Hue, 1968: Why Marines Were First Ordered Not to Shell the Citadel

On January 31, 1968, the Battle of Hue began before dawn: a signal flare over the Citadel, sappers blowing open a gate, and North Vietnamese battalions pouring through. By morning a Viet Cong flag flew over the Imperial Palace, and it would take U.S. Marines and their South Vietnamese allies most of a month to take the old city back. This video answers one question the story usually skips: who ordered the Marines not to fire into the Citadel, and why. Every date, unit and casualty figure here comes from an official U.S. Army history of the fighting at Hue, a second Army study of the battle, Marine Corps Medal of Honor records for Gunnery Sgt. John L. Canley and Sgt. Alfredo Gonzalez, and a March 1968 White House memo written for the President. Where the two Army sources disagree on the numbers, I give you both instead of picking one. You will hear how South Vietnamese Brig. Gen. Ngo Quang Truong held the Citadel with only a handful of troops on the first morning, why the ban on shelling the Citadel actually began with a meeting between the South Vietnamese corps commander and the senior American Marine general, and what the Army's own history says about the South Vietnamese soldiers who fought beside the Marines and, by its own count, lost more men than they did. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Gate Opens 1:19 How I Check This 3:31 Two Armies, One Night 6:31 The Marines Move In 9:15 The Order Not To Fire 15:22 What The Record Corrects SOURCES Erik Villard, The 1968 Tet Offensive Battles of Quang Tri City and Hue (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2008), p. 34 -- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/G... James H. Willbanks, The Battle for Hue, 1968, in Block by Block (Combat Studies Institute, 2003; DTIC ADA446541 via Internet Archive), p. 132 -- https://archive.org/download/DTIC_ADA... FRUS 1964-68, Vol. VI, doc. 108, Rostow to President Johnson, March 6, 1968 -- https://history.state.gov/historicald... Marine Corps History Division, Medal of Honor: Sgt Alfredo Gonzalez -- https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine... U.S. Marine Corps press release, Medal of Honor: Sgt. Maj. John Canley -- https://www.marines.mil/News/Press-Re... PHOTO CREDITS CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons: USMC Archives (17 photos); From the Frederick J. Vogel Collection (COLL/5577) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division; Archives Branch, USMC History Division (2 photos); WO W. A. Parks, USMC official photographer CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Sciacchitano (2 photos); David Samuel, User:Hellodavey1902; Sciacchitano/Don Hable CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Christophe95 (5 photos) ARCHIVE MATERIALS Public domain: Department of Defense, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army and National Archives photographs and film. A few scenes show the Hue Citadel as it stands today, marked "modern photo" on screen. AI illustrates scenes where no historical photograph exists; the three named people, Brig. Gen. Ngo Quang Truong, Gunnery Sgt. John L. Canley and Sgt. Alfredo Gonzalez, appear only in real public-domain photographs. MUSIC "Darkest Child", "Ossuary 5 - Rest", "Anguish", "Long Note Four", "The Descent", "Aftermath" -- Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Sound effects: freesound.org (CC0) and synthesized for this film. Footage: U.S. National Archives / archive.org. Company Clerk: both sides, on the record. If you served, tell me your unit and the year. #VietnamWar #BattleOfHue #VietnamVeterans #History