The Most Insane Battle the US Marines Never Saw Coming

It was pure insanity. Something America had never seen before and never expected.

[QUOTE]: "Here, it just didn't stop. That was the amazing part—it just did not stop."

Private First Class William Purcell stared down his rifle sight at enemies wearing full battle gear, not the North Vietnamese guerrilla fighters in sandals he'd been trained to fight. The fog and rain had grounded air support. Artillery positioned eleven miles away couldn't help in the narrow streets. His fellow Marines fell in the open, exposed to crossfire from fortified buildings. A terrible realization dawned: they were fighting a different war than they'd been told existed.

As 10,000 NVA and Viet Cong fighters flooded Vietnam's third-largest city during the 1968 Tet Offensive, it became clear that the ancient stone walls of Huế's Citadel hid a devastating secret…


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