Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Reading this book made me uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. I was a young marine and part of the volunteer group that first went into Hue at the beginning of the battle. My outfit was 2/1, then at Con Thien, so I was only in Hue at the beginning and took no part in the serious fighting that came later. I thought the book was carefully researched, and well written, and as honest as he could be. My criticism is only that the author glosses over the fact that journalists did have a staggering effect on the fighting, and often their stories did fuel the anti-war movement back home. It occurs to me that if journalists had written about the Battle of the Bulge in the same tone that Walter Cronkite and others portrayed Hue, we would have sued for peace with Germany. However, the book is painfully accurate about what it was like to be in Vietnam, in the Tet of 1968, and what it was like to be in a firefight. I took no exception to his portrayal of those in leadership as being both competent and incompetent because it’s true of any organization. And I appreciate the portrayal of marines and soldiers who might not have ever gotten a thank-you back home, but who proved themselves hero’s every day. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the battle.