Phase Line Green

by Nicholas Warr

The bloody, monthlong battle for the Citadel in Hue pitted U.S. Marines against an entrenched, numerically superior North Vietnamese army force. By official U.S. accounts it was a tactical and moral victory for the Marines and the United States. But a survivor's compulsion to square official accounts with his contrasting experience has produced an entirely different perspective of the battle, the most controversial to emerge from the Vietnam War in decades. In some of the most frank, vivid prose to come out of the war, author Nicholas Warr describes with urgency and outrage the Marines' savage house-to-house fighting, ordered without air, naval, or artillery support by officers with no experience in this type of deadly combat. Sparing few in the telling, including himself, Warr's shocking firsthand narrative of these desperate suicide charges - which devastated whole companies - takes the wraps off an incident that many would prefer to keep hidden. His account is sure to ignite heated