Michael Mann (« The Insider », « Ali », « Heat », « Collateral ») et Michael De Luca (« The Social Network », « Captain Phillips », « Moneyball ») ont acquis les droits de HUE 1968 pour en faire une mini-série de 8/10 heures (Deadline). Dans ce nouvel ouvrage de l’auteur de « Black Hawk Down », il sera question de la bataille la plus sanglante de la guerre du Vietnam et des grandes conséquences qu’elle a entraînées.
A riveting history of the biggest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War
HUẾ 1968:
A Turning Point in the American War in Vietnam
by Mark Bowden
Atlantic Monthly Press, June 2017
Not since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down has “master of narrative journalism” (New York Times Book Review) Mark Bowden written a book about a battle. His most ambitious work yet, Huế 1968 is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam.
By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which “the end begins to come into view.” The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke. Part military action and part popular uprising, the Tet Offensive included attacks across South Vietnam, but the most dramatic and successful would be the capture of Huế, the country’s cultural capital. At 2:30 a.m. on January 31, 10,000 National Liberation Front troops descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. By morning, all of Huế was in Front hands save for two small military outposts.
The commanders in country and politicians in Washington refused to believe the size and scope of the Front’s presence. Captain Chuck Meadows was ordered to lead his 160-marine Golf Company against thousands of enemy troops in the first attempt to re-enter Hue later that day. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II.
With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple points of view. Played out over twenty-four days of terrible fighting and ultimately costing 10,000 combatant and civilian lives, the Battle of Huế was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. In Huế 1968, Bowden masterfully reconstructs this pivotal moment in the American War in Vietnam.
Mark Bowden is the author of thirteen books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down. He reported at the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and now writes for the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and other magazines. He is also the writer in residence at the University of Delaware. His most recent book is The Three Battles of Wanat: And Other True Stories.
