cials from the Tri-ien-Hue Military 

Region (B4 Front), local party members, and military o®-

cers from the units involved in the attack, had authority over 

the city and the three districts that surrounded it. According to Eric Hammel’s Fire in the Streets, the B4 Front headquarters was located in the captured hamlet of on La Chu 

in a multistory American-built concrete bunker. e enemy 

also created a rear services group that would keep supplies 

moving into the battle area from the mountains, with much 

of the labor coming from civilians who would be pressed into 

duty once the oaensive began. 

Communist documents captured during and after the 

Tet oaensive indicate that enemy troops received intensive 

training in urban street ghting before the oaensive began 

for both individual and unit tasks, including oaensive tactics, 

techniques, and procedures to assist in taking the city and 

defensive measures to hold the city once they seized it. While 

the assault troops trained for the battle, Viet Cong intelligence agents prepared lists of “cruel tyrants and reactionary 
Death in the Imperial City | 7

elements,” who were to be rounded up during the early hours 

of the attack. e list included primarily South Vietnamese 

o®cials, military o®cers, politicians, American civilians, and 

other foreigners. After capture, these individuals were to be 

evacuated to the jungle outside the city where they would be 

“punished” for their crimes against the Vietnamese people. 

Although allied intelligence reported elements of two 

North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regiments (4th and 6th 

Regiments), two sapper battalions, and an assortment of Viet 

Cong local forces in ua ien Province, there was little evidence of enemy activity in the Hue sector. U.S. order of battle 

records listed the 6th NVA Headquarters with its 804th Battalion in the jungle-canopied Base Area 114, about 20–25 kilometers west of Hue. One battalion, the 806th, was supposed 

to be in the Street Without Joy area in Phong Dien District, 

35 kilometers northeast of Hue.* American intelligence o®-

cers believed the remaining battalion, the 802d, to be about 

20 kilometers south of the city or with the regimental headquarters in Base Area 114. According to the best allied information, the 4th NVA Regiment was in the Phu Loc area near 

Route 1 between Phu Bai and Da Nang. 

Unknown to the allies, both enemy regiments and support units were on the move toward Hue. Among the new 

arrivals was the 7th Battalion of the 29th Regiment, 325C 

Division, a unit that had come from laying siege to Khe Sanh. 

Also new to ua ien Province was the 5th Regiment, a 

three-battalion unit that normally operated from Base Area 

101 near Quang Tri City. Other reinforcements included an 

artillery battalion armed with 122mm rockets, two sapper 

battalions, two 82mm mortar companies, two 75mm recoilless rie companies, two 12.7mm heavy machine gun companies, and a special unit equipped with 50 rocket-propelled 

grenade launchers (RPG7, or B41) that had greater penetrating power than the older and more common RPG2 (B40) 

weapon. By the eve of Tet, the enemy had quietly assembled 

a strike force near Hue equivalent to at least 14 battalions.

e North Vietnamese spent much of December 1967 and 

January 1968 preparing the battleeld. Communist agents 

used patient and discrete observation, as well as human informants, to obtain up-to-date tactical intelligence about the 

military facilities in Hue. From those reports, they concluded that a quick capture of Hue was possible because the city 

was “nearly unprotected” and the soldiers defending it “had 

a weak morale and a poor combat capability.” Meanwhile, 

guerrillas made regular night excursions through the villages around Hue to make the local dogs bark, thus desensitizing the inhabitants to their canine alarms. Enemy scouts drew 

detailed maps of routes the attacking units were to take and 

spent many hours observing the routines of South Vietnamese soldiers. A Viet Cong sympathizer, Pham i Xuan Que, 

stated that “weapons were smuggled into us. We managed to 

print a number of leaets and tracts for the National Liberation Front (NLF) calling on the population to remain calm 

and not carry out reprisals when its forces entered the city.” 

*A longtime Communist bastion, the Street Without Joy is a 32-kilometer 

strip along the coast, stretching north and south.

Map courtesy of the Department of History, 

United States Military Academy at West Point.
8 | Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

North Vietnamese logisticians stockpiled supplies in mountain camps to the west and south of Hue, and the enemy established aid stations and hospitals staaed by both military and 

civilian personnel.

e Hue City Front organized a northern and southern 

wing to attack Hue from several directions simultaneously. 

e 6th NVA Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel 

Nguyen Trong Dan, was assigned three primary objectives: 

Mang Ca headquarters compound, Tay Loc aireld, and the 

imperial palace. In addition, bunkers, sentry posts, the Hue 

Citadel gates, and the ARVN airborne unit at An Hoa were 

to be taken. e regiment consisted of the 1st, 2d, 6th, and 

12th Sapper Battalions and four specialized companies (C15, 

C16, C17, and C18), reinforced by the 416th Battalion, one 

122mm DKB rocket launcher unit, and two special action 

units (40 men).

South of the Perfume River, the 4th NVA Regiment, under 

the command of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van, was to 

attack the modern city. Among its objective areas were the 

provincial capital building, the prison, and the USMACV 

advisors compound. e two regiments had nearly 200 specic targets in addition to the primary sites, including the 

radio station, police stations, government o®cials’ residences, 

the recruiting o®ce, and even the national imperial museum. 

e target list contained detailed intelligence that named 

suspected government sympathizers and their usual meeting 

places. 

From 28 to 30 January, elements of the 12th Sapper Battalion and the Hue City Sapper Battalion began to slip into 

the city disguised as simple peasants with the help of accomplices inside. With their uniforms and weapons hidden in 

baggage, boxes, and under their street clothes, the Viet Cong 

and NVA mingled with the Tet holiday crowds celebrating 

the Vietnamese Year of the Monkey. Many donned ARVN 

uniforms and then took up predesignated positions that 

night to await the attack signal.

Lieutenant Colonel John F. Barr, commander of the 1st 

Field Artillery Group, noted that 

e unusual number of young men in civilian clothes; 

unusual in that most Vietnamese youths were either 

drafted by the ARVN or oa in the hills with the Viet 

Cong. I mentioned this upon arrival at the ARVN 

artillery headquarters. I was assured by the artillery 

commander that it was customary for local farmers 

to come into Hue to celebrate the Tet holiday. Since 

he was a thoroughly professional soldier with eight 

years combat experience in the province, I accepted his 

explanation—to my subsequent regret.

Another American, Army Major Robert B. Annenberg 

with the 149th Military Intelligence Group, also felt something was amiss. Most shops closed earlier than usual, and 

one establishment that never closed—the local bordello—

was shuttered and dark. e streets were strangely deserted, and Annenberg saw almost no one celebrating Tet in the 

usual manner with recrackers, balloons, and decorations. He 

found the silence in the city unnerving. e unusually somber 

mood prompted the major to wonder whether the local population knew something that he did not. A Civil Operations 

and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) o®cial 

told U.S. Foreign Service o®cer James R. Bullington that an 

attack was imminent: “ere seem to be indications that it 

just might come as early as tonight.”

e main body of the southern wing descended from 

their mountain staging area on the afternoon of 29 January and headed for a ferry crossing on the Ta Trach River, 

about 10 kilometers south of the city near the “Rock Crusher,” a Navy Seabee stone quarry. e lead elements arrived 

two hours ahead of schedule and well before the sun had set. 

A forward air controller (FAC) spotted them and called in 

artillery and airstrikes, forcing the entire southern wing to 

postpone the crossing until the next night.

On the evening of 30 January, the northern wing of the 

enemy attack force moved toward Hue from base camps in 

the western hills. A Viet Cong company armed with 82mm 

mortars and 57mm recoilless ries veered north and took up 

a position near the PK-17 outpost. Its orders were to shell 

the South Vietnamese airborne and armored units stationed 

there once the oaensive began. Two kilometers to the northwest, an engineer unit moved within sight of its target—

the An Lo Bridge that spanned the Bo River. As it did, the 

806th Battalion, one company from the 800th Battalion, and 

a handpicked sapper platoon of 40 men, all from the 6th Regiment, quietly occupied a forward staging area in a graveyard 

two kilometers northwest of the Citadel. Around that time, 

the 802d Battalion from the 6th Regiment, the remainder of 
Death in the Imperial City | 9

the 800th Battalion, the 12th Sapper Battalion, and several 

heavy weapons companies marched down from the mountains to a spot on the Perfume River several kilometers west 

of Hue before turning toward the Citadel.

About 1900 that evening, the 6th Regiment had assembled on a slope designated Hill 138. According to an NVA 

account, the troops ate a meal of “dumplings, Tet cakes, dried 

meat, and glutinous rice mixed with sugar.” A prisoner taken 

after the battle said his unit was given a propaganda speech 

on how they were about to inaugurate “the greatest battle in 

the history of the country.” Lieutenant Colonel Dan and his 

o®cers inspected the men’s gear and many of the soldiers 

changed into new khakis, and at 2200, the regiment resumed 

its march.

Just after midnight, Marine Captain James J. Coolican, advisor to the Hoc Boa Company, drove over the 

Nguyen Hoang Bridge on his way to spend the night at the 

USMACV compound. “I remember stopping the jeep just 

before the bridge and looking back at the city,” he said. “I 

could see the lights of the Citadel. It was like Christmas . . . 

a very pretty sight. I spent a moment or two admiring the 

lights before driving across the bridge.”

The Battle Begins

In the enemy command post to the west of the city, the NVA 

commander waited for word that the attack had begun. At 

approximately 0230 on 31 January, a forward observer reported: “I am awake, I am looking down at Hue . . . the lights of 

the city are still on, the sky is quiet, and nothing is happening.” Sometime later, the observer came back on the radio 

and announced that the assault was under way. At 0340, a 

signal are lit up the night sky above Hue and a rocket barrage fell on the city from the mountains to the west. Lieutenant Hue was at home in bed when the rst rocket landed. 

“I jumped up and quickly put on my clothes and web gear 

and went outside,” he recalled. “I remembered I had given my 

jeep to one of my platoon leaders across the river, so I jumped 

on a bicycle to head to my headquarters on the other side of 

the aireld.” 

At the western gate of the Citadel, a four-man North 

Vietnamese sapper team, dressed in South Vietnamese Army 

uniforms, killed the guards and opened the gate. Using ashlights, they signaled the lead elements of Lieutenant Colonel 

Dan’s 6th NVA Regiment. In similar scenes throughout the 

Citadel, the NVA regulars poured into the old imperial capital. Lieutenant Hue reported that “ere were VC [Viet 

Cong] running all around me. I’d watch them go down one 

street and I would head the other way. I knew where I was 

going. ey didn’t.” Despite the crowd of enemy soldiers, 

Hue reached his unit. 

Nguyen i Noa, a 20-year old Hue resident, recalled that 

About 4 a.m. my mother got up to pray, and I heard 

the sound of gunre and the heavy thud of footsteps. 

I opened my door slowly and saw many, many [North 

Vietnamese] soldiers running by. ey wore helmets 

covered with leaves. By dawn, the soldiers from the 

South had all run away. e VC [Viet Cong] came 

and questioned the landlord about my husband and 

another soldier, but the landlord protected us. He told 

them my husband and the other soldier had come in 

the morning to drink tea, then left. It was lucky for us 

the landlord said that. Otherwise, my husband would 

have been killed.

e 800th and 802d Battalions pushed through the western gate and drove north. On the Tay Loc aireld, the Black 

Panther Company, reinforced by the division’s 1st Ordnance 

Company, stopped the 800th Battalion. Although the enemy 

battle account stated that the South Vietnamese “oaered no 

strong resistance,” the NVA report acknowledged that “the 

heavy enemy [ARVN] re enveloped the entire aireld. By 

dawn, our troops were still unable to advance.”

While the ght for the aireld seesawed back and forth, 

the 802d Battalion struck the 1st Division headquarters at 

Mang Ca. Although the enemy battalion penetrated the 

division compound, an ad hoc 200-man defensive force of 

staa o®cers, clerks, and other headquarters personnel managed to stave oa the enemy assaults. General Truong called 

back most of his Black Panther Company from the aireld 

to bolster the headquarters’ defenses. Lieutenant Hue led 

his men back to the division compound. “I could see some 

bodies outside the wall,” he said. “I also saw that the enemy 

had set up three machine guns overlooking the main gate to 

support an attack. I brought up some LAAWs [light antiarmor weapons] and we blew away the machine guns. en we 

threw down a smokescreen and dashed into the compound. 
10 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

We were very lucky. If I had arrived 1 hour later, there would 

have been no more headquarters.” In spite of the vigorous 

attack, General Truong remarked that “I never had to re my 

weapon, but it was close.” 

Captain Coolican recalled that “we picked up the 

LAAWs on our way back from an exercise near the DMZ 

[demilitarized zone] and when we got back to Hue we held 

several classes on how best to use them. ere is no doubt 

in my mind that their eaective use on that rst day saved 

General Truong’s headquarters.” Army Captain Ralph O. 

Bray Jr., who was in the headquarters at the time, recalled 

that “with all the B-40s and mortars we were taking I knew 

the enemy was close. When we had to stop them at our wall 

I knew they had the whole city.”

As daylight broke over the embattled city, more than 60 

percent of the Citadel, including the imperial palace, was in 

the hands of the NVA. At 0800, North Vietnamese troops 

raised the 54-square-meter red and blue Viet Cong banner 

H U E R I V E R

0 1 1

2

MILES

1

1

551

Areas Occupied In

Strength By Enemy

V

1ST ARVN

DIVISION

HEADQUARTERS

AIRSTRIP

IMPERIAL

PALACE

CITADE L

UNIVERSITY

USMACV

COMPOUND

PROVINCIAL HEADQUARTERS

PRISON

HOSPITAL

Fleet Marine Force-Pacific (FMFPac) Headquarters 

Positions occupied in strength by the NVA on 31 January. This map was produced after the conclusion of Operation Hue City.
Death in the Imperial City | 11

with its gold star over the massive Citadel ag tower. Marine 

Corps Captain Robert E. Laramy, an aerial observer, ew 

in an Army Cessna O-1 Bird Dog near the river when “We 

came up east of the city and came down the river at a very 

low altitude. It was rst light over the Citadel, and our radio 

tra®c was going berserk. en we saw that thing, a Viet 

Cong ag, uttering over the palace. It was an incredible 

sight only a few hundred feet away.” U.S. Army Chief Warrant O®cer Frederick E. Ferguson remembers “looking out 

of my right side [of the helicopter] as we went past the Citadel. My gunner on that side . . . said, ‘Let’s y past and get the 

ag on the way out’.”

A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) o®cer tried to y 

into Hue. “Our aircraft approached the city at 10,000 feet, 

and I can only describe the site below as ‘surreal’,” he recalled. 

“Not one inhabitant, vehicle, bicycle, or other form of life 

could be seen in this city of 140,000 Vietnamese.” e o®cer 

described a scene from a science ction movie where all the 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A801129 

Aerial view of Hue City.
12 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

people had been gassed or died from some lethal biological 

agent. Smoke billowed from destroyed Cessna L-19 aircraft 

at the Citadel’s Tay Loc aireld. Tracer re could be seen 

around the prison, the USMACV building, and the Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) compound. “What really 

caught my attention, however, was a huge red Communist 

ag waving from the main Citadel ag pole. I asked the pilot 

to descend to 5,000 feet,” the CIA o®cer said. “At 8,000 feet, 

watermelon sized anti-aircraft tracers came at us from atop a 

two story building near the An Cuu Bridge.” 

Across the river in southern Hue, much the same situation existed. U.S. advisors in the USMACV compound, a 

complex of several two- and three-story buildings astride 

Duy Tan Street (Route 1) at the foot of the Perfume River, 

awoke in the early morning hours to the sound of bursting 

mortar and rocket rounds. “ere was no doubt in my mind 

that it was an incoming round,” Captain Coolican said. “e 

rst thing I did was hit the deck and turn my [tactical] radio 

on.” e Americans in the compound grabbed any weapons 

at hand and manned their defenses against an assault by the 

804th and K4B Battalions of the 4th NVA Regiment. 

Specialist Fourth Class James M. Mueller related that 

“the trip wires, and ares on the barbed wire were ignited. 

Our entire corner of the compound was lighted up like it 

was daylight. . . . [T]he yelling, the screaming, and the chaos 

seemed to go on forever. We did not realize what was going 

on around us. We stayed in our bunker, followed the sergeant’s orders to defend the corner and prayed that we would 

survive this hell.” 

Captain Coolican left the relative protection of the 

bunker to make the rounds: “I went over by the dispensary to see about any casualties. ere was a lot of re coming 

from the back of the compound and I went to investigate. A 

bunker took a direct hit, injuring ve people, all helicopter 

pilots. I grabbed a stretcher and helped move the injured to 

the dispensary.” 

Coolican’s radio operator, Army Specialist Fourth Class 

Frank Doezema Jr., was in a 20-foot wooden guard tower 

“spraying machine gun re toward the area of the main gate.” 

Specialist Mueller, who was nearby at the time, recalled that 

“as Doezema was ring at the NVA, an explosion blew oa 

the lower part of his legs.” Coolican ran to help, laying down 

a base of re and climbing the tower. ough Doezema was 

hit in both legs and bleeding heavily, he was given a shot 

of morphine and transported to the USMACV dispensary. 

Mueller later said, “A medevac chopper was called in to evacuate him . . . but the enemy snipers prevented the Huey from 

landing. I learned later that Doezema bled to death.” 

e 4th NVA Regiment with the 804th NVA Battalion, 

supported by local force companies and elements of the Hue 

City Sapper Battalion, launched its oaensive against the city. 

e force divided into several attack groups and sought out 

key civil and military facilities. According to the North Vietnamese o®cial account, their actions and preparations in 

Hue lacked the cohesion and timing of those in the Citadel. 

For example, the attacks on southern Hue were carried out 

by many forces employing varying tactics. One unit lost its 

way in the darkness and did not arrive in the city until 0600. 

Despite confusion that morning, the NVA had control of 

most of southern Hue except for the prison, the USMACV 

compound, and the Hue landing craft utility (LCU) ramp on 

the waterfront to the northeast of the compound.

When James Bullington ew into Hue late on the afternoon of 30 January, he stopped at the CORDS headquarters for news on enemy activity. While nothing solid had 

been reported, some low-level rumors indicated there might 

be problems during the Tet holidays. Since no one seemed 

especially concerned, Bullington decided to spend the night 

at the power plant in southern Hue. At approximately 0200, 

he was awakened by the sounds of incoming mortars; however, by dawn things had quieted down. Bullington recalled 

that “I walked over to the power plant and spoke to my 

French friend. ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered with 

a shocked expression. ‘I told you to stay inside. ey’re here, 

the North Vietnamese are right here, they’re all around us.’ 

And he pointed to the other end of the courtyard where for 

the rst time I saw armed men with pith helmets.” e NVA 

had set up a command post in the power plant, not more 

than 25–30 yards from Bullington’s hiding place. 

While the NVA and Viet Cong assault troops roamed 

the streets freely and consolidated their gains, political o®-

cers began a reign of terror by rounding up South Vietnamese and foreigners on the special lists. Viet Cong o®cers 

marched through the Citadel with loudspeakers, calling out 

names and telling them to report to a local school. ose 

who did not report were hunted down. e detainees were 
Death in the Imperial City | 13

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pleasure 

in presenting the Navy Cross to Captain James Joseph Coolican, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism 

in action in the city of Hue, ua ien Province, 

Republic of Vietnam on 31 January 1968. In the 

early morning hours, without warning, the enemy 

assaulted simultaneously all positions of the Hue 

[U.S.] Military Assistance Command, Vietnam 

Compound perimeter with 122-mm. and B-40 

rockets, mortar and intense small-arms re. Captain Coolican, with disregard for his own safety, 

dashed 150 meters through the hail of exploding 

enemy rounds to a guard post where he moved four wounded 

personnel to the dispensary. Within a short time, the enemy 

scored a direct hit on a 20-foot tower, mortally wounding the 

guard. Quickly, Captain Coolican ran to the tower under heavy 

enemy re, recovered the wounded man and carried him down 

the ladder to an awaiting stretcher. After this, he returned 

to the tower guard post where he silenced the enemy with 

a erce blanket of M-79 grenade re. At daybreak, because 

of the critical condition of two wounded men, an emergency 

air medical rescue was planned from a landing zone approximately 400 meters from the [US]MACV compound. Captain Coolican organized a small force and, after 

two futile attempts at evacuation of the wounded, 

he nally succeeded on the third trip and carried 

critically needed ammunition back to the compound. When a relief force coming to the aid 

of the compound was ambushed and sustained 

numerous casualties, Captain Coolican assembled 

his men and sped to the scene of intense ghting. Under unrelenting hostile re, he skillfully directed the collection of the injured and evacuation to the 

Hue [US]MACV dispensary. roughout the battle of Hue, 

he skillfully eaected medical evacuations under enemy observation and re. He succeeded in saving many lives with no loss 

to his own force. Captain Coolican’s conspicuous gallantry, 

professionalism and extraordinary devotion to duty were in 

keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and 

the United States Naval Service.

ican, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism 

in action in the city of Hue, ua ien Province, 

early morning hours, without warning, the enemy 

Compound perimeter with 122-mm. and B-40 

tain Coolican, with disregard for his own safety, 

dashed 150 meters through the hail of exploding 

imately 400 meters from the [US]MACV compound. Cap

Captain James Joseph Coolican 

Distinguished Service Cross Citation 

e President of the United States of America, authorized 

by Act of Congress July 9, 1918, takes pride in presenting 

the Distinguished Service Cross (Posthumously) to Specialist 

Fourth Class Frank Doezema, Jr., United States 

Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection 

with military operations involving conict with 

an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam, while serving with Advisor Team 3, United 

States Army Advisory Group, U.S. Military 

Assistance Command, Vietnam. Specialist Four 

Doezema distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on 31 January 1968 while 

defending his unit’s compound in the city of Hue against a 

savage enemy attack. e insurgents unleashed an intense 

barrage of rocket, mortar and automatic weapons re on the 

installation during the early morning hours, Specialist Doezema raced to his assigned defensive post, a twenty-foot wooden 

tower, and sprayed the assaulting enemy with deadly accurate 

machine gun re. Heedless of the hostile fusillade directed 

at his exposed position, he directed his comrades’ re from 

the vantage point. A rocket exploded on the tower roof, and 

Specialist Doezema was seriously wounded by 

ying shrapnel. He determinedly remained at his 

post and continued ring at insurgents who were 

advancing in delade behind a cement wall on 

the far side of the street. While shouting words of 

encouragement to his fellow soldiers and directing their re, Specialist Doezema was mortally wounded by the explosion of a second enemy 

rocket. His fearless and gallant actions in close 

combat accounted for at least eighteen enemy killed and were 

responsible for the successful defense of the compound. Specialist Four Doezema’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to 

duty, at the cost of his life, were in keeping with the highest 

traditions of the military service and reect great credit upon 

himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

Specialist Fourth Class Frank Doezema Jr.
14 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

never seen alive again. eir fate was not known until U.S. 

and South Vietnamese forces captured the Citadel and found 

nearly 3,000 bodies buried in mass graves. 

In the Citadel, the embattled General Truong called in 

reinforcements. He ordered his 3d Brigade; the 3d Troop, 

7th ARVN Cavalry; and the 1st ARVN Airborne Task 

Force to relieve the pressure on his Mang Ca headquarters. 

In response, an armored column rolled out from the PK-17 

outpost onto Route 1 and headed for the city. A North Vietnamese blocking force stopped the ARVN relief force about 

400 meters short of the Citadel wall. Unable to push past the 

enemy positions, the South Vietnamese paratroopers asked 

for assistance. e 2d ARVN Airborne Battalion reinforced 

the convoy, and the South Vietnamese nally pushed the 

enemy aside and entered the Citadel in the early morning of 

31 January. e cost had been heavy, with the ARVN suaering 131 casualties, including 40 dead, and losing 4 of the 12 

armored personnel carriers in the convoy. According to the 

South Vietnamese, the enemy also paid a steep price in men 

and equipment. e ARVN claimed to have killed 250 of the 

NVA, captured 5 prisoners, and recovered 71 individual and 

15 crew-served weapons. 

e 3d ARVN Regiment had an even more di®cult 

time. On 31 January, two of its battalions—the 2d and 3d—

advanced east from encampments southwest of the city along 

the northern bank of the Perfume River until North Vietnamese defensive res forced them to fall back. Unable to 

enter the Citadel, the two battalions established night positions outside the southeast wall of the old city. e 1st and 

4th Battalions, also operating to the southeast, were stopped 

and surrounded by the North Vietnamese. Captain Phan 

Ngoc Luong, commander of 1st Battalion, was able to break 

away with his unit and retreat to the coastal Ba Long outpost, though arriving with only three clips per man for their 

World War II–era M1 Garand ries. e following day, 

the battalion embarked upon motorized junks and reached 

the Citadel without incident. e 4th Battalion, however, 

remained unable to break its encirclement for several days.

On 31 January, Lieutenant Colonel Phan Huu Chi, commander of ARVN 7th Armored Cavalry Squadron, attempted to break the enemy stranglehold south of the city. He led 

an armored column toward Hue, but like the other South 

Vietnamese units, found it impossible to break through. 

e lead armored personnel carrier (APC) took a direct hit 

from an RPG. Captain Jack Chase, U.S. Army advisor to the 

ARVN 3d Troop, 7th Armored Cavalry, explained that “they 

let the APC get right on top of them, perhaps 15 or 20 feet 

away before ring. When we nally got to the APC there 

wasn’t enough left of the crew to put in a helmet.”

With the promise of U.S. Marine reinforcement, Lieutenant Colonel Chi’s column, with three tanks in the lead, 

tried once more. is time, they crossed the An Cuu Bridge 

into the city. Coming upon the central police headquarters 

in southern Hue, the tanks attempted to relieve the police 

defenders. An enemy B40 rocket made a direct hit on Chi’s 

tank, killing him instantly and forcing the South Vietnamese 

armor to pull back.

Reaction Force

In the early morning hours of 31 January, General LaHue 

received information that Hue had been invaded by the 

enemy, that the USMACV advisors compound and 1st 

ARVN Division headquarters had been compromised, and 

that he would go to their assistance. Task Force X-Ray also 

received reports of enemy attacks all along Route 1 between 

Hai Van Pass and Hue. All told, the enemy hit 18 targets: 

bridges, combined action units, and company defensive positions. “e enemy intelligence was practically non-existent,” 

LaHue complained. At 0630, LaHue dispatched his “Bald 

Eagle” Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, under the 

command of Captain Gordon D. Batcheller, to reinforce the 

ARVN at the Truoi River Bridge.* Batcheller recalled some 

years later that “we were rousted out about 0400 on the 31st 

and launched south on trucks to rendezvous with and reinforce . . . [ARVN] forces about a map sheet and a half south 

of Phu Bai.”

According to Captain Batcheller, the truck convoy carrying his company was escorted by two Army trucks each 

armed with M55 quadruple mounted .50-caliber (Quad-50s) 

machine guns; one truck was at the head and the other at the 

rear of the column. Army Sergeant Robert H. Lauver was 

a squad leader of a Quad-50 multiple machine gun mount. 

“It was always exciting providing escort duty through Hue. 

*As a nod to an iconic American symbol, a Bald Eagle Company referred to 

a quick reaction force or a tactical reserve.
Death in the Imperial City | 15

[We] could relax, unbutton the ak jacket, and take oa the 

steel pot,” he recalled.*

When the convoy reached its destination, there were no 

ARVN troops to meet them. On their way south on Route 

1, the company passed several combined action units, whose 

troops indicated that the Viet Cong were moving toward 

Hue, though nothing had been hit and all bridges were up. 

Batcheller then received orders from Lieutenant Colonel 

Gravel to reverse direction and reinforce an Army unit north 

of Hue or go to the assistance of a Combined Action Platoon (CAP) just south of Phu Bai.

Regardless of Batcheller’s choice, this new mission was 

short-lived. Approximately 30 minutes later, at 0830, the 

company received another set of orders, presumably from 

Task Force X-Ray, “to proceed to the Hue Ramp area . . . to 

investigate reports that Hue City was under attack.” Until 

now, the ghting for Hue had been an entirely South Vietnamese aaair. General LaHue actually had very little reliable intelligence on the situation other than that Truong’s 

headquarters and the USMACV compound had come under 

attack. Because of enemy mortar re at the LCU ramp in 

southern Hue, the allies had stopped all river tra®c to the 

city. 

With this limited information, Company A continued 

north toward Hue. As the convoy proceeded along Route 1, it 

met up with four M48 Patton battle tanks from the 3d Tank 

Battalion. Lieutenant Colonel Karl J. Fontenot, the battalion 

commander, recalled that Second Lieutenant James E. Georgaklis commanded the “four tanks that were due to load onto 

LCUs to go on up to Dong Ha. e vehicles included two 

command [M48A3 90mm] gun tanks and two [M67A2] 

ame tanks.” e tankers had discovered some burned-out 

hulks of the 7th ARVN Armored Cavalry Squadron and 

decided to return to Phu Bai when Company A approached 

from the rear. Captain Batcheller discussed the situation 

with the major in charge, who then joined with Company 

A as they moved toward the USMACV compound. Private 

First Class William Purcell said, “We climbed on board the 

tanks and commenced the attack into the city, not knowing 

what we were getting into.”

*Sgt Lauver would later be awarded a Silver Star for his actions with the Quad-50.

A short time later, Lieutenant Colonel Edward J. 

LaMontagne, the 3d Marine Division embarkation o®cer, 

accompanied by a Navy chief petty o®cer, sought out Batcheller and “made the valid observation that we were moving 

too slow.” Batcheller was not sure of LaMontagne’s status, 

as he “never tried to assume command,” but instead “oaered 

excellent advice.” LaMontagne was, in fact, on his way to the 

LCU ramp to supervise the loading of 3d MarDiv (Rear) 

equipment and personnel, who were still redeploying from 

Phu Bai to Dong Ha.**

As Company A approached the southern suburbs of the 

city, they came under increased sniper re from the dilapidated buildings and thatched huts that lined either side of the 

highway. In one village, the troops dismounted and cleared 

the houses on either side of the main street before proceeding. “Incoming enemy re intensied, and we were asked to 

direct re at a multi-story building to the right side of the 

road,” Sergeant Lauver said. “As we poured several hundred 

rounds into the building, there was a sudden break by several 

NVA soldiers across an open area to the rear of the structure. 

Open targets! e guns traversed to the right, cutting down 

the enemy until they took cover.”

e convoy then crossed the An Cuu Bridge, which 

spanned the Phu Cam Canal, into the city. Caught in a murderous crossre from enemy automatic weapons and B40 

rockets, the Marines once more clambered oa the trucks and 

tanks. Sergeant Alfredo C. Gonzalez, a 21-year old Texan 

and acting 3d Platoon commander, took cover with his 

troops in a nearby building. When enemy machine-gun re 

wounded one Marine in the legs, Gonzalez ran into the open 

road, slung the injured man over his shoulder, and returned 

to the relative safety of the building despite being hit by fragments of a B40 rocket. Responding to orders from Captain 

Batcheller, Gonzalez rallied his men, who were on the point, 

and the column was again on the move.***

 is time the Marine convoy only advanced about 200 

meters before heavy enemy re forced them to stop. “When 

we went across a small canal, all hell broke loose,” Private 

**LtCol LaMontagne would later be awarded the Silver Star for his actions 

on 31 January 1968.

***Sgt Gonzalez would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for this 

event and actions he took on 3– 4 February.
16 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

First Class Purcell recalled. e enemy came at them from 

both sides of the road with a machine gun bunker on the 

west side of the road. “It was like going through a gauntlet,” Purcell said. “e rst tank received all the re coming 

from the buildings and at ground level.” Small-arms re 

sounded like gravel pelting a metal building. A recoilless 

rie red four rounds, two of which penetrated the M48A3 

tank (H-51) and killed the tank commander. At that point, 

Sergeant Gonzalez, on the east side of the road with some 

men from his platoon, crawled to a dike directly across from 

the machine gun bunker. With his Marines laying down a 

base of re, Gonzalez jumped up and threw four grenades 

into the bunker, killing all the occupants.

Company A cautiously made its way northward in the 

built-up area. “We got our wounded out of the street and 

from that point on we just started ghting our way up the 

H U E R I V E R

1

1

551

0 1 1

2

MILES

1

3 ARVN Bns

1 ARVN Bn and

Black Panther Company

ARVN Airborne Task 

Force en route to Hue

0830

1 USMC Company

ARVN

1445

1 USMC

 Company

1 ARVN Bn

Enemy

Inltration

Routes

STADIUM

Fleet Marine Force-Pacific (FMFPac) Headquarters 

Hue City on 31 January 1968. This map was produced after the conclusion of Operation Hue City. 
Death in the Imperial City | 17

street, one building at a time,” Private First Class Purcell 

explained. “ere was re coming from the buildings, and 

you had to imagine the scene. It was like going through 

Queens or Brooklyn, New York, with all two- and three-story 

buildings, paved streets, sidewalks, the whole developed side 

of things.” When the convoy reached the An Cuu Bridge, 

the Marines saw wrecked and smoldering South Vietnamese tanks on the far side, victims from the armored task force 

that had tried to reach the Citadel earlier that morning.

Captain Batcheller maintained sporadic radio contact 

with Lieutenant Colonel Gravel at Phu Bai. For the most 

part, however, the only thing he heard on his artillery and 

air radio nets was Vietnamese. e convoy reached an elevated highway in the middle of a large cultivated area, and 

once again came under enemy re. Navy Chaplain Richard M. Lyons recalled that “there was a narrow street with 

two-story houses along the street . . . we were receiving heavy 

re from them. We went up a street until we got to a wide 

boulevard that was being covered from inside the Citadel by 

the NVA.”* Several men were wounded. Batcheller went to 

the assistance of a fallen man and was wounded seriously in 

both legs and his arm. Lyons feared that “he would die, but 

they got a jeep and took him for medical attention and he 

survived.” Gunnery Sergeant James L. Canley, a giant of a 

man at six feet, four inches tall and weighing more than 240 

pounds, then took command of the company. 

As Company A engaged the enemy on the outskirts of 

Hue, Colonel Stanley S. Hughes, the 1st Marines commander, requested permission from General LaHue to reinforce 

*Lyons was the rst Navy chaplain to move with a Marine unit into Hue 

after the battle began. He also was the only Navy chaplain to receive the 

Silver Star during the Vietnam War.

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pleasure 

in presenting the Navy Cross to Gunnery Sergeant James L. 

Canley, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as Company Gunnery Sergeant of Company A, First Battalion, First 

Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), 

Fleet Marine Force, during operations against 

the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam from 

31 January to 6 February 1968. On 31 January, 

when his company came under a heavy volume 

of enemy re near the city of Hue, Gunnery Sergeant Canley rushed across the re-swept terrain 

and carried several wounded Marines to safety. Later, with the 

company commander seriously wounded, Gunnery Sergeant 

Canley assumed command and immediately reorganized his 

scattered Marines, moving from one group to another to advise 

and encourage his men. Although sustaining shrapnel wounds 

during this period, he nonetheless established a base of re 

which subsequently allowed the company to break through 

the enemy strongpoint. Retaining command of the company 

for the following three days, Gunnery Sergeant Canley on 

4 February led his men into an enemy-occupied building in 

Hue. Despite erce enemy resistance, he succeeded in gaining 

a position immediately above the enemy strongpoint and dropped a large satchel charge into the 

position, personally accounting for numerous 

enemy killed, and forcing the others to vacate the 

building. On 6 February, when his unit sustained 

numerous casualties while attempting to capture a 

government building, Gunnery Sergeant Canley 

lent words of encouragement to his men and 

exhorted them to greater eaorts as they drove 

the enemy from its fortied emplacement. Although wounded once again during this action, on two occasions he leaped a 

wall in full view of the enemy, picked up casualties, and carried 

them to covered positions. By his dynamic leadership, courage, 

and seless dedication, Gunnery Sergeant Canley contributed 

greatly to the accomplishment of his company’s mission and 

upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the 

United States Naval Service.

Canley, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary her

geant of Company A, First Battalion, First 

Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), 

Fleet Marine Force, during operations against 

the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam from 

31 January to 6 February 1968. On 31 January, 

geant Canley rushed across the re-swept terrain 

Hue. Despite erce enemy resistance, he succeeded in gaining 

Gunnery Sergeant James L. Canley 
18 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pleasure 

in presenting the Navy Cross to Captain Gordon D. Batcheller, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism 

while serving as Commanding O®cer, Company 

A, First Battalion, First Marines, FIRST Marine 

Division (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Force, in 

the Republic of Vietnam on 31 January 1986. 

Elements of Company A were assigned the mission of reinforcing a unit of the Army of the 

Republic of Vietnam in the city of Hue. Joining a small armored column north of Phu Bai in 

ua ien Province, the unit proceeded along 

National Route One toward Hue. On the southern edge of 

the city the column was ambushed by a numerically superior enemy force using automatic weapons, mortars, recoilless 

ries and B-40 rockets. Quickly organizing his outnumbered 

forces into a defensive perimeter and unmindful of the danger, 

Captain Batcheller boldly began directing his unit’s return 

re. Exhibiting sound tactical judgment and calm presence 

of mind under enemy re, he formulated a plan of attack and 

courageously exposed himself to the intense enemy barrage 

as he began shifting his men to more advantageous positions from which they delivered accurate suppressive re 

against the hostile emplacements. Although injured by fragments of an exploding enemy rocket round, he aggressively led his men in a erce assault against the enemy blocking 

positions, steadfastly advancing until he reached a besieged 

Popular Force compound. As the enemy increased the intensity of their attack, one of the Marine tanks was hit by hostile automatic weapons re and B-40 rockets 

which wounded several of the crew members. 

Ignoring the danger from enemy rounds exploding all around him, Captain Batcheller unhesitatingly moved to the damaged vehicle to assist 

in removing the casualties. Simultaneously, he 

reorganized his force and succeeded in routing 

the enemy from its fortied positions. As the 

intensity of enemy re to the front lessened, the 

column began receiving heavy automatic weapons re from 

both anks, seriously wounding Captain Batcheller in both 

legs. Exhibiting great courage and physical stamina, he supported himself with his elbows and resolutely continued to 

direct his men in repulsing the enemy until, weakened by 

the loss of blood from his serious injuries; his voice fell to a 

whisper. Even then, he bravely encouraged those near him as 

he lay receiving medical treatment. As a result of his determined eaorts, National Route One was reopened, enabling 

the reaction force to reach the embattled city of Hue. By his 

exceptional heroism, outstanding tactical ability and steadfast devotion to duty at great personal risk, Captain Batcheller upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the 

United States Naval Service.

eller, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism 

while serving as Commanding O®cer, Company 

the Republic of Vietnam on 31 January 1986. 

ing a small armored column north of Phu Bai in 

ua ien Province, the unit proceeded along 

sity of their attack, one of the Marine tanks was hit by hos

which wounded several of the crew members. 

Captain Gordon D. Batcheller 

the embattled company. e only available reinforcements 

were the command group of the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 

and Company G, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, which had 

become the Phu Bai quick reaction force in place of Company A earlier that morning. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel, the 

1st Battalion commander, remembered that no intelligence 

was available on the situation in Hue and that his own battalion was “strung out” in the Phu Bai sector with elements 

still at Quang Tri. Gravel had never met Captain Charles L. 

Meadows, the Company G commander, until “that rst day.” 

For Gravel’s part, the only planning he was able to accomplish was to give the order, “Get on the trucks, men.” Captain 

Meadows recalled that his task was to “get into the trucks 

with your company, go up to the 1st ARVN Division headquarters and escort the CG [commanding general] back 

down to Phu Bai.”* e mission should have taken no more 

than two to three hours.

*Capt Meadows would later receive the Silver Star for actions on 6 February.
Death in the Imperial City | 19

Crossing the An Cuu Bridge, Lieutenant Colonel Gravel’s relief column reached Company A in the early afternoon. 

With the linkup of the two forces, Gravel kept the tanks with 

him but sent the truck and the wounded, including Captain 

Batcheller, back to Phu Bai. e vehicles returned without 

escort, just the truck drivers and wounded, some of whom 

could still re their weapons. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel 

determined that this was the only feasible way to evacuate 

the wounded because “we weren’t going to get any helicopters in there.” According to Gravel, this “was a terrible long 

shot . . . but it worked.”

With the tanks in the lead, Company A, the battalion 

headquarters group, and Company G followed as Gravel’s 

makeshift command made its way toward the USMACV 

compound. Captain Meadows recalled that there was no 

tra®c on the road and no pedestrians or children on the sides 

of the road. “ere weren’t even chickens!” he claimed, which 

made him uneasy. In addition to a lack of good intelligence, 

the companies had to make do without maps of the city or 

solid communications, often just radio static. 

e convoy reached the compound at approximately 

1515 on 31 January, but the enemy attackers had pulled 

back from the immediate vicinity of the battered compound 

by this time. “ings were in bad shape,” Specialist Mueller said. “e compound had taken many rounds from mortars and rockets.” Lieutenant Colonel Gravel met with Army 

Colonel George O. Adkisson, the U.S. senior advisor to the 

1st ARVN Division. According to Marine accounts, Adkisson told the Marine battalion commander that the “Citadel was in ne shape,” but they needed assistance evacuating 

American nationals. “I quickly came to the realization that 

the North Vietnamese could easily have overwhelmed us,” 

Adkisson said. “Since they had not, it seemed most likely 

that they were simply not interested in us or our compound. 

For this reason, I did not believe subsequently that the compound was in great peril.”

Task Force X-Ray ordered Gravel to cross the river to 

relieve the pressure on General Truong’s headquarters. In 

a personal letter to Captain Batcheller, Lieutenant Colonel Gravel expressed his anger about the order: “We proceeded to the [US]MACV compound then were gifted with 

the most stupid idiotic mission to cross the Perfume River 

Bridge and go to the aid of the CG 1st ARVN Division.” 

He reported his concerns to Task Force X-Ray, but he was 

ordered to “go anyway.”

Leaving Company A behind to secure the USMACV 

compound, the battalion commander took Company G, 

reinforced by three tanks from the 3d Tank Battalion, the 

40mm self-propelled antiaircraft guns (or Dusters), the 

Quad-50s, and a few South Vietnamese tanks from the 

ARVN 7th Armored Squadron, and attempted to cross the 

main bridge over the Perfume River. Gravel left the vehicles 

behind on the southern bank to provide direct re support. 

“e Quads and Dusters were positioned at the base of the 

Nguyen Hoang Bridge and ordered to re across the river in 

support of the Marines from Company G,” Sergeant Lauver 

explained. 

Lauver further recounted that 

My Quad .50 was providing cover re from across the 

river when a Marine o®cer came up to me and asked, 

“Sarge, my men are getting the hell shot out of them, 

can you help them out?” We pulled the Quad truck 

onto the bridge and drove toward the Citadel on the 

north end . . . there were dead and wounded Marines 

along both edges of the bridge deck. Men were using 

bodies of their dead buddies as cover so they could 

continue to put re on the enemy. As soon as we 

reached the north end of the bridge, we opened up 

with our machine guns on the buildings that ran parallel to the river. e southeast corner of the wall of the 

Citadel was just to our left. Marines were yelling at us 

as we drove across to try to tell us where to direct our 

re. . . . During this action I saw many Marines perform heroic actions . . . many were cut down trying to 

take out machine gun bunkers. I remember a Marine 

charging a bunker with grenades only to not make it 

. . . another Marine with an M-60 ring from the hip 

also did not make it. 

Lance Corporal Willie J. Barnes spotted several North 

Vietnamese. He said, “You could actually see them maneuvering, then shooting, well organized. ey were there to kick 

our a——s.” Lance Corporal Lester A. Tully, later awarded 

the Silver Star for his action, ran forward, threw a grenade, 

and silenced a machine gun. Two platoons successfully made 

their way to the other side. ey turned left and immediately 
20 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

came under automatic weapons and recoilless rie re from 

the old ghting positions dug into the Citadel wall by the 

Japanese during World War II. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel 

recollected that, as it was late in the afternoon and the sun 

was in their eyes, “we were no match for what was going on.

 . . . I decided to withdraw.”

is was easier said than done. e enemy was well dug 

in and “ring from virtually every building in Hue City” 

north of the river. Gravel radioed back to Colonel Adkisson for vehicle support to recover the wounded. According 

to Gravel, the trucks never arrived. Becoming agitated by the 

situation, the battalion commander took his radioman and an 

interpreter “to nd out where in the hell the vehicles were.” 

ey came upon some U.S. naval personnel and a few American advisors in two Navy trucks and brought them back to 

the bridge. In the meantime, the Marines commandeered 

some abandoned Vietnamese civilian vehicles and used them 

as makeshift ambulances to carry out the wounded. 

Among the casualties on the bridge was Major Walter 

D. Murphy, the 1st Battalion’s S-3 or operations o®cer, who 

later died of his wounds. “I went over to Murphy and told 

him to hang in there, that he’d be on his way to a hospital shortly,” Captain Coolican remembered. “He told me his 

back was hurting him but otherwise he seemed in control. 

He was comforting the other wounded Marines. When I 

came back to get him for the medevac, he had bled to death. 

. . . Murphy was the man who drove the eaort that rst day 

and he took chances he probably shouldn’t have.” Captain 

Charles Meadows’ company had 49 casualties the rst day, 

almost all from crossing the bridge. 

By 2000 that evening, the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, had 

established defensive positions near the USMACV compound and a helicopter landing zone in a eld just west of 

the Navy LCU ramp in southern Hue. On that rst day of 

the battle, the two Marine companies in Hue had sustained 

casualties of 10 Marines killed and 56 wounded. During the 

night, the battalion called a helicopter into the landing zone 

to evacuate the worst of the wounded. According to Lieutenant Colonel Gravel, “It was darker than hell and foggy.” So 

much so that the pilot radioed, “Where are you? I can’t see.” 

A sergeant on the ground talked the aircraft down, knocked 

on the nose of the Boeing CH-46 Sea Knight, and replied, 

“Right out here, sir.” Gravel marveled that the sergeant 

“had a knack about working with helicopter pilots. . . . [H]e 

brought it [the helicopter] right on top of us.”

e American command still had little realization of the 

situation in Hue. General LaHue later commented that “early 

intelligence did not reveal the quantity of enemy involved that 

we subsequently found were committed to Hue.” U.S. Army 

General William C. Westmoreland’s headquarters had, if possible, even less appreciation for the magnitude of the NVA 

attack on the city. Westmoreland cabled Army General Earle 

G. Wheeler, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staa, that 

the “enemy has approximately three companies in Hue Citadel and Marines have sent a battalion into the area to clear 

them out.”

Evade, Escape, Capture

By the morning of 1 February, the situation was becoming 

only too apparent to both the South Vietnamese and American troops in Hue. In Da Nang, Lieutenant General Hoang 

Xuan Lam, the I Corps commander, and Marine Corps 

General Robert E. Cushman Jr., commanding general of III 

Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF), agreed that the 1st 

ARVN Division would assume responsibility for the Citadel 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A194522 

Two civilians of the USMACV help Marines carry wounded to 

the safety of the compound used as a command post for Company H, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, during the bloody street 

fighting in Hue. 
Death in the Imperial City | 21

while Task Force X-Ray would clear the city south of the 

Perfume River. “We were assigned at this time a multiplicity of tasks,” General LaHue stated. “ese included locating 

and rescuing isolated Americans of the intelligence community, going to the relief of specic ARVN units such as those 

in the engineer compound, ordnance depot, recapturing the 

ARVN arsenal, seizing the provincial prison before the prisoners could be released,” and the Provincial Reconnaissance 

Unit (PRU) compound in the northwest corner of the city 

overlooking the royal tombs. A CIA report noted that, “as 

of 1330 hours [on] 1 February Saigon time, the 50 PRUs 

in their Hue compound had repulsed ve attacks, were surrounded by approximately two VC [Viet Cong] companies, 

were short of ammunition, and had not had food for two 

days.”

e PRU commander withdrew his men from the compound to trenches near the southern perimeter. “I watched 

the PRUs retreat as enemy forces swarmed into the vacated building,” a CIA agent said. “I immediately contacted our supporting FAC who said he could provide naval 

gunre support from an American cruiser, which I believe 

was the USS Providence [CLG 6]. e rst round exploded directly in front of the building. A massive barrage of 

eight-inch shells quickly followed, reducing the structure 

to rubble instantly. e PRUs then counter-attacked and 

moved into the smoking ruin.” On 4 February, according to 

a CIA report, the PRUs withdrew to the Huong Hoa District headquarters. 

Captain Raymond R. Lau, a rural development advisor, shared a house with three other Americans when the 

attack began. Lau recalled, “We were awakened at about 4:00 

a.m. to the sound of gunre and explosions in the distance. 

. . . According to the Nung guards outside, the guard camp 

across the canal at Nam Giao was coming under attack, and 

they were noticeably concerned. . . . [T]he sustained reght 

indicated that it was something bigger than a probe.” Lau 

was joined by fellow Marines, Captain Robert W. Hubbard 

and Sergeant Howard G. Vaughn, and two civilians who 

worked for the American embassy. Sergeant Vaughn was 

severely wounded, along with one of the civilians, and died 

several days later. Captain Hubbard was killed on 4 February while leading the group to safety and was posthumously 

awarded the Navy Cross. 

e 135th Military Intelligence Group regional team 

was staying in a rented villa in the city at the onset of the 

attack, and they found themselves under intense enemy re. 

“It was like Custer’s last stand,” said Army Sergeant Donald 

J. Rander, assistant agent in charge of the Hue regional headquarters. “All the North Vietnamese in the world seemed to 

be outside the door.” e team held out all day and into the 

night before running out of ammunition. During the re-

ght, Army Corporal Barry L. Wolk was killed and four 

others captured, including Army Captain eodore W. 

Gostas and Sergeants Rander, Robert E. Hayhurst, and 

Edward C. Dierling. e latter two were able to escape from 

their captors days later and returned to friendly forces.

e Americans at Armed Forces Radio and Television 

Service, Detachment 5, also were caught behind enemy lines. 

e nine-man detachment under First Lieutenant James V. 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) 68-0015G

U.S. military police escort a captured Viet Cong combatant 

from the buildings next to the American embassy in Saigon. 

In the early morning attack on 31 January, 19 Viet Cong were 

killed in the embassy compound as they stormed the main 

building.
22 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

Di Bernardo was located a few blocks from the USMACV 

compound. “I remember being called over to the [US]

MACV compound the day before the attack for a briefing on enemy activity,” Di Bernardo recalled. “I was told 

to double my guards at my compound and to expect some 

kind of trouble. I told them that other than the two ‘white 

mice (ARVN military policeman)’ I didn’t have any guards.” 

When the rocket attack started, “the rst thing I noticed 

was that the white mice were gone. I called the [US]MACV 

compound and spoke to the duty o®cer. He told me they 

were under attack and to hold where I was until they could 

get back to me. e phone went dead and I never heard from 

them again.” e detachment held out for three days before 

Di Bernardo and four of his men were captured. Two others 

were killed, one executed, and one man escaped. 

Chief Warrant O®cer ree Solomon H. Godwin, a 

Marine counterintelligence o®cer, was assigned as an advisor 

to the Vietnamese National Police, Special Branch. He had 

taken refuge at their headquarters in the city during the initial North Vietnamese assault. He and four national policemen held out until 5 February, when they were wounded by a 

heavy mortar barrage and taken prisoner.*

Operation Hue City

On 1 February, the ght for the city was o®cially designated 

Operation Hue City. General LaHue stated that there were 

“Essentially four phases of the Marine commitment: Phase 

I, initial commitment of reaction forces; Phase II, buildup 

of forces south of the Perfume River and clearing that portion of the city of enemy forces; Phase III, operations within 

the Citadel; and Phase IV, operations in the urban and rural 

*CWO Godwin died in captivity on 25 July 1968 but was o®cially listed as 

missing/captured until he was declared dead on 14 May 1973. His remains 

have never been returned to the United States.

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pride in 

presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to Captain Robert 

Walker Hubbard, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as an Advisor to 

the Revolutionary Development Cadre, ua 

ien Province, in the City of Hue, Republic of Vietnam, from 31 January to 4 February 1968. On 31 January, while carrying out his 

advisory duties within the city of Hue, the quarters in which Captain Hubbard was temporarily residing, together with two military and two 

civilian personnel, came under intense enemy 

ground attack. Quickly assuming command, he organized a 

defense against the repeated assaults from the enemy forces 

and covered the front door along with two of his companions. 

Every attempt by the enemy to overrun their strongpoint was 

thwarted, until nally, after two of his group were seriously wounded, withdrawal was necessary. Quickly assessing the 

situation, he braved the intense enemy re while searching 

for a covered route through which his group could withdraw. 

Despite the ever increasing enemy re, he elected to cover 

the withdrawal of his unit and inicted numerous casualties 

upon the enemy. During the ensuing days, the enemy maintained almost complete control of the city of Hue, and Captain Hubbard’s group of men found it necessary to move from 

shelter to shelter to escape death or possible capture. Although acting in the capacity as a civilian 

advisor at the time of the Tet Oaensive, Captain Hubbard’s skill as a Marine infantry o®cer 

instantly surfaced during this crisis. He was constantly moving, administering to the wounded, 

foraging for food and water for his companions, 

searching for assistance from friendly forces, and 

returning deadly accurate re on the enemy. On 

4 February, with all food, water and ammunition depleted, he 

led the group, armed only with a single hand grenade, in an 

attempt to reach friendly forces south of the city. During this 

time he was hit and mortally wounded by small-arms re. 

By his brilliant leadership, intrepid ghting spirit and exceptional fortitude, Captain Hubbard was largely responsible for 

the escape of his fellow Americans. His outstanding courage 

and valiant devotion to duty reected the highest credit upon 

himself, the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

Walker Hubbard, United States Marine Corps, for extraor

dinary heroism while serving as an Advisor to 

ary 1968. On 31 January, while carrying out his 

civilian personnel, came under intense enemy 

tain Hubbard’s group of men found it necessary to move from 

Captain Robert W. Hubbard 
Death in the Imperial City | 23

areas south of the Phu Cam, north of the Song Van Dong 

and east of the city.” 

Task Force X-Ray ordered Lieutenant Colonel Gravel’s “bobtailed” 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, in southern Hue 

to advance to the ua ien provincial headquarters building and prison, six blocks west of the USMACV compound.*

Still unaware of the extent of the enemy forces in both the 

old and new cities, LaHue told a group of American reporters at Phu Bai that “very denitely, we control the south 

side of the city. . . . I don’t think they [Communist forces] 

have any resupply capability, and once they use up what they 

brought in, they’re nished.”

At 0700, Gravel launched a two-company assault supported by tanks toward the jail and provincial building. An 

M79 grenadier from Company G, 5th Marines, recalled 

that “we didn’t get a block away [from the USMACV compound] before we started getting sniper re. We got a tank 

. . . got a block, turned right and received 57mm recoilless 

which put out our tank.” Sergeant Lauver recalled, “A corpsman yelled for help and I jumped oa the truck and ran to 

the tank. He needed to get one of the wounded tankers to 

cover, so I grabbed and helped. e Marine was obviously 

seriously hurt, I never knew if he made it.” e attack was 

*e term bobtailed refers to a battalion that has less then four rie companies 

and may have less than its full complement of Headquarters and Service 

Company elements.

“stopped cold” and the battalion returned to the USMACV 

compound.

By this time, General LaHue realized the enemy strength 

in Hue was much greater than he had originally estimated. 

Shortly after noon, he called in Colonel Stanley Hughes of 

the 1st Marines and gave him tactical control of the forces 

in the southern city. In turn, Hughes promised Gravel reinforcements and provided him with the general mission to 

conduct “sweep and clear operations in assigned area of operation . . . to destroy enemy forces, protect U.S. Nationals and 

restore that portion of the city to U.S. control.”

North of the Perfume River, the 1st ARVN Division 

enjoyed some limited success. Although the 2d and 3d Battalions of the 3d ARVN Regiment remained outside the 

Citadel walls, unable to penetrate the NVA defenses, the 

2d and 7th Airborne Battalions, supported by armored personnel carriers and the Black Panther Company, recaptured 

the Tay Loc aireld. At approximately 1500, the 1st Battalion, 3d ARVN Regiment, reached the 1st ARVN Division 

command post. Later that day, U.S. Marine helicopters from 

Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 165 (HMM-165) 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) 10-1-14-34-68 

A Marine from 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, fires his M79 grenade launcher from a Hue University building at a North 

Vietnamese sniper.

Enemy Situation

e Task Force X-Ray command chronology for February 

identied the following enemy formations in the Hue City 

area: 

4th Regiment and subordinate 804th and K4B Battalions; 

6th Regiment and subordinate 800th, 802d and 806th 

Battalions; 

416th Battalion, 5th Regiment; 

7th and 8th Battalions, 90th Regiment; 

7th Battalion, 9th Regiment; 

7th and 9th Battalions, 29th Regiment; 

Hue City Sapper Battalion; 

810th Battalion; and

K200 Transportation Battalion. 

e 12th Sapper Battalion is carried as a probable participant 

and the 4th and 6th Battalions, 24th Regiment, are considered 

possible participants.
24 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

brought part of the 4th Battalion, 2d ARVN Regiment, from 

Dong Ha into the Citadel. One of the pilots, Captain Denis 

M. Dunagan, reported that the call for an emergency troop 

lift came in around 1400. Eight CH-46 Sea Knights made 

the ight in marginal weather with a 200–500-foot ceiling 

and a mile visibility, arriving in an improvised landing zone 

under enemy mortar re. e deteriorating weather forced 

the squadron to cancel the remaining lifts with about half of 

the battalion in the Citadel.

Shortly after 1500, Marine CH-46s brought Captain 

Michael P. Downs’s Company F, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, 

into a landing zone south of the LCU ramp, with minimum 

di®culty, though the helicopters took machine-gun re from 

the Citadel walls across the river. Downs reported to Lieutenant Colonel Gravel, who told him to relieve a USMACV 

communications facility that was surrounded by a Viet Cong 

force. Nothing Downs had been told at Phu Bai prepared 

him for the situation he encountered. e company spent 

most of the afternoon trying to reach the isolated U.S. Army 

signal troops but “never made it.” According to Down’s personal records, his company suaered 3 dead and 13 wounded. 

Downs pulled back to Gravel’s command post at the 

USMACV compound, where he received orders to take his 

company, a couple of tanks, and “make a night attack to the 

ua ien Provincial Prison, which was some six blocks 

away.” He questioned the order because “[it was] not reective of what the situation was in the city at the time” and 

drafted a message to Task Force X-Ray to rescind the order. 

Lieutenant Colonel Gravel agreed and forwarded the message. “I nally convinced them [Task Force X-Ray] that 

we didn’t have the power and that the prisoners had been 

released on 30 January,” Gravel noted. In fact, a South Vietnamese report indicated that, after being freed by the NVA, 

most of the approximately 2,000 prisoners were used as labor 

while 500 others were given weapons and joined enemy 

combat units as replacements. 

At Da Nang, General Cushman continued to discuss the 

situation with General Lam. e two commanders decided 

against the employment of xed-wing aircraft or artillery in 

Hue. As Cushman later related, “I wasn’t about to open up 

on the old palace and all the historical buildings in there. I 

told Lam he was going to have to do it.” While the South 

Vietnamese would remain responsible for the Citadel and 

the Marines for the southern city, Cushman made plans to 

cut the enemy lines of communication to the west.

With the concurrence of General Westmoreland, the III 

MAF commander made arrangements to bring the newly 

arrived 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) into the Hue battle. 

In late January, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) with 

two of its brigades had relieved the 1st Marines at Camp 

Evans, about 19 kilometers north of Hue. On 1 February, 

General Cushman alerted the cavalry commander, Army 

Major General John J. Tolson III, to be ready to deploy his 

3d Brigade from Camp Evans into a sector west of Hue. “We 

woke up one bright day and got word that Hue was occupied, with the exception of the 1st ARVN Division compound,” Tolson recalled. 

Reinforcement

Tolson’s plan called for the insertion of two battalions of the 

3d Brigade northwest of Hue “to attack to the south, southeast from Camp Evans, to destroy the enemy between Evans 

and Hue.” By midafternoon on 2 February, 400 men from 

2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Richard S. Sweet, landed 16 kilometers northwest of 

Hue, followed by the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, and the 3d 

Brigade headquarters. Sweet briefed his plan to the division 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371336 

Refugees pass by a supporting tank as it moves up the street 

during Operation Hue City. 
Death in the Imperial City | 25

staa. “Not a single man there said they couldn’t support us,” 

he said. “No one raised any objections.” e two battalions 

attacked southeast toward Hue in an attempt to shut down 

the enemy supply line. e rst day, 2d Battalion suaered 

approximately 30 wounded and was still some distance from 

the city.

e weather conditions in ua ien took a turn for the 

worse. A chill gripped the area, dense fog blanketed the landscape, and the cloud ceiling dropped to 300 feet. e sudden 

winter snap was but a preview of things to come. For the rest 

of the month, temperatures hovered in the low 50s and rarely 

exceeded the mid-60s. Virtually every day brought rain and 

fog, making ight operations di®cult if not impossible. e 

bad weather not only restricted the availability of air strikes 

but also hampered eaorts to supply units in the eld. 

Even when breaks in the weather permitted air operations, allied pilots found ying anywhere near Hue extremely dangerous. e enemy had placed dozens of antiaircraft 

machine guns on the upper oors of houses, and then had 

torn out small sections of roong to permit the weapons to 

re unimpeded. Because the barrels remained entirely inside 

the houses, pilots had di®culty seeing the muzzle blasts and, 

thus, locating the guns. “e weather was miserable at this 

time with ceilings being at most 150 to 200 feet,” Tolson 

said. “Nevertheless, helicopters kept ying and placed the 

troops close to the assault positions even if they could not 

make an actual air assault.” 

e U.S. Army’s Company C, 227th Aviation Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division, lost seven helicopters on 31 January. e company commander’s Bell UH-1 Iroquois was shot 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190509

A machine gun team from Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, uses a table to stabilize their weapon as they clean out snipers. 
26 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

down in a rice paddy by 12.7mm antiaircraft re as it passed 

over the city. It crashed in the midst of a large NVA force, 

and within seconds, it was struck by an RPG and small-arms 

re that wounded the crew and passengers. e wounded 

reached the safety of an ARVN compound and were eventually evacuated. Army Warrant O®cer John W. Hazelwood, 

Lift Platoon, C Troop, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Brigade, 

1st Cavalry Division, reported that “there was anti-aircraft 

re everywhere.”

In southern Hue on 2 February, the Marines made some 

minor headway and brought in further reinforcements. e 

1st Battalion nally relieved the USMACV radio facility 

that morning, and after a three-hour reght, reached the 

Hue University campus only after a tank was hit. “We were 

ordered back to our [US]MACV positions,” claimed Captain 

Downs. Sometime during the night, the NVA dropped the 

railroad bridge across the Perfume River west of the city, but 

they left the bridge across the Phu Cam Canal untouched. 

Captain G. Ronald Christmas, commanding o®cer of 

Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, was in the eld 

when he received orders to lead a beefed up 12-truck convoy 

that included 2 Army trucks equipped with quad .50-caliber 

machine guns and two M50 Ontos self-propelled 106mm 

tank destroyers to relieve the USMACV compound. “As I 

planned for the trip to Hue, I tried to recall the tactical principles involved in providing convoy security,” Christmas said. 

“I did remember one thing from the TBS, the importance of 

immediate action drills. I required the company to rehearse 

them before departing for the city.”*

At approximately 1100, Company H crossed the An Cuu 

Bridge. “Route 1 seemed clear,” Christmas recalled. “One, 

two, three roadblocks were passed with no enemy action. It all 

seemed too easy. Hue was in sight and seemed to be deserted. 

*TBS, or e Basic School, is the initial training school for Marine Corps 

o®cers following commissioning.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190400

Supported by tanks, Marines clear buildings during street fighting near Hue University.
Death in the Imperial City | 27

As the convoy rolled toward the compound, there were no 

signs of life. en, Wham!” e second truck in line had been 

hit by an RPG, which was followed by intense small-arms 

re, though most of it was from Company H. Unfortunately, a young lieutenant from another outt had hopped in the 

cab of the second truck and was killed by the blast. e NVA 

ed the scene without causing any casualties in the company.

In the ensuing confusion, the convoy exchanged re 

with a Marine unit already in the city. As one Marine in the 

convoy remembered, “Our guys happened to be out on the 

right side of the road and of course nobody knew that. First 

thing you know everybody began shooting at our own men 

. . . out of pure fright and frenzy.” Within a few minutes, the 

guns were silent. Neither of the Marine units took any serious casualties, and the Marine re had suppressed the enemy 

weapons. One rocket, however, disabled a truck that the 

Marines later towed to safety. Two French journalists, Catherine Leroy and Francois Mazure, who claimed they had wandered behind North Vietnamese lines and had been captured 

and released, took asylum with the convoy.

About midday, Company H joined Lieutenant Colonel Gravel where the 1st Battalion had established a toehold 

near the USMACV compound. “e compound reminded 

me of an old fort surrounded by Indians,” Christmas said. 

e NVA, however, continued to block any advance to the 

south. An enemy 75mm recoilless rie knocked out one of 

the supporting tanks. By the end of the day, the Marines 

had sustained 2 dead and 34 wounded and claimed to have 

killed nearly 140 of the enemy. As one Company G Marine 

remarked, the unit spent the day “hitting and seeing what 

was there.” e battalion consolidated its night defensive 

positions and waited to renew its attack the following day.

At Phu Bai, Colonel Hughes prepared to bring his headquarters group into Hue. On the afternoon of 2 February, Colonel Robert D. Bohn, the 5th Marines commander, 

called in his 2d Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ernest C. Cheatham Jr., three of whose companies were 

already in Hue. According to Cheatham, a big man who had 

played professional football, Bohn told him to “saddle up 

Catherine Leroy

Twenty-three year old Catherine Leroy was a French-born 

photojournalist who, with correspondent Francois Mazure, 

journeyed to Hue to cover the 

battle and found herself in an 

area controlled by the North 

Vietnamese. Taken prisoner, 

the pair was fortunate to meet 

a friendly NVA o®cer who 

ordered them freed and allowed them to take photographs. 

e resulting pictures and Leroy’s story were published in 

the 16 February 1968 LIFE magazine. Leroy was famous 

for being the rst accredited journalist to make a combat 

parachute jump. She had earned her parachutist’s license as 

a teenager, with more than 80 jumps under her belt. She was 

described by a U.S. Marine as “intense about her work and 

without hesitation would go oa on patrol with any unit that 

was going through the wire.” During one such patrol with a 

Marine Corps unit, she was wounded and hospitalized for 

several weeks. Remaining relatively unknown for most of 

her career, Leroy’s work was later documented by lmmaker 

Jacques Menasche in 2015, though she won multiple awards 

for images captured in Vietnam and Lebanon. Leroy passed 

away in Santa Monica, California, in 2006.

Marine Corps Art Collection

Bushwhackers, Hue, by John T. Dyer. A Marine tank, destroyed 

in the heavy street fighting of the 1968 Tet offensive in Hue 

awaits disposition beside the Perfume River. “Bushwhackers” 

had been painted on the tank’s barrel by its former crew.
28 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

what you need. . . . [the 1st Marines] headquarters is going to 

Hue tomorrow. ere’s problems up there. . . . We’re going to 

put you in . . . [to] take charge of your three companies and 

let me know what’s going on.” e next morning, 2d Battalion went in blind.

On 3 February, both the command groups of the 1st 

Marines and 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, arrived in Hue in 

another “Rough Rider” armed convoy.* e weather had 

taken another turn for the worse, with temperatures of 50 

*Originally coined as a nickname for the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Spanish-American War, here the term Rough Rider denotes 

an elite force dedicated to convoy security.

degrees and constant precipitation in the form of fog, a ne 

mist, or rain. Although the Marine trucks came under enemy 

sniper and mortar re, they safely reached the USMACV 

compound in the city. Colonel Hughes established his new 

command post and held a hurried conference at about 1330 

with his two battalion commanders. While Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham then took control of his three companies 

already in the city, Gravel retained command of Company A. 

e regimental commander gave the latter the task to keep 

the main supply route open, while Cheatham was to continue the attack south from the university toward the provincial 

headquarters. 

At this point, Hughes, a pre–World War II enlisted 

Marine, who had been awarded the Navy Cross for action on 

Cape Gloucester in the Pacic campaign, turned to Cheatham. According to the 2d Battalion commander, Hughes told 

him: “I want you to move up to the Hue University building, and your ank is the Perfume River and you’re going to 

have an exposed left ank. . . . [A]ttack through the city and 

clean the NVA out.” Cheatham waited for further clari-

cation of his orders, but the regimental commander gruÄy 

stated that “if you’re looking for any more, you aren’t going to 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190816

Hue City bridge over the Perfume River, which was blown up 

by North Vietnamese sappers. 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190767 

A Marine Ontos crew member enjoys a break in the fighting 

at Hue.
Death in the Imperial City | 29

get it. Move out!” He then softly added, “You do it any way 

you want to and you get any heat from above, I’ll take care 

of that.”

Beginning the Advance, 3–4 February 

Establishing his command post at the university, Lieutenant 

Colonel Cheatham ordered a two-company, tank-supported 

attack against a complex of buildings—public health, provincial treasury, and the post o®ce—just across the street from 

his position. While Company G remained in reserve, Company H was assigned to capture the public health building 

and Company F took the post o®ce and treasury facilities. 

Like Lieutenant Colonel Gravel before him, Cheatham discovered there was no quick solution given that walls of both 

the treasury building and the post o®ce were four or ve 

feet thick, preventing rie re from penetrating the concrete. 

Cheatham said, “ey were very strong buildings that took 

an awful lot of direct re.” e battalion tried to take the post 

H U E R I V E R

1

1

551

0 1 1

2

MILES

ARVN Airborne Bns

lead attack; force

enemy back.

Enemy

Inltration

Routes

STADIUM

Marines assault

through enemy

positions past

provincial prison.

PRISON

ARVN

97 Killed

426 Wounded

USMC

30 Killed

187 Wounded

and evacuated

ENEMY

1,616 Killed

4 Captured

410 Weapons

C ASUALTIES

Fleet Marine Force-Pacific (FMFPac) Headquarters 

Hue City during 1– 6 February 1968. This map was produced after the conclusion of Operation Hue City. 
30 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

o®ce and treasury buildings ve or six diaerent times: “at 

means mustering everybody’s courage and energy up. You’d 

assault and back you’d come, drag your wounded and then 

muster it up again and try it again.” 

Although Company H reached the public health building by evening, it had to fall back to the university. As Captain Christmas later explained, the Marines did not have 

enough men given that the frontage for a company was about 

one block, and with two companies forward, “our left ank 

was constantly exposed. e enemy would put an automatic 

weapon on the street that was outside our lines and re.” e 

battalion stayed in its night defensive positions and waited 

for daylight.

While Cheatham’s battalion tried to take the treasury and 

post o®ce, Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, maneuvered southeast of the USMACV compound and captured an 

abandoned South Vietnamese police station against nominal 

resistance. e Marines found 30 carbines, 2 M1919 Browning Automatic Ries, 10 M1 Garand ries, 20 60mm mortar 

rounds, and 40 cases of small-arms ammunition. At 1900, the 

battalion reported that the nearby International Control Commission (ICC) team was safe and that “no USMC personnel 

entered ICC building,” thus not providing any grounds that 

U.S. troops violated the terms of the 1954 Geneva Accords.*

By late evening on 3 February, all supporting arms restrictions were removed south of the river. However, poor weather prevented eaective air support; in fact, air support was 

most aaected by weather. Morning and evening fog, intermittent rain, and almost constant overcast skies curtailed 

the employment of ghter and reconnaissance aircraft. As a 

result, many of the radar-controlled airstrikes were own at 

night to the west of the city proper.

e morning of 4 February, Colonel Hughes discussed 

the situation with his two battalion commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel was not surprised to learn that the 2d 

Battalion, 5th Marines, had not moved from their position 

from the day before. Believing “that there was some secondguessing down at headquarters on the inability of his 

*e International Control Commission (the International Commission for 

Supervision and Control in Vietnam) was created by the Geneva Accords to 

ensure the provisions of the treaty. It consisted of Polish, Indian, and Canadian members. Although, by this time, ICC was unable to enforce anything, 

it still retained facilities and personnel in both North and South Vietnam.

battalion [1st Battalion, 1st Marines] to attack,” Gravel 

now felt somewhat vindicated. Colonel Hughes decided to 

place the 1st Battalion on Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham’s 

exposed ank and continue the push against enemy defensive positions.

As the 1st Battalion cleared its objective area, Lieutenant 

Colonel Gravel had only Company A, now under First Lieutenant Ray L. Smith, who had relieved the wounded Captain Batcheller. Lieutenant Smith recalled that, from when 

he arrived in Hue on 2 February until then, the battalion had 

basically held its own near the USMACV compound. On 

the morning of 4 February, its rst objective was the St. Joan 

of Arc School and Church, only 100 meters away. According 

to Smith, the building “was square with an open compound 

in the middle and we found by about 0700 that it was heavily occupied.” Smith’s Marines found themselves engaged in 

building-to-building and room-to-room ghting against a 

determined enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel remembered 

that, in the convent building, “in these little cloisters that the 

ladies live in . . . we went wall-to-wall.” One Marine would 

place a C-4 plastic explosive against the wall, stand back for 

the explosion, and then a reteam would rush through the 

gaping hole.

In the school building, Sergeant Alfredo C. Gonzalez’s 

3d Platoon secured one wing but came under enemy rocket 

re from across the courtyard. e Marine sergeant dashed to 

the window and red about 10 LAAWs to silence the enemy. 

A B40 RPG shattered the glass pane and struck Gonzalez in 

the stomach, killing him instantly. Lieutenant Smith credited 

Gonzalez with taking out two enemy rocket positions before 

he was killed.

After securing the school, Company A maneuvered to 

the sanctuary, which sat in a grove of trees and houses. As the 

troops advanced upon the building, the NVA threw down 

grenades, killing or wounding several Marines. According 

to Gravel, “ey [enemy soldiers] were up in the eaves, the 

wooden overhead; and they were in there and we couldn’t 

get them out.” Reluctantly, Gravel gave the order to re on 

the church. Marine mortars and M40 106mm recoilless ries 

pounded the building. In the ruins, the battalion found one 

Belgian and one French priest, both unhurt, but according 

to Gravel, they were “absolutely livid” that the Marines had 

attacked the sanctuary. Believing he had little choice in the 
Death in the Imperial City | 31

Alfredo Cantu Gonzalez was born on 23 May 1946 in Edinburg, Texas. He was an all-district football player at Edinburg High School in spite of weighing only 135 pounds. He joined 

the Marine Corps Reserve after graduating from high school in June 1965. He then joined the 

Regular Marine Corps on 6 July 1965. Gonzalez served one tour in Vietnam as a rieman and 

squad leader with Company L, 3d Battalion, 4th Marines, 3d Marine Division. On 1 January 

1966, he was promoted to private rst class, in October to lance corporal, and in December to 

corporal. Upon his return to the United States in January 1967, he served as a rieman with the 

2d Battalion, 6th Marines, 2d Marine Division, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. On 1 July 

1967, Gonzalez was promoted to sergeant, and later that month, he was transferred to Vietnam 

for his second tour of duty as a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine 

Division. He was serving as a platoon leader during the Battle of Hue City when he was cited 

to receive the Medal of Honor. His other awards and citations include the Purple Heart, the 

Presidential Unit Citation, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with star, the Vietnamese 

Cross of Gallantry with palm, the Military Merit Award, and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign.

Sergeant Alfredo C. Gonzalez 

e President of the United States of America, in the name 

of Congress, takes pride in presenting the Medal of Honor 

(Posthumously) to Sergeant Alfredo “Freddy” Gonzalez, 

United States Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and 

intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call 

of duty on 1 January and 4 February 1968, while serving as 

platoon commander, ird Platoon, Company A, First Battalion, First Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Force, 

in action against the enemy near Thua 

ien, Republic of Vietnam. On 31 January 1968, during the initial phase of Operation HUE CITY, Sergeant Gonzalez’s unit 

was formed as a reaction force and deployed 

to Hue to relieve the pressure on the beleaguered city. While moving by truck convoy 

along Route No. 1, near the village of Lang Van Lrong, the 

Marines received a heavy volume of enemy fire. Sergeant 

Gonzalez aggressively maneuvered the Marines in his platoon, and directed their fire until the area was cleared of 

snipers. Immediately after crossing a river south of Hue, 

the column was again hit by intense enemy fire. One of 

the Marines on top of a tank was wounded and fell to the 

ground in an exposed position. With complete disregard 

for his safety, Sergeant Gonzalez ran through the re-swept 

area to the assistance of his injured comrade. He lifted him 

up and though receiving fragmentation wounds during the 

rescue, he carried the wounded Marine to a covered position for treatment. Due to the increased volume and accuracy of enemy re from a fortied machinegun bunker on 

the side of the road, the company was temporarily halted. 

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Sergeant Gonzalez 

exposed himself to the enemy re and moved his platoon 

along the east side of a bordering rice paddy to a dike directly across from the bunker. Though fully 

aware of the danger involved, he moved to 

the re-swept road and destroyed the hostile position with hand grenades. Although 

seriously wounded again on 3 February, he 

steadfastly refused medical treatment and 

continued to supervise his men and lead the 

attack. On 4 February, the enemy had again 

pinned the company down, inicting heavy 

casualties with automatic weapons and rocket re. Sergeant 

Gonzalez, utilizing a number of light antitank assault weapons, fearlessly moved from position to position ring numerous rounds at the heavily fortied enemy emplacements. He 

successfully knocked out a rocket position and suppressed 

much of the enemy re before falling mortally wounded. e 

heroism, courage, and dynamic leadership displayed by Sergeant Gonzalez reected great credit upon himself and the 

Marine Corps, and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for 

his country.

Medal of Honor Citation
32 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

matter, Gravel thought the dark-robed clerics were fortunate 

to escape with their lives as his troops had been ordered to 

shoot at anyone in a black uniform.

At 0700 on 4 February, Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham’s 

companies renewed their attempts to take the public building across from the university. “e axis of advance would 

be generally along Lei Loy Street which ran west and parallel to the Perfume River,” Christmas said. e enemy situation was unknown, however, based on what he had seen for 

the past few days. Christmas knew there were strong North 

Vietnamese forces in the city. Company H was assigned to 

seize the public health building and then support Company 

F’s attack on the treasury, while Company G was in reserve. 

e 1st Platoon attacked on schedule and quickly seized 

its objective, but 3d Platoon took casualties as it attempted 

to cross the street. Christmas explained, “Each time the platoon popped smoke grenades to conceal its movement, the 

enemy opened up with an automatic weapon, ring accurate grazing re from somewhere on the ank. Apparently, 

the NVA had read our manual. ey knew that we concealed 

our movement with smoke grenades.” e company worked 

out a solution using an M40 106mm mule-mounted recoilless rie.*

 e Marines would use smoke grenades to ascertain the enemy machine gun position or positions and then 

move the M40 partially into the street, and then “crank oa ” 

a .50-caliber spotting round followed by the 106mm round. 

e backblast of the M40 raised a cloud of dirt and the 

recoilless rie shell forced the enemy troops to keep their 

heads down. Taking advantage of the opportunity and dust 

*e Willys-Overland M274 mule was o®cially known as the Army mule or 

mechanical mule. It was developed as an infantry ammunition, light cargo, 

personnel, and weapons carrier. e mule was adopted for service in 1957 

and was used by the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and to a limited degree by the 

Navy, Seabees, and Air Force.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190472

Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, leaves a church after successfully capturing it from North Vietnamese control during one 

of the bloody battles in Hue.
Death in the Imperial City | 33

cover, the Marine infantry advanced. Christmas explained 

that “once we got across that street . . . that rst lead element 

could direct its re back toward that automatic weapon [or 

weapons].” 

According to one of the noncommissioned o®cers 

(NCOs), the recoilless ries teamed up with both the M29A1 

81mm mortar crews and the infantry. e M40s would blast 

holes through buildings so the units could get in without using 

the entrance. Marine recoilless rie gunners ushed out the 

NVA and then forward observers for the mortar crews called 

in the 81mm rounds. Sergeant Terry Cochrane, the platoon 

sergeant of the 2d Battalion’s 106mm platoon, remembered 

that the gunner even red one recoilless rie from inside one 

of the university buildings. Unable to position their weapon to 

knock out a machine gun that blocked the battalion’s advance, 

Cochrane and his gunners took their 460-pound recoilless rie 

“inside . . . and we red it with a lanyard where we knocked 

out our objective—we kind of knocked out the building that 

the 106[mm] was in too, but it didn’t hurt the gun, once we 

dug it out.”

Nevertheless, the North Vietnamese remained inside 

the treasury building. With its thick walls and large steel 

door, the structure was impervious to Company F’s repeated eaorts to force its way into the building, despite the use 

of recoilless ries and tanks. e NVA covered all the avenues of approach with re. According to one account, Major 

Ralph J. Salvati, the 2d Battalion’s executive o®cer, suggested employing CS gas (or tear gas) against the enemy.*

 Salvati 

told Cheatham he had seen a stack of E8 35mm tactical CS 

launchers in the USMACV compound and proposed that 

he get them. Lightweight and compact, one launcher could 

re 64 CS canisters in four volleys of 16 each. Salvati joined 

Captain Downs in an abandoned school near the treasury 

with the launchers. 

Putting on their gas masks, Salvati and two enlisted Marines 

ran into an adjoining courtyard and set up a launcher.**After a 

misre, the major hooked up a battery to the trigger mechanism. is time, the E8 launcher hurled the gas canisters into 

the treasury compound and within minutes produced a huge 

*CS gas (2-chlorobenzylidene malonitrile) is widely used as an incapacitating spray that causes excessive tear production, eyelid spasms, increased nasal 

secretion, tightness in the chest, sneezing, coughing, retching, and burning 

sensations in the throat and nose.

**Maj Salvati was awarded the Silver Star for his actions on 4 February 1968.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190343 

Marines of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, move a 

106mm recoilless rifle during heavy fighting in Hue.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371125 

Marines of Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, cover a 

blown wall in Hue City. 
34 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

chemical haze. With the gas permeating the building, and 

under the protective re of 81mm mortars and 3.5-inch rockets, the Marines of Company F pushed forward wearing their 

gas masks. According to Captain Downs, once the Marines 

got inside the building, “the NVA wanted no part of us and 

they exited the building as quickly as they could.” 

Until 4 February, the An Cuu bridge over the Phu Cam 

Canal still stood and permitted the Marines to reinforce the 

troops in Hue. On the morning of the fourth, Company B, 

1st Battalion, 1st Marines, arrived with a Rough Rider armed 

convoy and joined Lieutenant Colonel Gravel’s command. 

at night, however, North Vietnamese sappers blew the 

bridge, eaectively closing the land route into the city, which 

left the Marine command two alternatives to resupply the 

Hue forces: river tra®c and helicopters. With the continuing mist and overcast skies, every helicopter mission was a 

hit-and-miss venture. More than once, heavy enemy 12.7mm 

antiaircraft re forced Marine pilots to jettison their loads 

of ammunition slung under their low-ying helicopters. e 

river route also presented problems. Taking advantage of the 

narrow ship channel up the Perfume River from the sea, the 

enemy subjected allied craft to both mortar bombardment 

and automatic weapons re.

Fortunately, Task Force X-Ray had built up the combat 

stocks of the 1st Marines in Hue. On 4 February, Marine 

trucks from Company B, 1st Motor Transport Battalion, 

brought in enough rations to sustain both infantry battalions in Hue for two days. e following day, a Navy LCU 

from Da Nang braved the NVA crossre from both banks of 

the Perfume River and docked at the LCU ramp in the city. 

e 1st Marines now had enough rations to last through 16 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371126

Marines of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, lower 

a wounded comrade from a rooftop on the Hue University 

campus. 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) 1D-17-37-68

Marines of Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, were 

equipped to meet any type of resistance as they combed the 

streets and alleys of Hue in February 1968.
Death in the Imperial City | 35

February. With the arrival of a second LCU on the fth, and 

another landing craft three days later, the regiment experienced no shortage of ammunition despite its expenditure at 

10 times the normal combat rate in Vietnam.

“We had to rely on the LCUs and LCMs [landing craft, 

mechanized] for resupply. ey made support of our forces 

possible,” General LaHue stated. “[We] loaded them in Da 

Nang, brought them up to Hue and down the Perfume River. 

Each river convoy was escorted by patrol boats as they battled through ambushes and harassing res . . . and they took 

losses. Many of them were hit while transiting the river. 

One LCU blew while carrying ammunition and two LCM 

bladder refueler boats were hit, caught re, and sank or were 

stranded.”*

Navy Lieutenant Commander omas J. Cutler wrote in 

Brown Water, Black Berets (2012) that 

When the Tet oaensive began on 31 January, the PBRs 

[patrol boats, river] got into the thick of things. A call 

from personnel at the supply oa-loading ramp in Hue 

said an attack was under way. Eight PBRs charged up 

*e LCM is a riverboat and mechanized landing craft used by the U.S. Navy 

and Army during the Vietnam War. ey were typically called Mike boats, 

which refers to the military phonetic spelling for LCM, or Lima Charlie 

Mike.

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pleasure 

in presenting the Navy Cross to Lance Corporal Roger O. 

Warren, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as a Machine Gunner with 

Company F, Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, 

FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet 

Marine Force, in action against the enemy in 

the Republic of Vietnam. On 3 February 1968, 

during Operation HUE CITY, Corporal Warren’s platoon was taken under intense enemy 

automatic weapons and rocket re as they 

attempted to assault the city’s Treasury Building. As the unit entered a large courtyard, one Marine was 

seriously wounded by a sudden burst of hostile re and was 

unable to move from his exposed position. Corporal Warren, 

who had been wounded earlier, ignored his own painful injuries and courageously ran into the open courtyard under 

intense enemy re and placed his body between the casualty and the hostile re. Disregarding his own personal 

safety, he commenced ring his machine gun from the hip 

at suspected enemy positions until he depleted his supply of 

ammunition. Quickly reloading his weapon, he once again 

placed re on the enemy allowing the casualty to be evacuated. On 5 February, as he was delivering a heavy volume of 

suppressive re on the enemy from the second story window 

of a building, he was suddenly hurled through the wall into 

the adjoining room by two enemy rocket rounds. Wounded in both legs and temporarily stunned by the 

force of the explosion, he was carried downstairs 

and placed with six other casualties awaiting 

treatment. Realizing the heavy enemy re was 

preventing expeditious evacuation of the casualties, he exposed himself to the intense enemy 

re and brought accurate M-16 re to bear on 

the enemy. Assured that the more severe casualties had been evacuated, he allowed himself to 

be evacuated and helped carry a wounded comrade to the 

aid station. Despite his several wounds, he refused medical 

evacuation and elected to return to his unit due to the shortage of qualied machine gunners. Upon returning to his unit 

Corporal Warren directed intense re on the enemy positions. He gallantly continued to perform his duties until the 

seriousness of his wounds caused him to be evacuated on 10 

February 1968. By his intrepid ghting spirit, exceptional 

fortitude, bold initiative and devotion to his fellow Marines, 

Corporal Warren reected great credit upon himself and 

the Marine Corps and upheld the highest traditions of the 

United States Naval Service.

Warren, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary her

Company F, Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, 

FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet 

Marine Force, in action against the enemy in 

the Republic of Vietnam. On 3 February 1968, 

ren’s platoon was taken under intense enemy 

automatic weapons and rocket re as they 

the adjoining room by two enemy rocket rounds. Wound

Lance Corporal Roger O. Warren 
36 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

the river in response and met heavy rocket, mortar, and 

small-arms re when they arrived. ey made repeated 

ring runs on the enemy positions on the north bank 

of the river opposite the ramp until they suppressed 

the hostile re. ey held the VC [Viet Cong] at bay 

until that evening, when Marines were able to move 

in and secure the area. e PBRs continued security 

patrols around Hue for the next several days.

Block by Block, 5–8 February

As the Marines experienced within the halls of the St. Joan of 

Arc School and Church, moving sporadically room by room, 

U.S. and allied forces could only advance in spurts given the 

nature of urban warfare in Hue. Casualties in this terrain initially were brought to the battalion aid station at Hue University by stretcher. Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham explained 

that “as we advanced further [sic] away from our initial aid 

station we commandeered civilian vehicles, turned them into 

ambulances, and drove them to [the] aid station. I had my 

doctors a few meters or maybe one block right behind the 

front line treating people. We never let the aid station get 

further [sic] than 2000 to 3000 meters from us.” Navy Hospital Corpsman First Class Russell M. Angman recalled, “e 

battalion aid station moved wherever the action was, setting up as fast as possible. It was very di®cult at times for 

the companies to get their wounded out of the eld because 

of enemy re. Consequently, many times all the casualties 

would arrive at once in whatever means of transportation 

that could be utilized.”

e Marines quickly adapted to the street ghting, so 

diaerent from the rice paddies and tropical jungles of the 

Vietnamese countryside in their previous sectors. As Captain Christmas later observed, “Street ghting is the dirtiest 

type of ghting I know. e adrenaline of the moment is the 

only thing that kept us going.” Although one Marine reteam leader agreed with Christmas that “it’s tougher in the 

streets,” he also remarked that “it beats ghting in the mud. 

. . . You don’t get tired as quickly when you are running and 

you can see more of the damage you’re doing to the enemy 

because they don’t drag oa their dead.”

An immediate problem caused by the change of locale 

from the countryside to the urban setting was in orientation. Gravel and Cheatham both complained about the 

North Vietnamese 

Army Defensive Tactics

ere are ve basic types of battle positions: primary, alternate, supplementary, subsequent, and strongpoint. e 

NVA’s defensive system was organized around strongpoints. 

e term strongpoint refers to a defensive position, such as 

a natural or reinforcing obstacle, that is heavily fortied and 

armed with automatic weapons, around which other positions are grouped for its protection. Strongpoints are positioned based on key or decisive terrain, particularly if it will 

isolate a defending force retaining a position critical to the 

defense. “I found that he [the NVA] defended on every other 

street,” Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham explained. “When 

we would take him oa one street, we would usually push 

through the next row of houses fairly quickly and then hit 

another defensive position.” In this urban battleeld, the 

strongpoints were typically centrally located in a threestory building surrounded by a courtyard with a stone wall. 

e NVA often built small bunkers for automatic weapons 

on the rst oor and placed snipers in the upper stories, as 

well as in other buildings along the route of advance. Spider 

holes, manned by a soldier equipped with both an AK47 and 

a B40 RPG, were positioned in the courtyard. 

e NVA would use interlocking bands of re, leaving 

allied troops no way to get around them. “We had to pick a 

point and attempt to break that one strongpoint,” Cheatham 

continued. “And if we could break that one strongpoint, then 

possibly we could get into that and it would sort of break 

up his defensive position. And then we’d work from there.” 

Each building became a fortress with interlocking res from 

another structure, which restricted allied movement and the 

ability to retrieve casualties. Another Marine described the 

battle “like ghting a hive of bees. Fire was coming from 

street level, from windows on the second oor, and from the 

roof of every building. We had to crawl everywhere and then 

call in the tanks so we could retrieve our wounded.”
Death in the Imperial City | 37

inadequacy of their maps. Originally, their only references 

were the standard 1:50,000-scale tactical maps that showed 

little of the city detail. Captain Meadows observed, “You 

have to raid the local Texaco station to get your street map. 

at’s really what you need.” Downs thought diaerently. 

“[Captain] Meadows may well have taken a map oa the gas 

station wall but the ones we used were 1:12,500 AMS [Army 

Map Service] maps. ey were the most valuable. Initially, 

I think there were only three in the battalion with only the 

company commanders having one.” Both battalions eventually obtained su®cient maps, which numbered the government and municipal buildings and prominent features of the 

city. Cheatham and Gravel and their commander used the 

numbers to coordinate their activity.

Prior to that time, Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham and his 

commanders used colors to designate their positions. Captain Christmas later related the resulting confusion. He 

would radio Captain Downs and yell, “Hey, I’m in a pink 

building.” Downs would reply, “Hey, that’s ne. I’m over here 

in a green building.” Captain Meadows would then chime in 

with “Good! I’m in a brown building.” At this point, Cheatham would ask, “Where the hell are the green, brown, and 

pink buildings?”

By this time, Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham had a rm 

idea about the extent of the task that his battalion faced. e 

2d Battalion had an area of operations about 11 blocks wide 

and 8–9 blocks deep. He later declared, “It wasn’t that big 

[but] it looked plenty big at the time.” Cheatham recalled 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190420

HM3 Edward F. Darewski, a corpsman with Company K, 3d Battalion, 1st Marines, aids a wounded Marine during a firefight 

along the Cua Viet River. 
38 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

that he “attempted to . . . attack with two companies up and 

keep that third company of mine back, protecting our left 

ank.” Due to the ghting conditions, Cheatham usually had 

to commit his reserve: “e area was just too large for one 

infantry battalion, minus a company, to attack.”

With little room to outank the enemy, the battalion had 

to take each building and each block “one at a time.” Cheatham and his Marines had to pick a point and attempt to break 

that one strongpoint. Over time, Cheatham and his o®cers 

noted that the enemy “defended on every other street. . . . 

When we would take him oa one street, we would usually 

push through the next row of houses fairly quickly and then 

hit another defensive position.” He compared the tactics to 

a football game, where “we hope to kill them inside or ush 

them out the back for the men watching the exits. en, 

taking the next building, two men rush the front. It sounds 

simple but timing has to be just as good as a football play.”

e close-quarter combat and the low-lying cloud cover 

prevented both Marine infantry battalions from depending 

upon air or artillery. Fixed-wing close air support was out of 

the question. Both units used artillery only occasionally and 

then usually later in the operation or for interdiction missions on suspected enemy approach and escape routes. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel explained that “artillery in an area like 

that is not terribly eaective because you can’t observe it well 

enough. You lose the rounds in the buildings, in the streets . . . 

and you have a di®cult time with perspective.”

Supported by the four tanks from the provisional platoon 

of the 3d Tank Battalion, which arrived with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, on 31 January and a platoon of Ontos 

from the Anti-Tank Company, 1st Tank Battalion, the 

Marine infantry advanced methodically against stubborn 

enemy resistance. Cheatham had reservations about employing the tanks in his sector due to the conning nature of the 

battlespace: “e moment a tank stuck its nose around the 

corner of a building, it looked like the Fourth of July.” e 

enemy opened up with all the weapons in its arsenal from 

B40 antitank RPGs to machine guns. One tank sustained 

more than 120 hits and another went through ve or six 

crews. Cheatham said that when the “tankers come out of 

those tanks . . . they looked like they were punch drunk.”

e Marine infantry commanders were much more 

enthusiastic about the Ontos with its six 106mm recoilless 

ries. Despite its “thin skin,” Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham 

described the vehicle “as big a help as any item of gear that 

we had that was not organic to the battalion.” An even stronger backer of the Ontos, Colonel Hughes later commented, “If any single supporting arm is to be considered more 

eaective than all others, it must be the 106mm recoilless 

rie, especially the M50 Ontos.” Hughes believed that the 

mobility of the Ontos made up for the lack of heavy armor 

protection. Further, its plating provided the crew with su®-

cient protection against enemy small-arms re and grenades. 

From ranges of 300–500 meters, the 106mm recoilless rie 

rounds routinely opened “4 square meter holes or completely knock[ed] out an exterior wall.” Even at distances of 1,000 

meters, they proved eaective. Because the Ontos was vulnerable to enemy RPGs and B40 rounds, Cheatham employed 

the vehicle in hull delade, even if the fortication came in 

the form of a brick wall.*

Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham reserved his greatest 

praise for his battalion’s organic supporting weapons, including 106mm recoilless ries, 3.5-inch rockets, and mortars. 

*e term delade refers to a military tactic that describes exposure to enemy 

re. If a unit is in delade, they are using the natural environment or articial 

obstacles for concealment or cover. When referring to an armored vehicle, it 

indicates a hull-down or turret-down position.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371122

Gas mask clad Marines of 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, move 

out in search of NVA during Operation Hue City.
Death in the Imperial City | 39

He preferred the 3.5-inch rockets that could penetrate 11 

inches of steel, and “that thing would pop these walls.” e 

colonel specically remembered one reght that lasted for 

nearly two hours between Marine and enemy gunners shooting 3.5-inch and B40 RPGs at one another at a range of 50 

meters. Fortunately, Cheatham’s unit had more ammunition 

than the enemy combatants.

Captain Downs recollected the similar use of 81mm mortars at extremely close quarters. He regularly brought Company F’s mortar re within 35 meters of his men: “We were 

on one side of the street and the 81[mm]s were red on the 

other side of the street.” Lance Corporal Roger L. Straight 

said, “We’ve got some good gunners. ey double-check 

everything because we have to. We’re ring about 25 meters 

[from] our friendlies . . . [so] we’ve got to be on target.” 

Cheatham compared their application of 81mm mortars to 

a sledge hammer: “If you put enough 81[mm] rounds on top 

of a building, pretty soon the roof falls in.” Downs had orders 

from Cheatham to destroy a building if they even suspected it housed the enemy. For Downs, this was when “we really 

became serious about retaking the city.”

On the morning of 5 February, both Marine battalions resumed the attack southwest toward the city hospital 

and the provincial headquarters. On the right ank, Company H advanced along Le Loi Street, parallel to the riverfront. e two companies of 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 

secured the left ank. Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham tried to 

keep a two-block front, which he later explained was “simple 

Marine Corps Art Collection

Flushing out Snipers, Hue, by Ned Conlon. A Marine fires a 3.5-inch rocket launcher at sniper positions in Hue City during the 

1968 Tet offensive. 
40 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

enough. But when you realize that there’s no one on your left 

. . . you’ve got to expand this out.” Expansion of the operation, however, required troops, “resources that we were very, 

very short of.” Lieutenant Smith later wrote that 5 February 

was “an extremely rough day” with the battalion sustaining 

19 casualties and advancing “only 75 yards.” Gravel remembered, “e going was slow. We would go maybe a block. We 

fought for two days over one building.”

Although both battalions encountered moderate-toheavy enemy resistance on the fth, 2d Battalion, 5th 

Marines, made somewhat faster progress. At 1630 that afternoon, Company G secured the main hospital building after 

a 90-minute reght supported by an M48 Patton main 

battle tank, 106mm recoilless ries, and 3.5-inch rockets. e 

Marines removed civilian patients from the line of re, killed 

4 NVA soldiers, and took 30 wounded prisoners. By the end 

of the day, the three companies accounted for more than 70 

NVA dead and 40 captured enemy weapons.

e morning of 6 February, Cheatham’s battalion continued clearing the hospital complex with all three companies on line. Company H on the right and Company G in 

the center met with relatively minor resistance and quickly consolidated their positions. Company F on the battalion’s 

left ank, however, took heavy re from its front and pulled 

back to call in 81mm mortars, and for one of the few times, 

105mm howitzer support from Marine artillery forward gun 

sites. About 40 high-explosive shells fell on the enemy positions. By late afternoon, the NVA broke contact under re, 

and the company secured the last of the hospital complex. 

Downs’s company sustained 4 dead and 11 wounded but 

killed more than 20 of the enemy.

Company G then launched its attack against the provincial prison. While 1st Platoon provided protective re from 

the second story of the main hospital building, mortar men 

and M40 106mm gunners blasted a hole in the prison walls. 

One corporal reported that the company red E8 CS canisters into the gaping hole, hoping to force the enemy troops 

out, but “they threw it back at us.”

Believing the NVA also were equipped with gas masks, 

the Marine infantry cautiously searched the rooms and cells 

of the prison, beginning with the top oor and working their 

way down. Second Lieutenant Michael A. McNeil, Company G’s 1st Platoon commander, described taking the unit’s 

rst prisoner, an NVA sniper, equipped with both an SKS 

Simonov and M1 Garand rie and eight grenades. e prisoner tried to jump Sergeant G. B. Zachary, but McNeil 

wrestled the enemy soldier to the oor with a half nelson 

and then bound his hands behind his back.* Even then, the 

North Vietnamese continued to struggle and had to be carried, “ghting all the way.” McNeil’s platoon took eight more 

prisoners, who “threw down their weapons, raised their hands 

and came walking out.” Company G killed 36 NVA at a cost 

of one man wounded as they took the prison.

On the 2d Battalions’ right ank, Company H encountered strong resistance after it left the hospital and pushed 

forward toward the nearby provincial headquarters. “I knew 

that the building complex was defended as a strong point,” 

Christmas said. “e attack would be completely canalized because of the nature of the buildings, streets, and 

alleys. My lead element would have to cross an open street 

and then 40–50 meters of open courtyard.” Like its sister 

companies, Company H employed mortars, E8 CS gas, and 

M40 106mm recoilless ries to soften up the objective. Private First Class George Sepio, a driver for one of the atbed mules in the M40 platoon, recalled that “[the] NVA 

threw everything they had at us. We took incoming mortars and rockets and automatic weapons re. We had to push 

the mule out, re, and pull it back in under heavy sniper re 

while we were ring. We opened up the way for the ‘grunts’ 

[infantry] to take the building.” 

Two Marine tanks came up to support the attack. One 

took four direct hits from B40 RPGs that struck and penetrated the turret, wounding three crewmen. e tank 

burned all day as the 90mm rounds cooked oa. e company expended more than 100 81mm mortar shells, 60 recoilless rie rounds, and four E8 CS launchers in support of the 

assault on the headquarters. “e battle raged for almost ve 

hours and the company still did not have a foothold. [Finally,] the enemy’s re slackened. I could see dead NVA soldiers in the courtyard and decided to order the 1st Platoon 

to attack under cover of tear gas and smoke,” Christmas 

explained. “e men smashed into the building . . . [where] 

one Marine was shot and killed on the stairway, and two 

*A half nelson is a wrestling hold in which one arm is thrust under the corresponding arm of an opponent and the hand placed on the back of the 

opponent’s neck.
Death in the Imperial City | 41

others were wounded but the assault continued . . . room 

by room.” By midafternoon, the exhausted Marines nally 

took the provincial headquarters. ey had killed 27 enemy 

soldiers, taken 3 prisoners, and captured an assortment of 

enemy small arms and ammunition. e company sustained 

1 dead and 14 wounded in the ght.

e provincial headquarters had served as a motivating 

symbol for both the NVA and the Marines in the modern 

city. A frayed Viet Cong ag ew over the building. Immediately after the capture, Gunnery Sergeant Frank A. omas 

“vaulted through a hole in the wall” and ran to the agpole 

clutching an American ag. As a CBS television crew lmed 

the event, omas raised the Stars and Stripes. “We never 

knew exactly where the ag came from,” omas said, “but 

when we said we wanted an American ag to raise, one of 

our Marines produced one a very few minutes later.” For this 

one time, the company ignored the USMACV directive that 

forbid the display of the U.S. ag without the South Vietnamese national banner beside it. 

e activity around the agpole caught the attention 

of the NVA. “Look out, there are snipers dug in along the 

wall,” a man yelled. e enemy had dug a number of foxholes 

along a cement wall in the courtyard in front of the building. 

Within seconds, the NVA were taken under re, six enemy 

combatants lay dead or dying, and a live North Vietnamese 

soldier was pulled out of a hole and taken prisoner. 

e capture of the provincial headquarters was more than 

symbolic. e building apparently had served as the command post for the 4th NVA Regiment. Once the headquarters 

fell, much of the enemy organized resistance in southern Hue 

collapsed. Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham remarked, “Once 

we overcame a NVA strongpoint, they never enveloped or 

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Colonel [then Lieutenant Colonel] Ernest C. Cheatham, Jr., United States 

Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while 

serving as Commanding O®cer of the Second 

Battalion, Fifth Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Force, in the 

Republic of Vietnam from 3 February to 3 

March 1968. During Operation Hue City, Colonel Cheatham led his battalion in extremely 

heavy house-to-house ghting against a numerically superior North Vietnamese Army force. 

Advancing through the city on 4 February to assault the 

well-fortied Treasury Building/Post O®ce complex, his 

unit came under intense re from concealed enemy positions. 

e enemy resistance halted the Marines’ advance during 

two days of bitter ghting. Nevertheless, Colonel Cheatham remained steadfast in his determination to secure the 

enemy stronghold. Skillfully deploying a 106-mm. recoilless 

rie squad into advantageous ring positions, he personally 

pinpointed the targets with M-16 tracer rounds and directed 

accurate re on the enemy, which signicantly reduced the 

pressure on his assaulting force. Completely disregarding his 

own safety, he joined the assaulting unit and aggressively led 

his men in routing the North Vietnamese from 

their entrenched positions. While proceeding 

through the city on 6 February, he organized 

his battalion for an assault on the enemy-held 

Provincial Headquarters Building. Ignoring 

the hostile re all around him, he directed his 

men to covered positions while he fearlessly 

advanced to an exposed position from which he 

could locate the sources of enemy re. Calling 

an Ontos forward, he directed eaective suppressive re on 

the enemy and then courageously led his unit as it continued 

the assault. Colonel Cheatham’s dynamic and heroic leadership and his unagging example inspired all who observed 

him and contributed greatly to the defeat of the enemy and 

to their subsequent withdrawal from the city. His dauntless 

courage and unfaltering devotion to duty upheld the highest 

traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval 

Service.

tenant Colonel] Ernest C. Cheatham, Jr., United States 

Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while 

serving as Commanding O®cer of the Second 

sion (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Force, in the 

onel Cheatham led his battalion in extremely 

ically superior North Vietnamese Army force. 

own safety, he joined the assaulting unit and aggressively led 

Lieutenant Colonel Ernest C. Cheatham Jr. 
42 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

never came back around behind us.” Lieutenant Smith wrote 

that, from 6 February forward, “[Company] A began to roll, 

and although we took more casualties, we never had a day 

to match” the earlier ghting. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel 

felt the NVA had lost its stomach for the ght and the main 

force evaporated, leaving only local forces as it crumbled.

On the morning of 7 February, both Marine battalions 

renewed their oaensive. Cheatham’s battalion on the right 

ank made rapid progress. He put two companies on the line 

and placed the other company in reserve. e battalion’s after 

action report stated, “It became quite obvious the enemy had 

retreated leaving bodies and weapons behind.” e 1st Battalion on the left ank also moved forward but at a slower 

pace after meeting pockets of heavy resistance. e NVA 

knocked out an Ontos with a B40 RPG, killing the driver 

and wounding the vehicle’s commander. After a brief re-

ght, a platoon from Company B retrieved the damaged 

vehicle, evacuated the wounded Marine, and recovered the 

body of the dead man.

By 10 February, the battalions reached their objectives and found that the North Vietnamese were abandoning food, weapons, and ammunition in their rushed exodus. 

“When any enemy begins to leave his weapons and personal gear behind,” First Lieutenant William Moore, 2d Battalion’s S-2 stated, “he is on the run. . . . I think we have him 

just where we want him now.” e Marines now controlled 

the southern sector of the city, but the NVA still controlled 

the Citadel, leaving the city cut neatly in two. During clearing operations, the battalions killed more than 1,000 enemy 

combatants, captured 6 prisoners, and detained 89 suspects. Marine casualties included 38 dead and approximately 320 wounded. Company H had been hit particularly hard. 

“Shortly after noon on 13 February,” Christmas remembered, “the company overran an enemy base camp situated 

west of the railroad yard. As I was checking the progress of 

the lead platoon, an intense mortar barrage seriously wounded me and the other o®cers of the company” and most of 

the staa NCOs. One Marine from Company G said, “We 

would start getting new guys and it just seemed that every 

time we got new guys we would lose them just as fast as we 

got them.” Another remarked, “e stink—you had to load 

up so many wounded, the blood would dry on your hands. In 

two or three days, you would smell like death itself.”

Foreign Service O®cer Bullington had managed to 

hide from the NVA with two Catholic priests in their twostory house. He recalled, “When the artillery started coming 

in we would all go downstairs, and huddle under the staircase. ankfully so, because we took a direct hit from what 

was probably a 105mm shell and suddenly the house was 

one-story. After nine days . . . Captain Ron Christmas and 

his Marines liberated me. ey wrapped me in a blanket and 

carried me out as if I was a wounded Marine, so the neighbors would not see that the priests had been harboring an 

American.”

With the Marine lines secure, the South Vietnamese authorities, assisted by U.S. military and civilian advisors, brought some semblance of order to southern Hue. 

ey established a refugee center at the university for the 

civilians unexpectedly caught in the middle of a war. e 

National Police took harsh measures against both civilians 

and ARVN troops participating in the wholesale looting 

that occurred behind the Marine advance. By 13 February, 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A372950

A tank attached to Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, 

secures the canal bridge sector through heavy NVA contact 

during Operation Hue City.
Death in the Imperial City | 43

Marine engineers had built a pontoon bridge alongside the 

destroyed An Cuu span, and truck convoys brought in muchneeded supplies and food for both the troops and the civilian 

population. Although the battle for southern Hue was largely over, the ght for the Citadel had just begun.

Stalemate in the Old City

While the Marines cleared Hue, the South Vietnamese 

oaensive in the Citadel faltered. In the rst days of the campaign, 1st Battalion, 3d ARVN Regiment, had cleared much 

of the northwest corner of the old city, while the 1st ARVN 

Airborne Task Force, just south of the 1st Battalion, attacked 

from the Tay Loc aireld toward the western wall. To the 

east, 4th Battalion, 2d ARVN Regiment, advanced south 

from the Mang Ca compound toward the former imperial palace grounds, enclosed within its own walls and moats. 

e battalion made excellent progress until enemy resistance stiaened about halfway toward its objective. e North 

Vietnamese had transformed hundreds of buildings, many 

of them constructed of stone and masonry thick enough to 

withstand small-arms re, into a series of defensive lines and 

interconnected strongpoints. By 4 February, 1st ARVN Division reported that nearly 700 NVA troops had been killed in 

the Citadel.

At this point, General Truong made some adjustments 

in his lines. On 5 February, he moved the 1st ARVN Airborne Task Force’s three battalions into the northeast sector, 

relieving the 4th Battalion. Assuming responsibility for the 

aireld, 4th Battalion pushed forward all the way to the 

southwest wall on the following day. At the same time, 1st 

Battalion, 3d ARVN Regiment, recaptured the An Hoa 

gate in the northwestern corner of the Citadel. South of 

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Captain George R. 

Christmas, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as the Commanding O®cer of Company H, Second Battalion, 

Fifth Marines, FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Force, in connection with 

operations against the enemy in the Republic of 

Vietnam. On the afternoon of 5 February 1968 

during Operation HUE CITY, Company H was 

attacking a complex of buildings known to be an 

enemy strong point consisting of mutually supporting bunkers, ghting holes, and trench lines. During the 

ensuing re ght, two platoons seized the corner building of a 

city block, but intense hostile small-arms, automatic weapons, 

and B-40 rocket re temporarily halted the advance. Realizing 

the seriousness of the situation and the urgent need to sustain 

the momentum of the attack, Captain Christmas, undaunted 

by the heavy volume of enemy re, completely disregarded his 

own safety as he moved across thirty-ve meters of open area 

to join the lead element and assess the situation. Returning 

across the re-swept area, he rejoined the remaining platoon, 

issued an attack order, and then ran seventy meters across 

open terrain, ignoring automatic weapons re, hand grenades, 

and satchel charges striking around him to reach 

a tank he had requested. Braving enemy re and 

two B-40 rockets that hit the tank, he fearlessly stood atop the vehicle to direct accurate re 

against the hostile positions until the intensity 

of enemy re diminished. Immediately realizing 

the tactical advantage, he jumped from the tank, 

and directed his company in an aggressive assault 

on the hostile positions, personally leading his 

men in room-to-room ghting until the building complex 

was secured. In a large measure due to his bold initiative and 

courageous actions, he provided the impetus which inspired 

his men to aggressive action and enabled them to successfully accomplish the mission. By his dynamic leadership, unfaltering determination and seless devotion to duty in the face 

of extreme personal danger, Captain Christmas upheld the 

highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States 

Naval Service.

Christmas, United States Marine Corps, for extraordi

ing O®cer of Company H, Second Battalion, 

forced), Fleet Marine Force, in connection with 

operations against the enemy in the Republic of 

during Operation HUE CITY, Company H was 

open terrain, ignoring automatic weapons re, hand grenades, 

Captain George R. Christmas 
44 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

the Citadel, just north of the Perfume River, the remaining 

three battalions of the 3d ARVN Regiment futilely butted 

up against the southeastern wall of the old city in an eaort to 

roll up the enemy defenses from that direction.

On the night of 6 –7 February, several hundred North 

Vietnamese reinforcements scaled the southwestern wall 

with grappling hooks and forced 2d Battalion, 4th ARVN 

Regiment, to fall back to the Tay Loc aireld with heavy 

losses. at afternoon, the cloud cover lifted enough for 

South Vietnamese Air Force xed-wing aircraft to drop 25 

500-pound bombs on the NVA-occupied southwestern wall 

of the Citadel. Despite several accurate strikes, however, 

Communist reinforcements continued to ow into the city.

According to the U.S. Army Center of Military History, 

the Communists tried to use their air power to support the 

attack. On 7 February, the North Vietnamese sent four Sovietmade Ilyushin IL-14 “Crate” twin-engine cargo planes racing 

toward Hue from an aireld near Hanoi. e aircrews had 

not been informed, however, that weather over ua ien 

Province was terrible. Two of the aircraft carrying explosives, 

antitank ammunition, and eld telephone cables managed to 

nd an opening in the cloud layer about 10 kilometers north 

of Hue. ey dropped their cargoes in a large lagoon for local 

forces to retrieve. One of the aircraft returned safely; but the 

other, ying through dense fog, crashed into a mountain, 

losing all on board. Meanwhile, the other two IL-14s, which 

had been modied to drop bombs, had orders to strike General Truong’s headquarters. Neither ight crew could nd the 

city in the fog and returned to North Vietnam without dropping their payload. ey tried again ve days later, but once 

again, bad weather prevented them from locating the Mang 

Ca compound. e two aircraft radioed that they were scrubbing the mission, then headed out to sea to jettison their 

bombs. A short time later, their transmissions went dead and 

they were never heard from again. 

With the NVA pouring reinforcements into the old city, 

General Truong once more redeployed his forces. He ordered 

the three battalions of the 3d ARVN Regiment south of the 

Citadel to give up their hopeless eaorts at the southeastern 

walls and move into the city. On the afternoon of 7 February, 3d ARVN Regimental headquarters and three battalions 

embarked on South Vietnamese motorized junks, landing 

the troops at a wharf north of Hue. e 3d ARVN Regiment 

then entered the Citadel through the northern gate and 

took up new positions at the 1st Division’s Mang Ca compound. By that evening, four airborne battalions, the Black 

Panther Company, two armored cavalry squadrons, the 3d 

ARVN Regiment with all four battalions, the 4th Battalion, 

2d ARVN Regiment, and a company from the 1st ARVN 

Regiment were inside the Citadel.

Despite the ARVN troop buildup in the old city, General 

Truong’s forces made little further headway. For the next few 

days, the ARVN ran up against dug-in NVA, who refused to 

budge. e North Vietnamese still controlled about 60 percent of the Citadel. NVA replacements continued to inltrate into the old city after dark.

To the west, the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division was 

having the same luck as the ARVN forces in the Citadel 

against the North Vietnamese. General Tolson’s mission was 

to seal oa the city from the west and north with their right 

ank on the Perfume River. e Army general observed, 

however, that the weather and low ceiling of 150–200 feet, 

combined with the enemy antiaircraft weapons, “made it 

impractical and illogical to contemplate an air assault by any 

unit of the Division, in the close proximity of Hue.”

As the vanguard of Army Colonel Hubert S. Campbell’s 3d Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Sweet’s 2d Battalion, 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371127

PFC James M. Jones with Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th 

Marines, helps a refugee child through the window of a 

house.
Death in the Imperial City | 45

12th Cavalry, started out on foot early on 3 February in a 

cold drizzle from its landing zone. e battalion advanced 

southeastward along a path paralleling Route 1. At approximately 1000, the Americans saw a North Vietnamese battalion setting up defenses in the village of Que Chu, roughly 

500 meters to their front. A tree-lined and thickly vegetated hamlet, Que Chu extended 200 meters north and south 

and was about 75 meters wide. e North Vietnamese were 

armed with machine guns, AK47 Kalashnikov assault ries, 

and recoilless ries, occupying positions originally prepared by 

ARVN troops. e battalion attacked, supported by the division’s Aerial Rocket Artillery (ARA) Squadron.*

 After several 

hours of ghting, the battalion cracked the NVA defenses and 

established a night defensive perimeter in northern Que Chu. 

Nine U.S. soldiers died in the attack and 48 were wounded.

At this point, Lieutenant Colonel Sweet did not know 

the size or identity of the enemy force. Que Chu harbored 

the headquarters of the Hue City Front, as well as the 416th 

Battalion of the 5th NVA Regiment and all three battalions 

of the 29th Regiment, 325C Division, the latter having just 

arrived after a forced march from Khe Sanh. Sweet surmised 

that he had stumbled onto a major staging area for reinforcements and supplies going into Hue, and he knew the enemy 

would make great sacrices to preserve it. 

Under cover of darkness, the enemy moved up reinforcements in regimental strength, and at daybreak on 4 February, 

it launched a counterattack supported by a heavy mortar barrage. e 2d Battalion was surrounded and outnumbered, but 

they beat oa several assaults with the support of the ARA 

Squadron and artillery. e brief morning reght cost the 

2d Battalion another 11 killed and 51 wounded. Sweet felt 

abandoned and remembered a brieng of the division staa 

prior to jumping oa. “Earlier they all said, every one of them, 

that they would be able support us,” he said angrily. “If there 

was going to be a problem, any problem, why didn’t some 

a——e say something?” 

In assessing the situation that night, III MAF “believed 

that the 2/12 Cav [2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment] is 

blocking a possible exltration route for the [NVA] forces 

involved in the battle for Hue.” At this time, Lieutenant 

*e ARA was an armed helicopter unit and it served as an artillery component of the Army’s airmobile divisions. e ARA aviation concept was no 

longer used by the Army by the mid-1970s.

Colonel Sweet was more concerned about the enemy overrunning his positions than blocking any exltration route. 

He held a hasty conference with his staa and company 

commanders. After considering the options, Sweet decided to break free of the encirclement that evening. Resolving 

to take action that the enemy least expected, Sweet moved 

his battalion deeper into enemy-held territory to a small hill 

called Nha Khan that rose from the plain several kilometers 

southwest of Que Chau. at afternoon, the battalion evacuated its wounded, but the helicopters did not have enough 

room to take the bodies of the 11 dead. ey were buried in 

the sand so they could be retrieved later.

As darkness fell, the battalion quietly formed two columns, using tape and pieces of clothing to secure items that 

might make noise as they marched. Shortly after 2000, the 

men slipped northwest toward a 75-meter gap in the enemy 

lines. e North Vietnamese sentries did not see the Americans as they slid past. e battalion reformed to single le 

after reaching a graveyard set between two villages and sent 

scouts out ahead for the march south. A few minutes later, 

the scouts froze when they heard the unmistakable sound of 

a machine-gun bolt being drawn. e unseen NVA manning 

the weapon were merely cleaning it, however, and failed to 

notice the crouching Americans only a few meters away. e 

scouts quietly backtracked and led the battalion in a wide 

arc around the machine-gun nest without provoking further 

incident.

Slogging its way through wet paddy lands, the battalion 

arrived at Nha Khanh by 0700 on 5 February. e exhausted soldiers established a new perimeter on a piece of high 

ground that dominated the approaches to Hue six kilometers 

to the east. One of the men later said, “We had gotten less 

than six hours sleep in the past 48 hours. We didn’t have any 

water and the river water was too muddy to drink.”

While the 2d Battalion dug in on Nha Khan, the 5th 

Battalion, 7th Cavalry, advanced into the Que Chau sector 

on the afternoon of the fth. Patrolling the area west of the 

hamlet, Army Lieutenant Colonel James B. Vaught’s men 

encountered only token resistance. In the meantime, Lieutenant Colonel Sweet believed his men had stopped all enemy 

daylight movement by “calling in artillery on the plains in 

front of them.” General Tolson considered moving the 2d 

Battalion back to Camp Evans but, “at this point . . . I was 
46 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

faced with a couple of situations that strained my resources. 

. . . [W]hen Hue was occupied, my main land supply line was 

out.” Concerned about protecting Camp Evans and his helicopters and supporting the 1st Brigade at Quang Tri City, 

Tolson “was told to attack towards Hue [and] I already had 

at least three missions that I felt had to be carried out.”

General Tolson dismissed the idea of bringing the 2d 

Battalion out of the ght for Hue. On 7 February, just northwest of Que Chau, Lieutenant Colonel Vaught’s battalion 

encountered a strong NVA force that had reoccupied the village. Unable to push the North Vietnamese out, he called 

in ARA gunships and artillery. e next morning, the Army 

troopers renewed the attack, but they were forced back in the 

face of NVA automatic weapons re, RPGs, and mortars. In 

frustration, the American battalion dug in for the night. 

At this point, the 3d Brigade commander ordered Sweet’s 

battalion to deploy oa its hill and come in behind the enemy, 

squeezing the NVA between the two American units. On the 

morning of 9 February, 2d Battalion troops departed their 

positions only to bump into a North Vietnamese battalion 

in the hamlet of Bon Tri, approximately 3,000 meters south 

of Que Chau. Like Vaught’s unit, Sweet’s battalion saw little 

success against strong enemy defenses.

For the next few days, the 1st Cavalry units west of Hue, 

like the ARVN in the Citadel, faced a stalemate. ey were 

able to hold their own but could not push the NVA out. 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371335

Machine gun team with machine gunner PFC Dominick J. Carango give advancing troops of Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th 

Marines, fire support during street fighting in Hue. 
Death in the Imperial City | 47

During this period, the NVA command maintained its own 

support area outside the western wall of the Citadel, capitalizing on the failure of friendly forces to isolate Hue. Washington Post correspondent Peter Braestrup wrote, “sealing oa 

an eight-mile perimeter [west of Hue] would have demanded far more troops . . . than were available.” 

With the clearing of southern Hue by 1st Marines, General Cushman prepared to bring more forces into the ght for 

the entire city. After Army General Creighton W. Abrams 

Jr. arrived and formally established the USMACV Forward 

headquarters at Phu Bai on 12 February, Cushman met with 

him the following day. ey both agreed that the “successful conclusion to Operation Hue City was the number one 

priority in ICTZ [I Corps Tactical Zone].” e III MAF 

commander relayed this concern to General Tolson, who still 

wanted to return 2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry, to Camp Evans. 

Cushman told the cavalry commander to keep 2d Battalion 

in the ght. He felt the battle was about to reach a climax 

and ordered Tolson to keep his forces in position to prevent 

the enemy from escaping to the southwest.

In the interim, General Westmoreland and the South 

Vietnamese Joint General Staa ( JGS) had sent reinforcements to I Corps.*

 e 1st Battalion, 327th Airborne Reg-

*e JGS was the equivalent of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staa except the JGS 

had direct operational control over South Vietnamese forces, while the Joint 

Chiefs only worked closely with U.S. commanders.

Distinguished Service Cross Citation 

e President of the United States of America, authorized 

by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918 (amended by act of July 25, 

1963), takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Lieutenant Colonel (Infantry) 

Richard Searcy Sweet, United States Army, for 

extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations involving conict with an armed 

hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam, while 

serving as Commanding O®cer of the 2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3d Brigade, 1st 

Cavalry Division. Lieutenant Colonel Sweet 

distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous 

actions during the period 3 to 5 February 1968 as a battalion commander defending the city of Hue. Colonel Sweet 

was on the ground with his front line troops when the enemy 

launched an attack on the city. Positioning himself far forward, he disregarded the intense North Vietnamese mortar 

and sniper re and expertly directed his forces in an advance 

toward Hue. His brilliant leadership enabled all four of his 

companies to successfully cross a wide open rice paddy into 

the city while under a constant enemy fusillade. He then led 

his battalion through the rst line of enemy resistance, and 

by nightfall had succeeded in establishing a tight defensive 

perimeter. Under a steady hail of mortar and heavy automatic 

weapons re from three sides, the battalion ercely fought to 

retain its position. Early in the morning of 4 February the 

perimeter came under an extremely heavy bombardment 

and shortly thereafter began receiving ground 

attacks by large numbers of North Vietnamese 

soldiers. e battalion was soon encircled by a 

North Vietnamese regiment, and heavy enemy 

re rained on the defenders from all directions. 

Colonel Sweet skillfully directed the perimeter 

defense, personally encouraging his troops’ ght. 

Following their commander’s example, the o®-

cers and men of the battalion fought savagely to repulse the enemy. After dark, Colonel Sweet devised 

a plan to deceive the surrounding North Vietnamese forces 

and move through their positions to a new location deeper 

in their lines of communication. e entire battalion slipped 

through the enemy’s encirclement without suaering one 

casualty. Again Colonel Sweet’s example provided the inspiration for his troops and by daybreak they had successfully 

occupied commanding terrain deep inside the enemy’s area 

of operations. Lieutenant Colonel Sweet’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reect great credit upon 

himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard S. Sweet 
48 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

iment, from the 101st Airborne Division had arrived at Phu 

Bai and came under the operational control of Task Force 

X-Ray, while another battalion from the division was coming 

by sea. e South Vietnamese ew the rst elements of the 

Vietnamese Marine Task Force A to Phu Bai from Saigon to 

relieve the battered Airborne Task Force in the Citadel. At 

Phu Bai on 9 February, General LaHue ordered 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, to move into Hue. 

Entering the Walled City

At 0700 on 10 February, Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th 

Marines, departed the battalion’s Phu Loc operating area 

south of Phu Bai for the latter base. e company reached 

Phu Bai at about 1100 and came under the direct operational control of the 5th Marines, who ordered it into Hue City 

to reinforce the 1st Marines. at afternoon, the company 

crossed the broken span of the An Cuu Bridge and entered 

southern Hue. At the same time, 1st Battalion’s Company 

B arrived at Phu Bai as did the lead elements of the Army’s 

1st Battalion, 327th Airborne Regiment. e Army battalion made ready to relieve the remaining companies of the 

Marine battalion in the Phu Loc sector. e 1st Battalion, 

5th Marines, in turn, would enter the old Citadel to reinforce 

the ARVN.

Simultaneously, the Marine command attempted to 

improve the coordination of artillery, naval gunre, and other 

supporting arms for the Citadel ghting. Earlier on 8 February, the 1st Field Artillery Group (1st FAG) at Phu Bai, 

the artillery command for Task Force X-Ray, deployed four 

155mm howitzers of Battery W, 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, 

to ring positions at Gia Le, approximately 3,000 meters 

west of Phu Bai, to improve supporting res for forces in 

Hue. Two days later, 1st FAG sent two 4.2-inch mortars 

from 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, to the stadium in southeast Hue to provide E8 CS gas and heavy mortar support for 

forces in the Citadel. Similarly, a 105mm howitzer battery 

from 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, entered the city across the 

newly established pontoon bridge over the Phu Cam Canal. 

From its position in southern Hue, the battery could support 

the Marines to the north and to the west.

On 10 February, 1st FAG commander Lieutenant Colonel John F. Barr ordered two o®cers on his staa to the Citadel as forward observers. One of the men, First Lieutenant 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) 1D-17-37-68

Marines of Company H, 5th Marines, display a captured Viet 

Cong flag that they replaced with the Stars and Stripes following a bitter fight for the Thua Thien Province headquarters 

during Operation Hue City.
Death in the Imperial City | 49

Alexander W. Wells Jr., remembered receiving word that the 

colonel wanted to talk to him. Barr informed Wells that he had 

volunteered the young lieutenant “for a 24-hour moppingup mission” to General Truong in the Citadel to coordinate 

supporting res. Wells, whose tour in Vietnam was about 

over, indicated he would rather stay where he was, but Barr 

gave him little choice in the matter.

Shortly after 1630 on 10 February, Wells and his radio 

operator ew by helicopter to the Tay Loc aireld, where 

they were to provide support to 2d Battalion, 4th ARVN, 

and the Black Panther Company, which had just retaken the 

eld. As the aircraft approached Tay Loc, the enemy attacked 

with sniper re. e two Marines leaped out of the hovering craft and ran into a Quonset hut near the aireld tower, 

which was “full of Australians [advisors] playing cards and 

drinking scotch.” Wells was then told that General Truong 

wanted to see him at the division headquarters compound, 

approximately 1.5 kilometers to the east.

Upon reaching the division headquarters, General 

Truong briefed Wells on his new assignment as an observer with the remnants of an ARVN airborne battalion pinned 

down in a forward area. Wells “was shocked to learn that 

the 5th Marines had not arrived yet and that he and his 

radioman would be the only Americans in actual combat 

with the ARVN.” e Vietnamese general indicated on a 

large wall map the location of his designated outpost surrounded by enemy troops. Truong explained the Vietnamese unit required “his ‘big guns’ immediately to break the 

siege.” According to Wells, “Truong emphasized . . . that the 

Emperor’s Palace of Perfect Peace and the Royal City itself 

were in a strict no-re zone, but H& I [harassing and interdiction] res could be designated on the outer wall surrounding the Palace grounds.”

After the brieng, two ARVN soldiers, whom Wells 

remembered as rangers, escorted him and his radioman 

through dark streets and alleyways to the ruins of a Buddhist pagoda approximately 500 meters west of the Dong 

Ba Tower. It took Wells roughly three hours to negotiate 

the kilometer distance from the Mang Ca compound to the 

pagoda. Inside and around the courtyard of the temple, only 

a short distance from the imperial palace were approximately 

100 Vietnamese troops. According to Wells, they were surrounded by North Vietnamese forces. Given the ominous 

circumstances, Wells nicknamed his refuge the “Alamo.” For 

the next two weeks, he called in Marine support artillery and 

naval gunre from ships oa the coast, adjusting his target 

selection by reference to his map and by sound.

At division headquarters, General Truong revised plans 

for the battle of the Citadel. With the arrival of the South 

Vietnamese Marine Task Force A at Phu Bai, he proposed 

they replace the battered Vietnamese airborne battalions in 

the eastern sector. e airborne units would then return to 

Phu Bai and be own back to Saigon. rough the chain 

of command, he asked Task Force X-Ray to provide a U.S. 

Marine battalion, which would then relieve the Vietnamese Marines and attack to the south. After the U.S. Marines 

arrived, the Vietnamese Marines would push to the west 

and then turn south, advancing along the western wall. e 

four 3d ARVN Regiment battalions would continue clearing operations in the northwest sector. Eventually, the allied 

forces would surround and isolate the NVA forces holed up 

on the former imperial palace grounds, which separated the 

Vietnamese and American Marine sectors.

As was often the case, events overtook the plans. 

Although Vietnamese Marine Task Force A and its 1st Battalion arrived at Phu Bai from Saigon on 9 February and 

came under the operational control of the 1st ARVN Division, the Vietnamese remained at Phu Bai. In a meeting with 

the Vietnamese Marine commander, Major Hoang ong, 

at Task Force X-Ray headquarters, General LaHue suggested that ong deploy immediately to the Citadel. However, ong declined until the rest of his command joined him. 

He explained that he “was acting under written instructions 

promulgated by the Vietnamese Joint General Staa which 

prohibited piecemeal [commitment] . . . of his force.”

e support elements of the Vietnamese Marine task 

force reached Phu Bai on the night of 10 February. e next 

morning, U.S. helicopters lifted the task force headquarters 

and its 1st Battalion into the Citadel. e weather turned 

nasty in the afternoon, however, and only the headquarters 

and one company made it into the city before clouds and rain 

grounded the helicopters. General LaHue proposed that the 

remainder of the battalion be trucked to southern Hue and 

then board LCMs for the trip downriver to a landing site 

north of the Citadel. ey would then move on foot into the 

city. Major ong refused, saying that “he did not feel that 
50 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

either route was su®ciently secured.” Two days would pass 

before the skies cleared su®ciently for the airlift to resume. 

e 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, entered the old city. 

Shortly after 1045 on 11 February, Marine CH-45 Sea 

Knight helicopters lifted three platoons of Company B into 

the Mang Ca compound. e Sea Knight carrying 3d Platoon was hit and the pilot wounded, forcing the aircraft to 

abort and return to Phu Bai with the troops still on board. 

Later that day, Company A, with ve tanks attached, reached 

the 1st ARVN Division headquarters after an uneventful 

crossing of the Perfume River in a Navy landing craft. 

Also on 11 February, Major Robert H. ompson, the 

commanding o®cer of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, and his 

command group accompanied the remaining companies 

from the Phu Loc sector to Phu Bai. Only 10 days prior, 

Colonel Bohn had chosen ompson, who had served with 

him before as a battalion operations o®cer, to take over the 

battalion after its previous commanding o®cer was wounded. Before assuming command of the battalion, ompson, 

a lieutenant colonel selectee, had been the III MAF embarkation o®cer. e NVA had prepared a rather undignied 

assumption of command ceremony for the new battalion 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190401

A Marine scans the streets for enemy snipers with an M48 Patton tank ready for heavy firepower in the Hue University area. 
Death in the Imperial City | 51

commander. ompson recalled that “the moment I stepped 

oa the helicopter [at Phu Loc] we received mortar incoming. 

My rst 15 minutes with 1/5 [1st Battalion, 5th Marines] 

was spent at the bottom of a muddy ghting hole with my 

baggage and several Marines piled on top of me.”

When Major ompson arrived at Phu Bai, he reported to General LaHue, who briefed him that the 1st Marines 

had largely cleared southern Hue, although 1st ARVN Division was having a di®cult time in the Citadel. LaHue stated 

that ompson’s battalion would be given a zone of action in 

the Citadel to assist the ARVN in cleaning out the remaining NVA forces from the city. LaHue expressed some concern about ompson’s rank or rather lack of it. He feared 

that, since ompson was only a major, Truong might 

take advantage of his inexperience. LaHue even suggested 

“making me a brevet colonel,” ompson recalled. “I didn’t 

believe that would be necessary because I didn’t usually wear 

rank insignia in combat.” ompson had the impression that 

“no one seemed to know what the actual situation was in the 

Citadel. I can remember General LaHue commenting that 

it shouldn’t take more than a few days to clean up the Citadel aaair.”

ompson reported to Colonel Hughes at his USMACV 

command post, where he was ordered to “move up the Perfume River in LCUs, land, and enter the Citadel from the 

north.” He was then to advise General Truong of the intention to launch a three-company attack southward within a 

zone of action that extended from the inner palace wall on 

the west to the Citadel wall on the east. ompson spent the 

night in some damaged Hue University buildings. Sometime during the night, “an Army major appeared wearing 

full battle dress, including a .45-caliber pistol.” He introduced himself as Father Aloysius P. McGonigal, a Catholic 

chaplain assigned to the USMACV advisory group. He volunteered to accompany ompson to the Citadel, which he 

gladly accepted.

e following afternoon, Companies C and D joined 

ompson and his small advance party at the LCU ramp 

in the new city. Company D was placed under operational 

control of 2d Battalion, 5th Marines. After delays caused by 

enemy mortar and sniper re on river tra®c, the battalion’s 

headquarters group, the 3d Platoon, Company B, and Company C embarked on board an LCU. In spite of encountering 

an occasional RPG round or enemy sniper re from both 

banks of the Perfume River, they landed north of the city 

without incident. 

As ompson’s men were about to march to the Citadel, villagers warned the major that the NVA had set up an 

ambush along the route. e civilians guided them to another road and they were not red on. After arriving at the 

ARVN division command post, ompson met with General Truong and his staa. “Truong was very eager to accommodate our plan of attack or anything we wanted to do,” 

ompson recalled. Truong’s staa indicated that an ARVN 

airborne battalion was holding a position near the attack 

point and that they would hold that position until U.S. 

troops passed through that morning. ompson then prepared to execute his plan. Several years later, he indicated 

that he had proposed to move a column of companies from 

the division compound at rst light to make contact with the 

airborne battalion, which would serve as the line of departure 

(LOD). e battalion would then advance “with two companies abreast” and one company in reserve.

e actual situation diaered from the assumptions being 

made by the leadership. Apparently, when the Vietnamese 

Marine company came into the Citadel the previous day, 

the Vietnamese airborne units departed for Phu Bai and 

Saigon. Unaware of the interrupted Vietnamese Marine airlift, ompson radioed Hughes late on the night of 12 February that he could not locate the two Vietnamese Marine 

battalions but, “unless directed otherwise, intend to commence 

attack at 13 [February] 0800.” ompson also did not know 

that the Vietnamese airborne had since departed the Citadel.

Fight for the Tower

As planned, on the morning of 13 February, 1st Battalion, 5th 

Marines, moved out of the Mang Ca compound with Company A on the left, Company C on the right, and Company B 

in reserve. “[Within] fteen minutes . . . all Hell broke loose,” 

ompson recalled. “ere was no Airborne units in the area 

and Company A was up to their armpits in NVA.” Squadand platoon-size enemy elements were dug in bunkers and 

built-up areas and along the Citadel walls. Company A took 

35 casualties, including company commander Captain John 

J. Bowe Jr., from automatic weapons, grenades, B40 RPGs, 

mortars, and small arms. General Truong reported later that, 
52 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

“if there was any confusion, it was a communications problem. I was in daily contact with the Airborne Task Force 

commander. . . . I passed on all the information I had to the 

Marines.” ompson countered after the incident that, “if I 

had known the Vietnamese airborne was gone, I would have 

planned diaerently.”

At that point, ompson ordered Captain Fernandez 

Jennings Jr.’s Company B to relieve Company A and resume 

the attack with First Lieutenant Scott A. Nelson’s Company 

C. With two attached tanks, Company C advanced approximately 300 meters before being stopped by heavy enemy re 

from an archway tower at the Dong Ba Gate along the Citadel’s eastern wall. e NVA had dug in at the base of the wall 

and tunneled underneath the structure. e thick masonry 

protected them from supporting arms and also provided a 

covered approach for reinforcements. 

H U E R I V E R

1

1

551

0 1 1

2

MILES

U.S. Army units block

and attack toward

enemy inltration/

supply lanes

STADIUM

USMACV

COMPOUND

1–9 Feb

Marines clear

south Hue

1–12 Feb

ARVN attack forces enemy to

southeast sector of Citadel and

strong point along west wall

ARVN

194 Killed

790 Wounded

USMC

42 Killed

276 Wounded

and evacuated

ENEMY

2,351 Killed

17 Captured

783 Weapons

CASU ALTIES (Cumulative)

12 Feb

1st Bn 5th Marines

lands in Citadel

Fleet Marine Force-Pacific (FMFPac) Headquarters 

Hue City on 12 February 1968. This map was produced after the conclusion of Operation Hue City. 
Death in the Imperial City | 53

e battalion was stopped 75 meters short of its original proposed LOD. “Fighting in the Citadel was unlike anything I had ever experienced,” ompson recalled. “We were 

in such close quarters with the enemy, often just meters away. 

We had no room to re and maneuver. In essence, the ghting was an exercise of reducing fortied positions.” Colonel 

Hughes radioed ompson to hold his position and “reorganize and prepare plans for continuing [the] attack indicating [the] type [of ] support deemed necessary and desirable.” 

ompson requested air and artillery support and the return 

of Company D. 

On the morning of 14 February, the battalion resumed 

its attack using 5- and 8-inch naval gunre and 155mm and 

8-inch howitzers to pave the way. For the rst time in several 

days, the cloud cover lifted for a brief period, allowing Marine 

McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom IIs and Vought F-8 

Crusaders to y support missions. “ere was extremely heavy 

air activity everywhere,” First Lieutenant Andrew C. Delaurier, a Crusader pilot from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 

235 (VMF-235) observed. Delaurier’s wingman “proceeded 

with one run with zunis and snakes and I followed up with 

napalm.”* ey had to make two runs to acquire the target. 

Although antiaircraft re hit Delaurier’s Crusader, causing it 

to leak fuel, he made his way safely back to Da Nang.

Despite the heavy bombardment, the tower still stood 

and the attack stalled. ompson felt the naval guns were 

accurate but were of little value because their at trajectory caused either a hit outside the Citadel wall or over the 

wall past any targets inside. He praised the accuracy of the 

*e term zunis refers to 5-inch Zuni air-to-surface unguided rockets, and 

snakes refers to 250- and 500-pound bombs congured with a tail called 

snake eyes.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190477

Marines of Company B, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, render aid to trapped Marines while under heavy fire from an enemy machine 

gun during the Battle of Hue. 
54 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

artillery, but with the battalion on the “gun target line . . . it 

[was] virtually impossible for us to lean into our res.”* In 

this situation, with the artillery ring at close range and parallel to the direction of the attack, the shell dispersion could 

cause friendly casualties. e NVA also moved forward when 

ompson’s men fell back to use supporting arms, “so when 

the res were lifted, we had to ght to retake more ground.”

As a result, the attack stalled. Company C, on the right, 

advanced roughly 100 yards, destroyed an NVA rocket position, and captured an enemy soldier who walked into their 

lines. Company B did not make any progress against the 

tower, and after several futile attempts to take the tower, 

ompson was forced to withdraw both companies and 

establish a night defensive position.

Captain Myron C. Harrington’s Company D joined the 

battalion at approximately 1800, after a frustrating day trying 

to cross the Perfume River by landing craft and nally by 

a Navy patrol craft, fast (PCF) or Swift boat. Harrington 

described the situation:

I could feel a knot developing in my stomach. Not so 

much from fear—through a helluva lot of fear was 

there—but because we were new to this type of situation. We were accustomed to jungles and open rice 

elds, and now we would be ghting in a city. . . . 

[O]ne of the beautiful things about the Marine is 

that they adapt quickly, but we were going to take a 

number of casualties learning some basic lessons in 

this experience. I think my most vivid memory as I 

went in was in talking with one of the other company 

commanders who had already been participating there 

in the action for a couple of days. In a very matter-offact way, without a great deal of embellishment on his 

part, he just frightened the hell out of me in telling 

me how bad it was. And I thought in my mind right 

then and there that, you know, hey, here I am with a 

fresh company and I knew without having to be told 

that what my mission was going to be the next day 

was to try and take the fortied tower position along 

the east wall. And sure enough, that evening when I 

went in to be briefed, Major ompson, he just said, 

*A gun target line refers to an imaginary straight line from the guns to the 

target.

“Delta Company, tomorrow you’re going to take that 

east wall.” And I said, “Aye, aye, sir,” and went at it.

“My rst impression was of desolation, utter devastation,” 

Harrington recalled further. “ere were burnt-out tanks and 

trucks, and upturned automobiles still smoldering. Bodies lay 

everywhere, most of them civilians. e smoke and stench 

blended, like some kind of horror movie—except that it 

lacked weird music. You felt that something could happen 

at any minute, that they would jump out and start shooting 

from every side. Right away, I realized that we weren’t going 

to a little picnic.” 

e next morning, under heavy supporting arms, Company D launched its attack. Harrington explained, 

We tried our best to avoid malicious damage, if you 

would. We just didn’t shoot at walls just to blow them 

down. But when we had to shoot at a house, we shot at 

a house. When we had to destroy a house, we destroyed 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190302

Marines of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, participate 

in a search-and-clear mission on the south side of the Perfume River after a heavy fight at the old imperial capital of 

Hue. 
Death in the Imperial City | 55

it. But we didn’t go in there with the express purpose 

that this is a wonderful opportunity to show how great 

our weapons are and how much destructive power 

they possess. As a result of their being so entrenched, 

it required for us to bring maximum repower at our 

disposal to eliminate them.

On 15 February, artillery and naval gunre struck at enemy 

positions. Under the pounding, the tower gave way. A break in 

the cloud cover allowed two Marine Douglas A-4 Skyhawk 

jets to drop 250- and 500-pound bombs on the target. Backed 

both by tanks and Ontos, Harrington’s Marines crept toward 

the wall and up the tower. ey cleared the North Vietnamese 

and Viet Cong from their spider holes one by one with hand 

grenades and rie re. e NVA, nevertheless, defended their 

positions tenaciously, forcing ompson to commit Company B. After six hours of hard ghting, including hand-to-hand 

combat, Harrington’s 1st Platoon established a foothold at 

the base of the tower. According to one account, Private First 

Class John E. Holiday made a “one-man charge” against an 

enemy machine gun bunker on the wall, ring his “machine 

gun from the hip ‘John Wayne’ style.” e rest of the company followed and captured the tower.

e tower’s capture cost the battalion 6 men killed in 

action and more than 50 wounded, while claiming 20 enemy 

dead. at night, Harrington left one squad in the tower and 

established his command post in a damaged house below the 

wall. e NVA launched a surprise night attack and retook 

the tower. Harrington led a counterattack and recaptured it: 

I had to admire the courage and discipline of the North 

Vietnamese and the Vietcong [sic], but no more than 

I did my own men. We were both in a face-to-face, 

eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. Sometimes they were 

only twenty or thirty yards from us, and once we killed 

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Captain Myron C. Harrington, Jr., United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary 

heroism while serving as Commanding O®cer 

for Company D, First Battalion, Fifth Marines, 

FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet 

Marine Force, in connection with operations 

against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. 

On the afternoon of 23 February 1968, Company D was attacking a well entrenched North 

Vietnamese Army force that was occupying a 

fortied section of the wall surrounding the Hue 

Citadel. As the Marines maneuvered forward, they began 

receiving a heavy volume of small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and antitank rocket re. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Captain Harrington skillfully deployed 

his 3.5 rocket teams into advantageous ring positions. Continuously moving from one position to another, he pinpointed enemy emplacements and skillfully directed the re of his 

men. After silencing four hostile positions, he requested supporting arms re and skillfully adjusted 60-mm. mortar re 

to within twenty-ve meters of the forward elements of his 

company, while simultaneously adjusting artillery 

re. Disregarding his own safety, Captain Harrington then fearlessly maneuvered to the point 

of heaviest contact and, rallying his men, boldly 

led a determined assault against the enemy soldiers. Shouting words of encouragement to his 

men, he skillfully maneuvered his unit forward 

and directed the Marines’ re upon the hostile 

emplacements. Largely due to his resolute determination and intrepid ghting spirit, his men overran the 

hostile positions and routed the North Vietnamese soldiers, 

accounting for twenty-ve enemy soldiers conrmed killed. 

By his courage, superb leadership and unfaltering devotion 

to duty in the face of extreme personal danger, Captain Harrington upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps 

and the United States Naval Service.

rington, Jr., United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary 

heroism while serving as Commanding O®cer 

for Company D, First Battalion, Fifth Marines, 

FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet 

against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. 

pany D was attacking a well entrenched North 

Vietnamese Army force that was occupying a 

to within twenty-ve meters of the forward elements of his 

Captain Myron C. Harrington Jr. 
56 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

a sniper only ten yards away. After a while, survival was 

the name of the game as you sat there in the semidarkness, with the ring going on constantly. . . . And the 

horrible smell. You tasted it as you ate your rations, as 

if you were eating death. It permeated your clothes, 

which you couldn’t wash because water was very scarce. 

You couldn’t bathe or shave either. My strategy was 

to keep as many of my Marines alive as possible, and 

yet accomplish the mission. You went through the full 

range of emotions, seeing your buddies being hit, but 

you couldn’t feel sorry for them because you had others 

to think about. . . . It was dreary, and still we weren’t 

depressed. We were doing our job—successfully.

On the morning of 16 February, the battalion pushed 

southeast along the Citadel wall. It seemed as if the men 

were under re from three directions at once: North 

Vietnamese snipers brought anking re on them from the 

taller building on Gia Hoi Island to the east and from walls 

of the imperial palace to the west. e battalion used artillery, naval gunre, and an occasional air strike to suppress the 

enemy on the outer walls, but could do nothing about the 

snipers in the palace because the royal residence was a no-re 

zone. e battalion gained the Americans approximately 150 

yards, but at that point, ompson called a halt to reorganize 

and resupply. In the day’s ghting, the battalion counted 63 

NVA bodies but suaered 7 killed and 47 wounded.

For the next few days, 1st Battalion met the same closequarter resistance. Unlike the enemy in southern Hue, the 

battalion discovered that the NVA units in the Citadel 

employed better urban ghting tactics, had improved already 

formidable defenses, dug trenches, built roadblocks, and conducted counterattacks to regain redoubts, which were critical for their defensive scheme. ompson described the older 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190492

Marines en route to Hue aboard a Navy LCM 8 Mike boat prepare to return sniper fire from shore. The boat was loaded with 

105mm ammunition. 
Death in the Imperial City | 57

city as “row after row of single-story, thick-walled masonry 

houses jammed close together and occasionally separated by 

alleyways or narrow streets.” As a result, the Marines were 

faced with hundreds of naturally camouaged, mutually supporting, fortied positions. Moreover, both their anks were 

exposed to the enemy; to the east, or left ank, four- or vestory houses stood outside the moat, which allowed the NVA 

to dominate the Citadel wall with observation and re; and 

to the west, or right ank, the imperial palace provided the 

NVA safe haven from which to deliver small-arms, rocket, 

and mortar re. Eventually, ompson received permission 

to re mortars, and on a “few occasions to have the ARVN 

re artillery for us inside . . . the palace walls.” In his mind, 

“[t]he enemy had everything going for him.” 

ompson countered the enemy xed defenses with 

heavy artillery, naval gunre, liberal use of tear gas, and when 

weather permitted, xed-wing support. He recalled, however, 

“there was slow, misty cold rain falling constantly. I don’t 

recall seeing the sun during that period and the cloud cover 

broke enough to allow close air support on about three brief 

occasions.” He depended largely on his own unit’s repower, 

especially mortars and automatic weapons, and the tanks and 

Ontos that reinforced the battalion. ompson compared 

his tankers to the “knights of old sallying forth daily from 

their castles to do battle with the forces of evil.” One rieman stated that, “if it had not been for the tanks, we could 

not have pushed through that section of the city. ey [the 

NVA] seemed to have bunkers everywhere.”

e M48 Pattons and Ontos worked together under the 

command of the attached tank platoon commander. e 

infantry provided a screen while the Ontos or battle tanks 

furnished direct re support. After a joint reconnaissance, the 

armored vehicles would move forward at full speed as the 

infantry laid down a heavy volume of re. Upon reaching a 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190582

Marines of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, advance with a tank inside the Citadel at Hue. 
58 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

position where hits could be placed on the target, the vehicle 

commander halted and red two or three rounds and then 

reversed direction to return quickly to friendly front lines.

At rst, the M48 tank’s 90mm guns were relatively ineffective against the concrete and stone houses; shells occasionally ricocheted back on the Marines. e tank crews then 

used concrete-piercing fused shells that “resulted in excellent penetration and walls were breached with two to four 

rounds.” Casualties were high among armored vehicle crews, 

but the tanks received relatively little damage from RPG 

rounds.

e two 4.2-inch mortars from 1st Battalion, 11th 

Marines, supported the battalion’s advance with highexplosive and E8 CS rounds. Private First Class Edward M. 

Landry later recalled, on 18 February, “ring a CS mission 

across the river again today. e air is [so] full of gas . . . we 

are almost used to it unless it is very heavy. We then use our 

masks.” In the Citadel, the 4.2-inch CS shells proved more 

eaective than the E8 launchers. e rounds penetrated the 

tile roofs of the building and “concentrated the full power of 

the round in the building rather than relying on the inltration of the CS gas from outside.” Enemy prisoners testied 

to the demoralizing eaect of the gas on their units, although 

some NVA o®cers and senior NCOs carried gas masks with 

them into battle.

After heavy ghting on 17 February, ompson called a 

temporary halt to the advance. NVA mortars sank an LCU 

attempting to resupply the battalion in the Citadel. Faced 

with shortages of food and ammunition, especially 106mm 

rounds for the Ontos and 90mm rounds for the M48 tanks, 

he made the decision to rest the battalion until the supplies 

arrived. e attack was at a standstill. “e resistance is getting stiaer,” ompson reported. “It’s most di®cult because 

of such close contact. We get an occasional gunship but no 

other air support. Charlie’s dug way down into the buildings 

and they’re too strong for our light mortars.”*

Taking the Citadel

While the U.S. Marine battalion fought for the Dong Ba 

Tower and inched its way forward, the Vietnamese Marine 

*Charlie represents a shortened reference to the Viet Cong, or Victor Charlie 

in military phonetic spelling.

task force also entered the battle. After several delays, on 13 

February, U.S. Navy landing craft ferried the command group 

and the remaining companies of the 1st Vietnamese Marine 

Corps (1st VNMC) Battalion and the entire 5th VNMC 

Battalion from the LCU ramp across the Perfume River to 

the northern landing site. At his Mang Ca headquarters, 

General Truong assigned the southwest sector of the Citadel, west of the imperial palace, to the Vietnamese Marine 

Task Force A. According to Truong’s concept of operations, 

the task force would pass through friendly forces south of the 

headquarters the following morning and then attack rst to 

the west and then turn with the 1st Battalion on the eastern 

ank and the 5th Battalion on the western ank.

For control purposes, General Truong divided the Citadel into six zones or areas of operations: Zone A covered the 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371220

A Marine from 2d Platoon, Company H, aims an M60 

machine gun out the window of a house during the Battle of 

Hue.
Death in the Imperial City | 59

Mang Ca compound; Zone B included the area immediately south of headquarters and under friendly control; Zone C 

had been given to the 3d ARVN Regiment and focused on 

the northeast sector; Zone D belonged to the U.S. 1st Battalion, 5th Marines; Zone E covered the imperial palace and 

grounds still occupied by enemy forces; and Zone F included 

the Vietnamese Marine sector. 

As planned, at 0900 on 14 February, the Vietnamese Marines left their line of departure, but both battalions immediately ran into strong enemy forces. From 0930 

to 1200, 5th Battalion engaged in intense house-to-house 

ghting until it reached its rst objective. In its sector, 1st 

Battalion failed in its mission to secure a small school stubbornly defended by the NVA. ird Lieutenant Nhut led his 

men into a pagoda to launch an attack on the school. After 

an air strike on the enemy position, the lieutenant suddenly dashed forward toward an abandoned house that sat halfway between the school and the pagoda. Enemy re cut him 

down. “I never told anyone to charge ahead,” his company 

commander said. “I told everyone to wait.” During a lull in 

the ghting, a small group of Vietnamese Marines recovered 

Nhut’s body and his equipment. His helmet bore the inscription, “Live bedside you, darling, die beside buddies.” On the 

fourteenth, 1st Battalion lost 9 dead and 24 wounded. After 

repulsing early morning probes on its positions, the battalion 

counterattacked and nally captured the schoolhouse on the 

afternoon of the fteenth. During two days of ghting, the 

two Marine battalions had advanced less than 400 meters.

e 3d ARVN Regiment in the northwest sector of the 

Citadel also met with setbacks. On 14 February, the NVA 

broke out of their salient west of the Tay Loc aireld and cut 

oa the 1st Battalion of the regiment in the western corner of 

the Citadel. Two days would pass before the ARVN could 

break the encirclement.

Similarly, the NVA was dealing with challenges of their 

own. On the night of 16 February, ARVN troops at the 

Alamo with Lieutenant Wells intercepted a radio transmission ordering “an attack of battalion-size reinforcements into 

the Citadel through the ‘west gate’ and over the moat bridge.” 

Wells immediately called for support from the 155mm howitzers at Gia Le and all available Navy gunships on station 

to re at on-call targets around the gate and the bridge. A 

5-inch mount from one of the Navy destroyers responded 

within 3 minutes and continued ring for approximately 10 minutes. Wells reported “screaming on the radio” after 

a direct hit on the moat bridge killed a high-ranking NVA 

o®cer and blew several enemy troops into the water. 

At midnight, the technical detachment of 1st ARVN 

Division intercepted a radio communication from enemy 

headquarters inside the Citadel. Its contents revealed that 

the enemy commander had been killed during an attack-by-

re, that enemy losses were heavy, and that the new commander recommended a withdrawal from the Citadel.*

 His 

request was denied and he was ordered to continue ghting. 

Estimating the Situation 

and Mounting the Offensive

e U.S. command feared a buildup of NVA forces in the 

Hue sector. Earlier on 16 February, General Abrams ew 

over 1st Cavalry Division’s objective west of the city. He 

believed the North Vietnamese had at least three battalions still in the city and that “they are resupplied nightly 

from a base camp 18 kilometers west of the city, generally through the west gate. ey have plenty of 60mm mortar 

and B-40 rocket ammo.” Allied intelligence now identied 

*e term attack-by-re refers to a tactical mission where a commander uses 

direct re, supported by indirect re, to engage the enemy without closing 

with them to destroy, suppress, x, or deceive.

Senior North 

Vietnamese Instructions

According to a recent Vietnamese history, the Communist 

Central Military Commission (CMC) issued instructions 

that the Citadel must be held until 18 February. On the 

twentieth, the local Tri-ien Regional Party Committee 

suggested to the CMC that it permit the withdrawal from 

Hue. e CMC then instructed the Communist military 

regional headquarters to: “Strive to hold, you will be supplied, including by air.” e Vietnamese account then goes 

on to state, “From the night of the 20th through the 23d 

of February IL-14 aircraft of our Air Force ew parachute 

resupply to our forces in Hue. Although the eaectiveness 

was low, the resupply by our air force stimulated the ghting 

morale of our troops and people on the battleeld.”
60 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

a new enemy battalion west of the city and a new regimental headquarters two kilometers north of the city with at least 

one battalion. Abrams radioed General Cushman to expect 

a renewed attack in Hue and “to reinforce the 3d Bde [Brigade] of the 1st Air Cav Div [Air Cavalry Division] to bring 

additional forces to bear north and west of Hue. We should 

make every eaort to move against the enemy now, straining 

our logistics base to the maximum to include air supply if 

required.”

at same afternoon, General Abrams hosted a meeting 

with Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky and Lieutenant General Hoang Xuan Lam, the I Corps Commander, and Generals Cushman and LaHue. e USMACV Forward staa and 

Task Force X-Ray briefed the dignitaries on the Hue situation. Vice President Ky reported that his intelligence sources concurred with the American assessment of an enemy 

buildup west of the city. He also believed the North Vietnamese were willing to sacrice “thousands of men to win 

H U E R I V E R

1

1

551

0 1 1 2

MILES

U.S. Army

16 –21 Feb

Marines, ARVN, and Vietnamese 

Marines attack southeast sector 

of Citadel against heavy enemy 

resistance

Vietnamese Marines

ARVN USMC

ARVN

384 Killed

1,800 Wounded

USMC

142 Killed

857 Wounded

and evacuated

ENEMY

5,113 Killed

89 Captured

1,632 Weapons

C ASUALTIES (Final)

1

2

3

4

22 Feb Marines

secure assigned

objectives

24 Feb ARVN

seize imperial

palace; Vietnamese 

Marines push enemy 

to southwest corner

24 Feb U.S. Army

units reach southwest wall

25 Feb U.S. and 

Vietnamese Marines 

trap enemy remnants.

Citadel declared secure

LEGEND

3

2

4

1

Fleet Marine Force-Pacific (FMFPac) Headquarters 

Hue City on 16 – 25 February 1968. This map was produced after the conclusion of Operation Hue City. 
Death in the Imperial City | 61

a slight political gain.” Ky declared that the advance of U.S. 

forces should not be deterred by the enemy’s use of pagodas, churches, and other religious buildings. e vice president would “accept responsibility” for any destruction caused 

by American eaorts.

On 17 February, General Westmoreland met with Generals Cushman and Abrams. He concurred with them that 

the enemy was about to launch a major operation with Hue 

as its target. e three commanders also agreed on the need 

for further reinforcements and ordered in 1st Brigade, 101st 

Airborne Division, with two battalions and 3d Brigade, 1st 

Air Cavalry Division, with two battalions as reinforcements. 

e two Marine battalions would continue mopping up in 

the modern city and expand operations to the east and south 

of Hue. e 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne, would block avenues of retreat to the south and southwest, while 3d Brigade, 

1st Air Cavalry, pressed the NVA from the northwest.

In the Citadel, General Truong prepared for the nal 

thrust against entrenched and determined enemy forces. He 

assigned the Vietnamese Marine Task Force A, now reinforced by a third battalion, to clear the southwestern wall. 

With the Vietnamese Marines on the western ank, Truong 

placed the 3d ARVN Regiment in the center with orders to 

attack south toward the imperial palace. His Reconnaissance 

Company approached on the right ank of ompson’s battalion, which renewed its assault in the southeastern sector.

 From the eighteenth through the twentieth, the U.S. 

Marine battalion and the South Vietnamese units in the Citadel met dogged resistance. e NVA in the Citadel were 

now ghting a rearguard action, and they contested nearly 

every piece of ground.* In spite of mounting casualties, the 

North Vietnamese continued to throw replacements into the 

ght. During the early morning hours of 19 February, two 

enemy battalions attacked the South Vietnamese Marines in 

the southwestern sector of the Citadel. Although supported by artillery, the Vietnamese Marines beat back the enemy 

assault, which several high-ranking NVA o®cers and political leaders used as a diversion to escape from the city. 

After regrouping on 19 February, ompson’s battalion 

resumed its oaensive in the southeastern sector. He placed 

*e term rearguard action refers to a defensive or delaying tactic created by a 

rear guard covering the retreat or evacuation of an army.

three companies on line—B, C, and D, with A in reserve—

but the battalion only made nominal gains against the NVA, 

who were holed up in the rubble. A two-story administrative 

building (the largest in the Citadel) remained particularly 

concerning for ompson. From it, the enemy had excellent observation and elds of re. ompson believed that, 

if the building were taken, the rest would be easy—but by 

the twentieth, his battalion had run out of steam and a new 

approach was needed.

Generals Abrams and Cushman also were concerned 

about progress in the Citadel and the mounting number of 

American casualties. News correspondents with the Marines 

in the old city led dispatches and lm about the intensity of the ghting that were being read or viewed by American audiences the next day. One dramatic picture showed a 

Marine tank with a makeshift litter carrying wounded to the 

battalion aid station. On 19 February, reporter Lee A. Lescaze wrote a front-page article titled, “Shortage of Men, Air 

Support Slows Marine Drive in Hue,” that appeared in the 

Washington Post. According to Lescaze’s account, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, had advanced four blocks but were still two 

blocks from the southern wall of the Citadel. Marine o®cers 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371416

Marines of Company L, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, use walls 

and buildings as cover during their advance against the 

enemy.
62 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

were quoted as asking, “When are they going to get help?” 

Lescaze described the lead companies “trying to keep on 

line as they maneuver through buildings and rubble of Hue.” 

He wrote that, in some instances, corporals were acting platoon leaders taking the place of wounded or dead company o®cers. One o®cer remarked that “we don’t have enough 

men, enough air support, or enough artillery to do this thing 

quickly.”

Although not disputing the accuracy of Lescaze’s article, a division message stated that, of the 10 platoons in the 

Citadel battalion, 3 were commanded by lieutenants, 1 by a 

gunnery sergeant, 2 by staa sergeants, 2 by sergeants, and 2 

by corporals. It further stated that inclement weather permitted xed-wing support only on three days, 14–16 February. Because of the need for accuracy, the division revealed 

that it used only 8-inch howitzer and naval gunre in support of the battalion, admitting that “1/5 [1st Battalion, 5th 

Marines] casualties have been high. During [the] past week, 

priority of personnel replacement has been given to the 5th 

Marines.”

On 20 February, General Abrams radioed General Cushman that he recognized the eaorts to end the siege in Hue, 

but also that the weather had considerable impact on operations. Nevertheless, Abrams considered “the measure so 

far taken to be inadequate and not in consonance with the 

urgency of the problem or the resources you command.” In 

the Army general’s mind, it was essential that all available 

means of repower and support be used to eliminate enemy 

forces in Hue. Abrams directed Cushman to focus priority on artillery res to the ARVN and Marine units in the 

city. He declared that General Truong should coordinate 

“all outside support tendered, and we should be responsive 

to his requests. In accomplishing all the above, I direct that 

the resources owned by the U.S. be unstintingly committed 

to the support of the Vietnamese forces of all types, cutting 

out all the red tape and administrative procedures that in any 

way hinder the conduct of the battle. . . . is is one battle 

and anything anyone has that is useful should be committed 

to its early and nal conclusion.”

At the same time he radioed Cushman, Abrams also sent 

a message to 1st Calvary Division’s General Tolson: “You 

have a priority task to clear the northwest, west and southern approaches to Hue within the next 48 hours, using all 

resources at your disposal.” He then directed Tolson to make 

contact with Truong and assess the situation within the city, 

reporting personally to headquarters with a proposed plan 

of action. Abrams promised Tolson that he would issue the 

“necessary orders” to General Cushman “to insure [sic] that 

all available resources are placed at your disposal to accomplish this mission.”

Despite the obvious anxiety in Abrams messages, the 

battle for Hue was in its last stages. e enemy’s stubborn 

resistance inside the Citadel hit a desperate point on 21 February, when three 1st Cavalry battalions—1st Cavalry’s 3d 

Brigade; 2d Battalion, 501st Infantry; and 1st Battalion, 7th 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190561

Marines of Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, move out 

on patrol in Hue. 
Death in the Imperial City | 63

Infantry—drove a concerted attack against the Que Chau 

area, ve kilometers northwest of Hue and the location of 

29th Regiment, 325C Division headquarters. U.S. forces occupied this area, and thus severed all enemy communications 

and resupply activities between the Citadel and the outside. 

In the Citadel, Major ompson determined the battalion 

needed another option to get the assault moving again. “To 

continue the attack as before would be sheer folly,” he said, 

and decided that a night attack might succeed. He briefed 

the company commanders, who “were not very enthusiastic. 

. . . [T]hey were willing to try, but I could see that their hearts 

were not in it.” He gave the mission to Company A, now 

under the command of First Lieutenant Patrick D. Polk. In 

the brief time he commanded the company, Polk had revived 

its morale. So much so that ompson believed “Pat Polk and 

Company A were ready to go.” According to the major’s plan, 

a platoon from the company would seize three key facilities, 

including the two-story administrative building, anking the 

NVA positions during the night. At rst light, the rest of the 

battalion would launch the general attack.

e 2d Platoon, led by Staa Sergeant James Munro, was 

divided into approximately three 10-man teams. At 0300 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A374463

From a classroom at Hue University, a Marine fires his M16 at a sniper during Operation Hue City. 
64 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

on 21 February, the platoon moved out, and within a short 

time, captured all three buildings with a minimum of resistance. ompson later speculated that the North Vietnamese had withdrawn during the night to sleep elsewhere. By 

daybreak, the enemy troops moved back in, providing “a 

turkey shoot” for Company A. According to one Marine, 

“Hell, the rst thing in the morning, we saw six NVA . . . 

just standing on the wall. We dusted them all oa.” e major 

thought “this threw the NVA into utter confusion and . . . 

gave our other companies the spirit they needed to continue 

the attack with zest.” Despite initial success, NVA resistance 

hardened. By the end of the day, the battalion had killed 16 

North Vietnamese, taken 1 prisoner, and captured ve individual weapons at a cost of 3 dead and 14 wounded Marines. 

e battalion was still approximately 100 yards short of the 

southeastern wall. 

At 0930 the next morning, the battalion pushed forward. 

Except for some scattered snipers and an occasional mortar 

round, the enemy seemingly had melted away. Upon reaching the southeastern wall, Lance Corporal James M. Avella 

removed a small American ag from his pack and fastened 

it to a telegraph pole. e battalion’s after action report documented the event: an element of Company A “hoisted our 

National Ensign.”

Upon securing the wall, ompson ordered a new company under his command—Company L, 3d Battalion, 5th 

Marines—to capture the southern gate and the immediate area between the Citadel and the bridge across the river. 

e company performed “a classic combined arms eaort 

that could not have been executed better on a blackboard.” 

Ironically, the sun was out for the rst time in two weeks, 

and Marine xed-wing aircraft dropped napalm within 800 

Navy Cross Citation

e President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Lieutenant Colonel [then Major] 

Robert H. ompson, United States Marine Corps, for 

extraordinary heroism while serving as the Commanding O®cer, First Battalion, Fifth Marines, 

FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet 

Marine Force, in the Republic of Vietnam, from 

12 February to 3 March 1968, while participating in the Operation HUE CITY, Lieutenant 

Colonel ompson aggressively led his battalion in intense ghting against well entrenched 

North Vietnamese forces within the Citadel. On 

13 February, he deployed elements of his unit across the Perfume River to reduce enemy resistance in the southeast corner 

of the walled city. Almost immediately, small-arms, automatic weapons, and rocket re from a large North Vietnamese 

force slowed his advance. Ignoring the intense enemy re, he 

moved to an exposed vantage point where he rapidly assessed 

the situation and unhesitatingly moved across the re-swept 

front of his battalion, directing the eaorts of the company 

commanders and shouting words of encouragement to individual Marines, inspiring them to resume the momentum of 

the attack. Ordered to commence an attack northwest of the 

city on 28 February, Colonel ompson fearlessly moved his command group with the attacking companies repeatedly moving to the areas 

of heaviest contact in order to personally assist 

his unit commanders and inuence the course 

of the engagement. When an attacked company engaged a well entrenched North Vietnamese 

force on 1 March, Colonel ompson accompanied a reinforcing unit dispatched to establish 

a blocking position to prevent the enemy’s escape. Located 

with the lead elements, he personally coordinated supporting arms re with the movement of the advancing Marines as 

they overwhelmed the enemy and accomplished the mission. 

By his intrepid ghting spirit, inspiring leadership, and selfless devotion to duty at great personal risk, Colonel ompson upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and 

the United States Naval Service.

Robert H. ompson, United States Marine Corps, for 

manding O®cer, First Battalion, Fifth Marines, 

FIRST Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet 

ing in the Operation HUE CITY, Lieutenant 

North Vietnamese forces within the Citadel. On 

Major Robert H. Thompson 
Death in the Imperial City | 65

meters of advancing troops. An M48 Patton battle tank provided suppressive re on the enemy’s positions on the palace 

wall, though one of the tanks took a direct hit. Sergeant 

Edward Scott said, 

I don’t know what they threw at us. e round penetrated 10 inches of steel. It hit the turret and entered 

on the loader’s side. He got killed along with the tank 

commander. I was wounded also. Pieces of shrapnel 

were ying inside and destroyed all the radios and 

started a ash re. ere was so much smoke you 

couldn’t see anything. e driver was untouched. . . . 

[He] got us out of there and drove to an aid station.

By 1800, the battalion had attained all of its objectives. To 

the west, however, the North Vietnamese continued to ght 

for every inch of the old city still in their hands. On 22 February, the enemy red 122mm rockets followed by ground 

attacks against the Vietnamese Marines. Although forced 

back, the NVA maintained pressure on the Marine task force. 

By 23 February, they were in “moderate to heavy contact” and 

no advances were made. Venting his anger at what he considered the slow progress of the Vietnamese Marines, General 

Abrams threatened to dissolve the unit. He complained that, 

in the last three days, they “have moved forward less than 

half a city block,” in spite of being the “strongest force in the 

Citadel either Vietnamese, U.S., or enemy.”

At 0500 on 24 February, soldiers from 2d Battalion, 3d 

ARVN, pulled down the NLF banner ying over the Citadel, ripped it into tatters, and hoisted the South Vietnamese national colors. For the rst time in 25 days, the yellow 

ag with three red stripes uttered triumphantly in the early 

morning air. By 1025, the 3d ARNV Regiment had secured 

the southern wall. General Truong then ordered the Black 

Panther Company and 2d Battalion, 3d ARVN, to assault 

the imperial palace they recaptured by late afternoon. In 

the interim, the Vietnamese Marines had taken the western wall. By nightfall, only the southwest corner of the Citadel remained in enemy control. Under cover of darkness at 

0300 on 25 February, the 4th Vietnamese Marine Battalion 

launched a surprise attack and eliminated this last pocket of 

North Vietnamese ghters in the Citadel. Outside the eastern walls, a two-battalion ARVN Ranger task force cleared 

the Gia Hoi sector, a small enclave located between the 

Citadel and the Perfume River that had been under NVA 

control since 31 January. Other than mopping-up operations, 

the ght for the Citadel had ended.

For 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, except for isolated skirmishes, its last signicant action in the Citadel occurred on 

22 February with the seizure of the southeast wall and its 

approaches. ompson had hoped to participate in taking 

the imperial palace, but he later observed, “For political reasons, I was not allowed to do it. To save face, the Vietnamese 

were to retake the ‘Forbidden City’.” On the twenty-sixth, 

the ARVN relieved the Marine battalion, which departed the Citadel to join 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, in a twobattalion sweep east and north of the city.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A373668

A Marine grenadier fires an M79 round into a sniper’s position in Hue as 1st MarDiv advances toward the Citadel.
66 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

Operation Hue City Ends

For the Marines, the operation lasted about another week. 

While 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, mopped up in southern 

Hue, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, conducted numerous company- and platoon-size combat patrols south of the Phu 

Cam Canal. e battalion relieved the 101st ARVN Engineering Company that had been surrounded by NVA just 

southwest of the new city. On 24 February, the battalion 

began a three-company sweep south of Hue in conjunction 

with the two battalions of 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. Under cover of darkness at 0300, the battalion advanced 

south of the Phu Cam Canal along Route 1 and then swung 

west. e 2d Battalion easily took its rst objective at 0500, 

a piece of high ground 1,000 meters south of the canal and 

west of the highway. Roughly an hour later, Company F 

secured its second objective, Hill 103, another 1,000 meters 

south, without meeting any resistance. On Hill 103, Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham established an outpost manned 

by an artillery forward observer team, a forward air controller, and an infantry squad from Company F for security. He 

then prepared to advance through a Vietnamese cemetery 

toward his main objective—an ARVN engineer battalion 

compound 1,500 meters to the west. e engineers had held 

out against repeated Viet Cong and NVA assaults since the 

beginning of February.

e battalion attacked at 0700, and by 0830, Company 

G reached the base and tied in with the ARVN engineers. 

On the morning of 26 February, the battalion continued the 

attack to clear a ridgeline west of the compound. e high 

ground was stubbornly defended, and by 1330, the enemy 

forced Company H to pull back and call in an air strike. e 

company pushed forward, but at 1630, it was unable to make 

any further headway. Two ights of A-4 Skyhawks came in 

low and dropped their ordnance, knocking out two enemy 

mortars and two machine guns and killing approximately 

20 North Vietnamese. One bomb fell short, exploding near 

the company lines and killing four and wounding two. With 

darkness approaching, Cheatham recalled the company and 

waited for morning to renew the assault.

On 27 February, Marine air and artillery bombarded the 

enemy defenses. After the last res had lifted, all three companies rushed forward, reaching the crest of the hill without 

opposition and discovering that the enemy had escaped 

during the night. Fourteen enemy bodies were found strewn 

around the hilltop. e battalion completed its sweep south of 

the new city the next day and prepared for a joint operation 

with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, to the east and north of Hue.

Leaving the southern sector to 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne, on 29 February, the two Marine battalions entered 

their new area of operations to cut oa any NVA forces trying 

to make their way from Hue to the coast. Although encountering few enemy personnel, the two battalions uncovered 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190553

Marines of 2d Platoon, Company F, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, 

relax after securing a battle-scarred building during the Battle 

of Hue.
Death in the Imperial City | 67

“fresh trench work along the route of advance, 3,000 meters 

long with 600 ghting holes.” Captain Downs remembered 

a trench complex covering eight kilometers with overhead 

cover every 15 meters. He remarked that it “had to be a way 

to get signicant reinforcements into the city.” e search for 

North Vietnamese forces, however, proved fruitless. Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham observed, “We couldn’t close it [the 

loop around the enemy]. To be honest, we didn’t have enough 

people to close it.” On 2 March 1968, Operation Hue City 

was terminated.

Epilogue

e battle for Hue City cost all sides dearly. Marine units 

sustained casualties of 142 dead and close to 1,100 wounded. American advisors with the 1st ARVN Division in Hue 

reported 333 South Vietnamese Army troops killed, 1,773 

wounded, and 30 missing in action. According to the U.S. 

Marine advisors with the Vietnamese Marine Task Force 

A in Hue, the Vietnamese Marines suaered 88 killed, 350 

wounded, and 1 missing in action. e Army’s 1st Cavalry 

Division (Airmobile) reported 68 killed and 453 wounded 

during the battle, while 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne, listed 

6 dead and 56 wounded. Allied unit casualties exceeded 600 

dead and nearly 3,800 wounded and missing. e enemy 

did not escape unscathed. Allied estimates of NVA and Viet 

Cong dead ranged from 2,500 to 5,000 troops. According 

to the South Vietnamese, captured Communist documents 

showed 1,042 killed and an undisclosed number of wounded.

e size and number of units the allies engaged in the 

one-month battle could only be speculated. e allied command, however, knew the enemy was in Hue in force. South 

Vietnamese and U.S. intelligence o®cers initially identi-

ed at least three North Vietnamese regimental headquarters controlling subordinate units during the early ghting: 

4th, 5th, and 6th NVA Regiments. Later, American and South 

Vietnamese units conrmed battalions from at least three 

more NVA regiments: the 29th from 325C Division and 

the 90th and 803d from 324B Division. Allied intelligence 

also estimated that 15–18 enemy battalions took part in the 

battle in one form or another, not including Viet Cong local 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A801236

ARVN soldiers of Company 212 raise the South Vietnamese national flag over the Citadel.
68 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

force units. An estimated 8,000–11,000 enemy troops participated in the ghting in the city itself or the approaches to 

the former imperial capital.

Until the battle for Hue, the allied order of battle estimates 

listed the battalions from the 29th and the 90th Regiments as 

part of the besieging force at Khe Sanh, approximately 72 

kilometers to the northwest. e 803d Regiment was supposed to be in the eastern DMZ, 72 kilometers to the north. 

A prisoner from the 803d Regiment captured on 23 February 

by Vietnamese Marines told his captors that, on the night of 

21–22 February, his unit made a forced march from Gio Linh 

District to the Citadel. Although wounded, he spoke of the 

high morale and fairly low casualties in his unit. On 23 February, his unit received orders to withdraw, but he did not know 

why. In the hasty departure, the prisoner lost his way and ran 

into the South Vietnamese troops.

e allies remained unsure about North Vietnamese 

command and control. U.S. after action reports referred to a 

division-size force but never identied a specic enemy division headquarters. Given the disparity of so many regiments 

from diaerent divisions, allied intelligence o®cers believed 

that a forward headquarters of the B4 Front under a North 

Vietnamese general o®cer directed the NVA Hue oaensive.

Given the resources the North Vietnamese put into the 

battle and the tenacity with which they fought, the Hue 

campaign clearly represented a major component of the 

entire Tet oaensive. According to an enemy account, the 

North Vietnamese military command had taken into consideration that the United States and South Vietnamese had 

concentrated their forces in the north, expecting an attack 

along Route 9. It viewed Hue as a weak link in the allied 

defenses in the northern two provinces. A North Vietnamese author wrote, “e enemy knew nothing of our strategy; 

by the time our forces approached the city of Hue, the enemy 

still had not taken any specic defensive measures.”

Once in the city, the NVA were there to stay. e Communists established their own civil government and their 

cadres rounded up known government o®cials, sympathizers, and foreigners, including American civilians and military 

personnel, in sections of the city they controlled. After the 

recapture of Hue, South Vietnamese authorities exhumed 

approximately 3,000 bodies that had been thrown into hastily dug graves. In all probability, these were the victims of 

the Communist roundups. Although the North Vietnamese 

admitted to tracking down and punishing “hoodlum ringleaders,” they claimed most of the reported civilian deaths 

were the result of happenstance, exaggerations by the South 

Vietnamese, or caused by the allies. Lance Corporal Ronald 

D. Defore observed that, “when we rst came to the city, on 

most of the streets you’d nd dead civilians that seemed to 

have [been] killed by the NVA. ey seemed to have just 

slaughtered a lot of the families . . . you’d see whole families—which would be mother, father, and children—that 

were just killed, and they raped quite a few of the younger 

women. . . . A mother said the NVA raped and killed her two 

daughters, 15 and 13.” Hue was a devastated city. Some estimates showed that more than 80 percent of the structures in 

the city sustained damage or were destroyed. Of a population 

of approximately 140,000, more than 116,000 people were 

homeless and 5,800 were either dead or missing. 

From the allied perspective, the struggle for Hue was 

a near thing, especially in the rst few days. Only the failure of the North Vietnamese to overrun the Mang Ca and 

USMACV compounds permitted the allies to retain a toehold in both the Citadel and the new city. By holding these 

two positions, the Americans and South Vietnamese could 

bring in reinforcements to mount a counteroaensive. Lieutenant Colonel Gravel observed that the enemy had oriented 

his defenses to fend oa forces coming into the city: “When 

we got in and were able to stay in there in strength . . . we 

fought him from the inside out.” Even then, if the enemy had 

blown the An Cuu Bridge across Route 1 on the rst day, the 

Marines would not have been able to bring their initial battalions and supplies into the city.

Fortuitously for both the Americans and the South Vietnamese, the 1st Cavalry Division had arrived in northern 

I Corps before Tet and was in position to eventually commit 

a four-battalion brigade to the battle. Overcoming strong 

enemy opposition, including elements of three separate regiments, 3d Brigade reached the walls of the Citadel on 25 

February, closing oa enemy avenues of approach to the city 

from the west. By this time, the American and South Vietnamese forces had overwhelming superiority—the North 

Vietnamese units, ghting a rearguard action, abandoned the 

struggle to hold on to the city. General Truong told General 

Tolson that, if “I could ever get the Cav [1st Cavalry] to the 
Death in the Imperial City | 69

walls of Hue, the enemy would ‘bug out’.” Unfortunately, it 

took 22 days for the 3d Brigade to ght its way there. Major 

Talman C. Budd II, the U.S. Marine advisor to the Vietnamese Marine Task Force A, later wrote that, if the 1st Cavalry had been reinforced or replaced “to enable sealing oa the 

west wall sooner . . . [it] would have shortened the struggle to 

reach the south wall.”

While the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese harassed 

ship tra®c along the Perfume River and other water routes 

into the Hue, they made no serious attempt to bar passage. 

Even with the An Cuu Bridge closed for more than a week, 

the Marines had stockpiled and brought in enough supplies by LCU to support operations in both the Citadel and 

southern Hue. By 14 February, the road network into the 

new city was once more open with a pontoon bridge in place 

over the canal. On two occasions, the NVA sank an LCU 

and temporarily shut down boat tra®c on the Perfume River, 

which forced Major ompson’s battalion to halt its advance 

due to a shortage of 106mm and 90mm rounds. If the enemy 

had made a stronger eaort to cut both water and land lines 

of communications, the outcome of the battle for Hue would 

have been less predictable.

e Marine contingent eventually built up their logistics facilities in Hue, despite marginal ying conditions that 

curtailed resupply missions and the haphazard attempts of 

the enemy to cut the lines of communications. Marine helicopters eventually lifted more than 500 tons of supplies into 

Hue, while Navy LCUs brought in another 400 tons. After 

Route 1 opened on 12 February, trucks from Company B, 

7th Motor Transportation Battalion, carried the bulk of the 

supplies into the city. More than 100 truck convoys made the 

round-trip journey from Phu Bai to Hue.

e 1st Marines established its logistics support area (LSA) 

in Hue next to the LCU ramp. Because the LSA was exposed 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A371124

A grenadier of the 3d Platoon, Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, carries a Vietnamese woman, a patient in Hue’s hospital, 

to safety during the battle.
70 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

to enemy mortar re and snipers, the Marines moved it to a 

South Vietnamese government complex next to the USMACV 

compound. Stockpiling supplies created a premium for space, 

which forced 1st Marines to relocate the LSA to the Tu Do 

(Freedom) Stadium several blocks to the east of the USMACV 

buildings. On 22 February, 1st Marines turned over the LSA 

to Force Logistics Support Group-Alpha (FLSG-A). General LaHue credited logistics support with enabling the infantry battalions to clear the city.

e low ight ceilings limited helicopter ights, signi-

cantly impacting medical support and evacuation. e need 

of forward medical facilities could not have been more clear 

to 1st Marines. Colonel Hughes established the regimental 

aid station at the USMACV compound and staaed it with 

eight doctors, providing “denitive” emergency care and control and coordination of all medical evacuation and serving 

as a battalion aid station for 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. e 

other two battalions had their own aid stations.

e Marines used trucks, mechanical mules, and any 

available transportation to evacuate the wounded back to 

treatment facilities. According to a 1st Marines report, bringing a wounded man from the battle site to an aid station 

could take approximately two to three minutes and another two to three minutes to transfer from the aid station to the 

helicopter landing zone. Eventually, the regimental surgeon 

established two categories of wounded for helicopter evacuation: Class I or emergency medevac, weather permitting; and 

Class II or immediate evacuation. Army helicopters assisted 

with Class I, while Marine helicopters had sole responsibility 

for Class II, “which they accomplished under severe weather 

conditions, and with great risk to the helicopter crews, often 

times ying with a 100-foot ceiling and zero visibility.”

On the south bank of the Perfume River, only two casualties died after arriving at the forward aid station. e two 

men from 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, died minutes after their 

arrival, one of gunshot wounds to the head and the other 

of neck wounds that severed both carotid arteries. Across 

the river, where 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, was dependent 

on air or water evacuation, six men died while waiting for 

helicopter evacuation suspended during severely inclement weather. e battalion surgeon declared that four of the 

Marines “would have died regardless of evacuation because 

of the nature of their wounds, and of the remaining two, it 

is equivocal whether they could have been saved if evacuated quickly.” In the Hue City battle, as with all operations 

in Vietnam and despite issues with helicopter evacuation, if 

a Marine reached an aid station alive, he had a 99 percent 

chance of surviving.

e allies faced another signicant problem—population 

control. After the widespread destruction of the city, an estimated 116,000 homeless had to be fed and temporarily 

housed. Most of the population ed the city to take refuge 

with relatives and friends in the surrounding villages. After 

the initial confusion, U.S. and South Vietnamese agencies 

set up refugee centers. About a week after the NVA struck, 

U.S. Army Major Jack E. Walker, a subsector advisor, recalled 

that his superior considered him the “CORDS ‘refugee man’.” 

Walker surveyed the situation and discovered that 5,000 refugees had taken shelter in a Catholic church, another 17,000 

were at Hue University, and another 40,000 displaced people 

were in the Citadel sector. Walker initially tasked himself 

with three activities: restoring city services, including water 

and power; eliminating health hazards, including burying the 

dead; and securing food for the refugees. With the assistance 

of the local Catholic church and American resources and personnel, Walker and his soldiers attacked these problems. By 

the end of February, a full-time refugee administrator was 

in place and local government functioned once more, albeit 

slowly.

In the rst two weeks after the battle for Hue, the city 

still lacked any semblance of public order. e authors of the 

Marine Corps Art Collection

Tanks in Hue by Wendell A. Parks. CWO Parks illustrated his 

Hue City experience on a wooden fuse box, and then burnt 

the image into the wood with a burning kit sent to him from 

home. 
Death in the Imperial City | 71

he saw other Marines looting photographic equipment 

from a partially destroyed store. e Swiss reporter encountered another group of Marines near the royal palace who 

were manning a strongpoint and “drinking whiskey, cognac, 

and beer, and cooking chickens.” He also witnessed several 

Marines shooting at dogs, cats, and chickens for their own 

amusement. A CORDS o®cial told U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth F. Bunker that Marines vandalized o®ces in the Hue 

power plant, alleging they took “whiskey, piasters [sic], and 

dollars.”*

*e term piastre refers to a monetary unit of the pound (a hundredth of a 

pound) used in many Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, Lebanon, 

and Syria.

South Vietnamese o®cial history of Tet wrote: “ievery 

and looting were widespread. War victims stole from their 

fellow suaerers. All deserted houses were emptied of valuables. Robbed victims sought to steal from others.” Lieutenant Colonel Gravel complained about the “ARVN looting 

behind us.”

From an American perspective, reports of U.S. Marines 

involved in the looting were even more concerning. e 

Associated Press supposedly had a photograph of an American soldier or Marine carrying a large painting under his 

arm. A Swiss newspaperman reported to the USMACV that 

he saw “numerous breaches of discipline which would not be 

tolerated in the Swiss Army.” In his complaint, he claimed 

that a Marine tried to sell him a Longines watch and that 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A372930

People move everything they can carry in an attempt to reenter their former residence or relocate their families after the destruction of their previous dwellings during the battle.
72 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

On 26 February, General Westmoreland ordered Generals Abrams and Cushman to give this potentially explosive 

issue their full attention. In turn, General Cushman asked 

Brigadier General LaHue and Major General Donn J. Robertson from 1st Marine Division to report all measures taken 

by their commands to avoid such incidents. Cushman said, 

“Looting obviously cannot be tolerated, and we must insure 

[sic] that every step is taken to prevent it. O®cers and NCOs 

must he held responsible for looting by their subordinates.” 

General Abrams assigned the USMACV (Forward) staa 

judge advocate to begin a formal investigation. General Robertson sent a 1st MarDiv attorney, Captain Bernard A. Allen, 

to assist with the probe in Hue.

On 2 March 1968, General Abrams reported the results 

of the investigation. He rst addressed the Associated Press 

photograph. According to bureau heads in Vietnam, no such 

picture existed. ey did remember a photograph taken 

before Tet of a 1st Cavalry soldier carrying a religious painting of the Virgin Mary in a sector south of Da Nang. After 

interviewing all commanders, newsmen, and CORDS personnel, the investigators concluded that “probably some small 

articles were looted by the Marines . . . however, these reported incidents were in extreme contrast to the extensive and 

systematic looting by ARVN troops and civilians.” Captain 

Allen learned that ARVN troops used trucks to carry away 

the loot, regardless of the fact that no formal complaints 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190581

Viet Cong captives taken during Operation Hue City. 
Death in the Imperial City | 73

from South Vietnamese citizens had been made against the 

Marines. General Abrams observed that “at this time, [the] 

investigation has failed to produce su®cient evidence upon 

which to base prosecution for any instance of looting by U.S. 

personnel.”

Abrams commended the Marine commanders in Hue. 

He observed that Colonel Hughes took “positive measure[s] 

to deter looting.” On 4 February, Hughes told all officers 

and NCOs that looting would not be tolerated. He directed 

battalion and company commanders to carry out periodic 

inspections of personnel. Many valuables were turned into 

the regimental command post and returned to the rightful 

owners. Hughes did authorize, however, commandeering and 

cannibalizing vehicles when necessary to transport casualties. He also ordered the Marines to shoot dogs, cats, and 

pigs “eating bodies, both of U.S. and [Vietnamese] . . . which 

could not be immediately retrieved because of the tactical 

situation.” Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham stated that his 

men used blankets and broke windows “to avoid fragmentation from incoming rounds.” General Abrams concluded 

that Marine commanders had taken reasonable measures to 

prevent needless destruction.

During the close-quarter street ghting, such as in Hue, 

commanders did not have absolute control of the activities of 

their men. One Marine lance corporal reported, “Anything 

that was of any value we took . . . to keep for souvenirs and 

stua.” He mentioned the random destruction to the university’s microscopes and other laboratory equipment that had 

been caused by Marines. e lance corporal seemed particularly amused when they seized vehicles, such as motor scooters, trucks, and even jeeps. He laughed as he described how 

“a grunt . . . would just jump on it and start riding it around 

the streets . . . that was pretty funny—right in the middle of 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A372924

GySgt Frank A. Thomas from Company H, 2d Battalion, 5th 

Marines, finds humor in a toy car during the height of battle 

for Operation Hue City.

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A190503

This Hue marketplace was destroyed in the Viet Cong attack. 
74 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

this war riding up and down the streets in motor scooters 

and even a 1964 black Mercedes goes ying down the street 

lled up with a bunch of Marines in it.” A Navy corpsman 

with the Marines recorded in his diary: “Looting is widespread. e ARVN’s wait until the Marines secure an area 

and then move in to loot. e Marines do well for themselves also.” 

Even though some accounts seemed valid, Marine commanders in Hue believed that their men acted with restraint in 

spite of the temptations. Five years later, Lieutenant Colonel 

Gravel recalled, “We took things for our own use; I wouldn’t 

kid you about that. I saw some things and I saw that they 

were returned.” Gravel and his Marines used bedding, food, 

and alcohol they found, but he insists there was no looting 

for anyone’s personal advantage. Some tried, but word soon 

spread of the consequences. In a similar vein, Lieutenant Colonel Cheatham and his company commanders made much the 

same case. Despite some admitted pilfering of small items, such 

as watches and money, the company commanders denied there 

was a problem. Captain Meadows said, “Your troops don’t have 

Defense Department (Marine Corps) A800450

Sgt P. L. Thompson sits on the golden throne of the former Vietnamese emperors at the heart of the palace, which was used as 

the NVA headquarters during the fighting for Hue City. 
Death in the Imperial City | 75

time to pick up big things to carry them around. ey have 

other, more pressing things [to do].”

e speed and degree of the enemy oaensive in Hue caught 

the South Vietnamese and American commands oa guard. In 

underestimating the strength of the enemy in Hue, the allies 

sent too few troops to drive the attackers out. Although the 

South Vietnamese and U.S. commands in I Corps eventually 

deployed additional units piecemeal into the Citadel and the 

southern part of Hue and inserted the 3d Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, to the west, command and control and coordination remained an issue until the nal weeks of the operation. 

In a sense, Task Force X-Ray, the 1st ARVN Division, and the 

3d Brigade fought their own battles in isolation of the others. 

With the exception of General Cushman and General Abrams, 

the Hue campaign never benetted from an overall American 

or single commander. Both Cushman and Abrams often were 

distracted by the responsibility of their ranks and other skirmishes, such as Khe Sanh, to focus much of their attention, 

except periodically, on the Hue situation. From his headquarters at the Mang Ca compound, General Truong controlled 

the South Vietnamese eaort in the Citadel. However, the lack 

of an overall commander meant no general battle plan existed and an increase in competition for supporting res, air, and 

logistical support. 

With the end of his stay at Phu Bai fast approaching, General Abrams provided General Westmoreland his 

assessment of the enemy situation in the north. Abrams 

was less concerned about Khe Sanh but worried about the 

NVA using the A Shau Valley and Route 547 leading from 

the valley to “turn our ank.” He also expressed some anxiety about the recent move of the 803d NVA Regiment into 

Hue. Abrams claimed the “continuing movement of [NVA] 

replacements to coastal plains supports my belief that Hue 

is the objective he [the enemy] would most like to have.” 

He acknowledged, however, that the NVA might settle for 

a less important objective if possible. Both sides were ghting for time, which meant overcoming manpower and logistical deciencies. In the end, however, Abrams believed 

time was on their side. Generals Cushman and Westmoreland concurred with Abrams’s assessment. e recapture of 

Hue would represent the calm before the North Vietnamese 

launched another wave of attacks.
76 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

Sources

is commemorative was based on the o®cial U.S. Marine 

Corps publication by Jack Shulimson, LtCol Leonard A. 

Blasiol, Charles R. Smith, and Capt David A. Dawson, 

U.S. Marines in Vietnam: e Dening Year, 1968 (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headquarters Marine Corps, 1997). Additional information came 

from Erik Villard’s e 1968 Tet Oensive Battles of Quang 

Tri City and Hue (Fort McNair, DC: U.S. Army Center of 

Military History, 2008); Tong Ho Trinh, Huong Tien Cong 

va Noi Day Tet Mau an o Tri-ien-Hue (nam 1968) [e 

1968 Tet Oaensive and Uprising in the Tri-ien-Hue eater] (Hanoi: Vien Lich Su Quan Su Viet Nam [Vietnamese Institute for Military History], 1968); Ron Christmas, 

“A Company Commander Remembers the Battle of Hue,” 

Marine Corps Gazette 61, no. 2 (February 1977); George W. 

Smith, e Siege of Hue (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 

1999); Eric Hammel, Fire in the Streets: e Battle for Hue, 

Tet 1968 (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1990); and John 

Prados, e Blood Road: e Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999).
Death in the Imperial City | 77

Acronyms and Abbreviations

APC ...................................................................................................................................................armored personnel carrier

ARA ....................................................................................................................................... Aerial Rocket Artillery Squadron

ARVN ....................................................................................................................................Army of the Republic of Vietnam

CAP ...............................................................................................................................Combined Action Platoon or Program

CIDG ..................................................................................................................................... Civilian Irregular Defense Group

CORDS ......................................................................................... Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support

DMZ ..............................................................................................................................................................demilitarized zone

FAC(A) .....................................................................................................................................forward air controller (airborne)

FAG ..........................................................................................................................................................Field Artillery Group

FLSG .........................................................................................................................................Force Logistics Support Group

FMFPac ............................................................................................................................................Fleet Marine Force, Pacic

HMM ................................................................................................................................Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron

ICC ......................................................................................................................................International Control Commission

ICTZ ........................................................................................................................................................ I Corps Tactical Zone

JGS .................................................................................................................................. South Vietnamese Joint General Staa

KIA ......................................................................................................................................................................killed in action

LAAW ..................................................................................................................................................light antiarmor weapons

LAW ....................................................................................................................................................... light antitank weapons

LCM ................................................................................................................................landing craft, mechanical (Mike boat)
78 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

LCU .............................................................................................................................................................landing craft, utility

LOD .................................................................................................................................................................. line of departure

LSA ............................................................................................................................................................ logistics support area

MAF .................................................................................................................................................Marine Amphibious Force

MAW .......................................................................................................................................................Marine Aircraft Wing

NCO ....................................................................................................................................................noncommissioned o®cer

NLF ....................................................................................................................................................National Liberation Front

NVA .....................................................................................................................................................North Vietnamese Army

PBR ................................................................................................................................................................... patrol boat, river

PCF ................................................................................................................................................ patrol craft, fast (Swift boat)

PRU .......................................................................................................................................... Provincial Reconnaissance Unit

RVN ........................................................................................................................................................... Republic of Vietnam

SOG ......................................................................................... Special Operations Group or Studies and Observations Group

SOP ............................................................................................................................................................ senior o®cer present

TAOR ............................................................................................................................................ tactical area of responsibility

USMACV ............................................................................................................U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam

VMA ................................................................................................................................................... Marine Attack Squadron

VMF ................................................................................................................................................. Marine Fighting Squadron

VNMC .............................................................................................................................................. Vietnamese Marine Corps
Death in the Imperial City | 79

Acknowledgments

e author would like to recognize the Marine Corps History Division for its assistance with this monograph, particularly Chuck Melson and Paul Westermeyer, for their 

advice and constructive comments; intern Igor Neves for his 

help with the photographs and maps; Dr. Fred Allison for 

providing the oral history interviews from History Division’s 

extensive collection; and the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the research grant it provided to support the project. Special recognition, of course, goes to the veterans of the 

battle for their sacrice and valor at Hue. Semper Fi.
80 |Marines in the Vietnam War Commemorative Series

Dick Camp entered the Marine Corps through the O®cer Candidates 

School after attending the State University of New York and graduating with a degree in elementary education. Commissioned as a second 

lieutenant in 1962, he served in a variety of command and staa assignments during a 26-year career, including 13 months as a rie company 

commander with Lima Company, 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, and aide 

de camp to Major General Raymond G. Davis. Camp retired in 1988 

with the rank of colonel and became a business manager for two school 

districts in Ohio. Retired again in 2005, he became the acting director of Marine Corps History Division. In 2006, Camp became the vice 

president for museum operations at the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. He retired in 2012 to write full time.

He is the author of 15 books, including Assault from the Sky: U.S. 

Marine Corps Helicopter Operations in Vietnam (2013); two novels on 

Vietnam titled Echo Among Warriors: A Novel of Marines in the Vietnam 

War (2011) and e Killing Ground: A Novel of Marines in the Vietnam War (2013); and more than 100 articles in various military history magazines; and coauthor of Lima-6: A Marine Company Commander in Vietnam (1989). In addition, Camp has 

been a guest lecturer at numerous seminars and professional meetings.

Richard D. Camp Jr.

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)

Photo courtesy of the author