All about us lay the wounded - Vietnamese and Americans, civilians and soldiers, some crying out and others grimly silent. The surgeon who finally operated on me was in a white-hot fury that the bombardment was causing so many civilian casualties, and that Americans were being treated better than the Vietnamese. Today Hue bears little resemblance to the dust, cordite, and death-filled city that I knew in those long days and nights. The imperial palace has largely been restored. The red lacquer pillars in the throne room, where US Marines hung their hammocks in another hour of peril for Hue, now look as they must have when the last emperor reigned.
Vietnamese couples stroll hand in hand.
New buildings have sprung up among the cleared rubble, and I cannot now find the street on which Harrington's company took so many casualties. I watch instead a Vietnamese film crew shooting a scene on the palace grounds. An actress, of a certain age, dressed in a traditional mandarin dress, is lip-synching a sentimental Vietnamese song. Greenway was wounded while attempting to rescue a dying Marine in the battle of Hue, and was later awarded a Bronze Star with a Combat V by the Marine Corps.