‘It took a day to cross a street’

Late last summer, Mr. Haught, who lives in Monaca, made up his mind to go back to Vietnam. He had been buoyed by support at gatherings of the local Veterans Breakfast Club, with whom he first shared the horror of his weeks in Hue as a corporal in Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines.

His father-in-law encouraged him to go, too.

“He said, ‘ You only have one 50th.’”

Military Historical Tours, a company in Woodbridge, Va., was offering a trip to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive — a blitz of surprise attacks throughout South Vietnam by North Vietnamese military and their southern allies just before the Tet lunar new year holiday. Of the many battle sites of the Tet Offensive, Hue (pronounced Hway) was the trip’s focus.

Mr. Haught remembered the traffic circle at the entrance to the city off Highway One and the gas station where his company commander, Capt. Chuck Meadows, now a retired colonel, found a tourist map. He remembered a market, boats on the Perfume River. He remembered, in blips between panic and running and hiding and ducking, the French colonial villas and gardens, the plane trees along the sidewalks.

He remembered only dozing, afraid to fall asleep “because if you did, you might not wake up.”

As someone who had buried his story for 48 years, telling it for the first time in a torrent of emotion, he was prepared for more of the same as he planned his trip: “I want to see what it’s going to bring up,” he said. “I tell people it took a day to cross a street and they look at me like I’m crazy.”

The Battle of Hue was the bloodiest battle of the war in Vietnam, with some estimates as high as 10,000 civilians and combatants killed. It was also a rare urban battle, with snipers in second- and third-story windows. News from Hue was light because Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces, told the government and the media that Hue was under control.

In his 2017 book “Hue 1968,” Mark Bowden described this misleading narrative as “a conspiracy of denial.”

Hue was fully under the control of the North Vietnamese army and their southern allies. More than 8,000 of their troops had amassed around Hue, occupying the city and its heavily fortified Citadel as Tet festivities were about to begin.

Resistance initially came from just two companies of Marines to support several battalions of the South Vietnamese army, or ARVN.

The imbalance was perverse, but so much about the foray into Hue was out of whack.

There was almost no intelligence to suggest any major concern about enemy activity, plus a ceasefire was supposed to be on for Tet.

Capt. Meadows didn’t know what he was leading his 160-man Golf Company into. He even had to scavenge for a city map.

The mission was to retrieve ARVN’s Gen. Ngo Quang Truong, commander of his army’s first division in the Citadel, and take him safely back to Phu Bai. It sounded like an easy day trip to a city — a rare treat for guys whose war experiences had been in the jungle and the boonies. So they left their packs behind. Capt. Meadows had a funny feeling as their 6x6 trucks rolled north on Highway One. It was almost Tet — a time of travel for homecoming — and no one was around? he thought. No traffic on the roads? Strange.

When they arrived in Hue, they found Alpha Company, 1st battalion, 1st Marines in tatters, already ambushed. Together, they made their way to the compound of military advisers under attack. Then they headed to the Citadel to retrieve ARVN’s general.

‘I’m glad we didn’t make it in’

Mr. Haught was one of the few Marines who spent the entire Battle of Hue in Hue. A scrap of a guy at 140 pounds when he entered Hue and 130 when he left, he was trained to handle a 3.5 rocket launcher, a flamethrower, a machine gun and a 106 recoilless rifle.

In the first day of fighting, he saw his friend Clyde Carter go down, the first of the company to be killed. Seven others from Golf died on the first day and 45 were wounded.

There was no air support — in part because of bad weather, in part because the threat in Hue was still not officially recognized. Bombing was off limits because of the historic architecture in what was then a South Vietnamese city. That order was eventually rescinded, but not before scores of men were killed.

Some of those men were on Mr. Haught’s mind as he and Danny Cholewa fell in with the rest of the returning veterans from Golf Company, walking peacefully to the end of the bridge.

On Tran Hung Dao Street, parallel to the river, the group turned right at the first intersection, a street that led into the Citadel through the Truong Tu gate.

“This is a critical spot for Golf Company,” Col. Meadows said. “This is the corner were Larry [Lucas] was wounded, where [Rich] Cobb hid behind a tree. We lost Glen Lucas, we lost [Don] Kirkham and we lost [Gerald] Kinny.

“Even for Marines, we were a little outnumbered,” said Col. Meadows. “I reflect back to the second time I made this trip, trying to piece together the pieces. I still shake my head at how we made it over the bridge.”

Col. Meadows, who was 28, lost nearly 35 percent of his men, wounded or killed. He decided not to enter the Citadel but to pull back, recross the bridge.

“We couldn’t get any further. I never completed the mission I was sent on, and that stayed with me for years,” he said. “The first trip back, in 1996, I went to the farthest point we got to and then I walked into the Citadel.”

Fifty years ago, he had no idea that just inside the gate, a wide open space would have become a killing field.

“If we had gotten in, we would have all been lost, obliterated,” he said. “I am fully reconciled to the fact that I’m glad we didn’t make it in.”

The Battle of Hue was a technical victory for the South and its American allies, as the North Vietnamese were eventually driven out of the Citadel. But the Tet Offensive was, by all accounts, the point at which the resolve to win began to erode for the American government and its public.

It was finally clear that the enemy was willing to sacrifice more to unite its country than the U.S. was to keep it apart.

‘Old Marines do cry’

The Citadel was built in the early 1800s, home of the Nguyen Dynasty’s Imperial Palace — now a museum. The walls are 6 feet thick. The gates are arched tunnels, each about 30 feet long. Thousands of people live there, and hundreds of little shops and restaurants operate within its walls.

“I credit the colonel with not getting us into the Citadel,” said Rich Cobb, whose daughter Amanda accompanied him on this trip. They live in WinstonSalem, N.C. “She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for his decision. We would have been wiped out in five minutes.”

As the colonel, now of Tigard, Ore., provided narrative to the tour group, three men approached.

“This must be a military group,” one said. He introduced his father, Tom Odom, of Cookeville, Tenn. In 1968, Mr. Odom was a first lieutenant with the Green Berets stationed about 6 kilometers from Hue.

Spotting Col. Meadows, his face began to crumble.

“I know who you are,” he said as Col. Meadows put his arm around his shoulder. “You guys were getting shot to hell and our lieutenant said he wasn’t able to provide fire.” Mr. Odom choked back a sob. “We couldn’t help you.”

The colonel asked Mr. Odom and his sons to walk with the group into the Citadel.

“I’d be proud to,” Mr. Odom said.

Entering the Citadel this time was a symbolic action but not without its modern-day challenges. The roadway over the moat is narrow, so people have to walk single file, hugging the sides as traffic flows by. Once inside, the group gazed up through the mist at the blackened tower above the gate. Then everyone walked back across the moat and regrouped on Tran Hung Dao Street.

Mr. Haught asked for a prayer. He had traveled in part to say goodbyes he didn’t get a chance to say 50 years ago.

The Hue guys gathered into a huddle — the colonel, Mr. Haught, Mr. Cholewa, Mr. Cobb, Larry Verlinde, Larry Lucas and Corpsman Bruce Gant. They stood with their arms over each other’s backs, their heads bowed.

There were murmurs and sniffles, and then the colonel’s words: “You were the guys who made me want to keep being a Marine.”

“’You don’t know it,” Mr. Haught told the colonel, “but I thank God every day for you.’”

As they stood apart, each man saluted him.

“He’s the type of Marine who