- The Battle of Hue began early on January 31, 1968.
- Hue was a major part of North Vietnam's Tet Offensive, and even though the US and South Vietnam thwarted the attack, the battle had a profound effect on the war.
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In the middle of the night on January 31, 1968, 10,000 North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops swept into the historic city of Hue, a major cultural center in South Vietnam.
Within days, those troops captured the city, surprising US commanders, who were slow to understand what had happened and the opponent they now faced.
The city was retaken by early March. Ostensibly it was a US and South Vietnamese victory, won at the toll of 250 US Marines and soldiers and more than 450 South Vietnamese troops. With several thousand North Vietnamese and thousands more civilians killed, the number of dead in the shattered city was more than 10,000.
"With nearly half a century of hindsight, Hue deserves to be widely remembered as the single bloodiest battle of the war, one of its defining events, and one of the most intense urban battles in American history," writes Mark Bowden, author of the 2017 book "Hue 1968."
In a phone interview in January, Bowden explained how the battle played out, the toll it took, and why, 50 years on, the troops who fought there still feel bitter about the sacrifice they made.