Bing helps you turn information into action, making it faster and easier to go from searching to doing. Hue 1. 96. 8 Revisits An American Turning Point In The War In Vietnam NPRDAVE DAVIES, HOST This is FRESH AIR. Im Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDINGJOHN LAURENCE What kind of fighting is it going to be ERNIE CHEATHAM Its house to house and from room to room. LAURENCE Had you ever expected to experience this kind of street fighting in Vietnam CHEATHAM No, I didnt, and this is my first crack at street fighting. I think this is the first time the Marine Corps been street fighting since Seoul in 1. DAVIES Thats CBS correspondent Don Webster reporting on what our guest, Mark Bowden, says was the single bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War and one of its defining events. POST BROADCAST CORRECTION In the version of this report that was broadcast, we misidentify the CBS correspondent in the clip of the battlefield interview during the Battle of Hue as Don Webster speaking to Mark Bowden. The reporter was CBS correspondent John Laurence, and he was speaking with Lt. Col. Ernest Cheatham. Bowdens new book tells the story of the ferocious battle for Hue, Vietnams old imperial capital and one of the targets of the Tet Offensive of 1. Communist forces surprised American troops and their Vietnamese allies with coordinated attacks across South Vietnam. The offensive soured many Americans on the war which U. S. commanders had insisted was going well. Bowden interviewed dozens of participants in the battle as well as civilians who suffered terribly and journalists who covered the fighting. Mark Bowden is the author of Black Hawk Down and 1. Hes also a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Wasted money on unreliable and slow multihosters LinkSnappy is the only multihost that works. Download from ALL Filehosts as a premium user at incredibly fast speeds Hue 1968 Revisits An American Turning Point In The War In Vietnam Author Mark Bowden says the capture of Hue, Vietnam, was part of a wave of well. Well, Mark Bowden, welcome back to FRESH AIR. I want to begin with a reading of your book. This is a moment where we meet an American soldier who is with an a unit that is pinned down by North Vietnamese soldiers. Hes in a foxhole. Do you want to just set this up and read us this portionMARK BOWDEN Yeah. His name is Carl Di. Leo, and he was infantryman with an Army Cavalry unit that had been sent out to push toward the Citadel from the north. And they got trapped in the middle of a field where they were stuck for a day or two essentially with the North Vietnamese taking target practice at them. And it was a they lost half of their men. So it was a harrowing and terrifying experience for him and for all of the men who were there. Reading The worst thing was the mortars, which rained straight down on them. They were being launched periodically from only a few hundred yards away. Di. Leo could hear the pock and then the whoosh of its climbing. If he looked up, he could actually see the thing as it slowed to its apogee. From that point on, it was perfectly silent. There it would hang, a black spot in the gray sky, for what seemed like a very long beat, the way a punted football was captured in slow motion by NFL Films, before it plummeted straight down at them. Reading The explosion was like a body blow even when it wasnt close. All of these were close. You opened your mouth, and sometimes you screamed out of fear, and it kept your eardrums from bursting. It was hell, a death lottery where all you could do was wait your turn. If you stayed down in the hole, you were OK unless the mortar had your number and landed right on top of you. Reading This is what happened to Di. Leos good friend Walt Loos and the other man in his foxhole, Russell Kephart. They were one hole over. They got plumed. They were erased from the Earth. Di. Leo watched the round all the way down, and it exploded right in their hole, vaporizing them. One second, they were there, living and breathing and thinking and maybe swearing or even praying just like him. Reading And in the next second, two hale young men, both of them sergeants in the United States Army, pride of their hometowns Perryville, Mo., and Willimantic, Conn., respectively had been turned into a plume of fine pink mist, tiny bits of blood, bone, tissue, flesh and brain that rose and drifted and settled over everyone and everything nearby. It, or they, drifted down on Di. Leo, who reached up to wipe the bloody ooze from his eyes and saw that his arms and the rest of him were coated, too. Then there would come another pock and another whoosh. DAVIES And that is Mark Bowden reading from his new book about a pivotal battle in the Vietnam War, Hue 1. You know, thats such a vivid description of the brutality and terror of war. And thats theres a lot of that in the book. But that particular incident also I think highlights some of the things that you see in the war and particularly the ignorance and self deception of a lot of military commanders. So thats what I like about this, is that it gets the detail and some of the big picture. So well get to that. But I want to start here by talking about a young woman, an 1. Viet Cong fighter in the Hue area. Her name was Che Thi Mung. BOWDEN Right. DAVIES Tell us about her, why she was so committed to the Viet Cong. BOWDEN Well, she was an 1. Her family had fought for independence against the Viet Minh years earlier. Her grandfather had been arrested. Her father had spent time in jail. DAVIES The Viet Minh were those who fought against the French when they occupied. BOWDEN Right. DAVIES. Indochina in the 5. BOWDEN In the 1. And so here we were, you know, 1. A new generation was fighting against this time it was the Americans, who were perceived as foreigners, invaders who were trying to rule the Vietnamese people. Her older sister had joined the Viet Cong and had gotten killed. And after her sister was killed, the South Vietnamese came to the village and rounded up everyone related to her, including Che. And Che was taken and interrogated. She was waterboarded, basically, and was extremely proud of the fact that she had not told them anything. She herself had joined the Viet Cong since her sisters death, and she knew a lot about what was going on in the village. You know, shes about my age or a little older than I am, in her 6. And shes still extremely proud of having endured and not given up anything. DAVIES In the fall of 1. BOWDEN Right. DAVIES We have a role for you. What was it BOWDEN And they recruited her and 1. And the idea was for them to move into the city of Hue and spy on the Americans and the South Vietnamese. And so she moved in with a family and lived in the center of the city, selling conical hats on the streets and basically observed the comings and goings of American troops from the compound, the MACV compound in the southern part of the city and other. DAVIES Thats the American military compound, yeah. BOWDEN. Right and other, you know, military locations. And she didnt take any notes because it was too dangerous. She would memorize numbers and types of weaponry and comings and goings. She did this for months along with these other 1. So she knew that something big was coming. But her job was just to observe and report back every evening. DAVIES Right. There would eventually be an invasion, and she would have a role in guiding these troops through these streets which she knew so well. Lets talk a little bit about where the war was in 1. American military presence was in Vietnam. BOWDEN Well, Lyndon Johnson had really upped Americas involvement in the war three years earlier, in 1. South Vietnamese troops to actually waging war themselves. And so by 1. 96. 8 actually, by 1. American troops there, an enormous American presence. I mean Vietnam had become, for all intents and purposes, a Vietnam colony. And you know, what had happened as a result of this tremendous investment was really not much. They had slowed the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, but they hadnt stopped them. And the war was really kind of at a stalemate even though the general in charge, General William Westmoreland, had made a trip to the United States in late 1. DAVIES He had the trust and confidence of Lyndon Johnson. The president really believed what Westmoreland was telling him. BOWDEN Right. DAVIES One of the things that you saw in that area that stage of the war was that American airpower was used with great ferocity and impact. Why didnt that work What was the impact of this incredible level of explosives that were dropped on the countryBOWDEN Well, we were killing a lot of people. And it was definitely hurting the North Vietnamese.
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