'Hue 1968' Revisits An American 'Turning Point' In The War In Vietnam

AVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross.

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JOHN LAURENCE: What kind of fighting is it going to be?

ERNIE CHEATHAM: It's house to house and from room to room.

LAURENCE: Had you ever expected to experience this kind of street fighting in Vietnam?

CHEATHAM: No, I didn't, and this is my first crack at street fighting. I think this is the first time the Marine Corps' been street fighting since Seoul in 1950.

DAVIES: That's CBS correspondent John Laurence speaking with Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheathem, reporting on what our guest Mark Bowden says was the single bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War and one of its defining events. Bowden's latest book tells the story of the ferocious battle for Hue, Vietnam's old imperial capital and one of the targets of the Tet Offensive of 1968, when Communist forces surprised American troops and their Vietnamese allies with coordinated attacks across South Vietnam. The Tet Offensive soured many Americans on the war, which U.S. commanders had insisted was going well. Bowden interviewed dozens of participants in the battle, as well as civilians who suffered terribly and journalists who covered the fighting.

Tomorrow's Veterans Day, which got us thinking we should listen back to my interview with Mark Bowden recorded in June, when his book "Hue 168" was published. Bowden's also the author of "Black Hawk Down" and 12 other books. And he's a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

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DAVIES: Well, Mark Bowden, welcome back to FRESH AIR. I want to begin with a reading of your book. This is a moment where we meet an American soldier who is with a unit that is pinned down by North Vietnamese soldiers. He's in a foxhole. Do you want to just set this up and read us this portion?

MARK BOWDEN: Yeah. His name is Carl DiLeo, and he was an infantryman with an Army cavalry unit that had been sent out to push toward the Citadel from the north. And they got trapped in the middle of a field where they were stuck for a day or two, essentially with the North Vietnamese taking target practice at them. And it was a - they lost half of their men. So it was a harrowing and terrifying experience for him and for all of the men who were there.

(Reading) The worst thing was the mortars, which rained straight down on them. They were being launched periodically from only a few hundred yards away. DiLeo could hear the pock and then the whoosh of its climbing. If he looked up, he could actually see the thing as it slowed to its apogee. From that point on, it was perfectly silent. There it would hang, a black spot in the gray sky, for what seemed like a very long beat, the way a punted football was captured in slow motion by NFL Films, before it plummeted straight down at them. The explosion was like a body blow, even when it wasn't close. All of these were close. You opened your mouth, and, sometimes, you screamed out of fear, and it kept your eardrums from bursting. It was hell, a death lottery where all you could do was wait your turn. If you stayed down in the hole, you were OK unless the mortar had your number and landed right on top of you.

(Reading) This is what happened to DiLeo's good friend Walt Loos and the other man in his foxhole, Russell Kephart. They were one hole over. They got plumed. They were erased from the Earth. DiLeo watched the round all the way down, and it exploded right in their hole, vaporizing them. One second, they were there, living and breathing and thinking and maybe swearing or even praying just like him. And in the next second, two hale, young men, both of them sergeants in the United States Army, pride of their hometowns - Perryville, Mo., and Willimantic, Conn., respectively - had been turned into a plume of fine pink mist, tiny bits of blood, bone, tissue, flesh and brain that rose and drifted and settled over everyone and everything nearby. It - or they - drifted down on DiLeo, who reached up to wipe the bloody ooze from his eyes and saw that his arms and the rest of him were coated, too. Then there would come another pock and another whoosh.

DAVIES: And that is Mark Bowden reading from his new book about a pivotal battle in the Vietnam War, "Hue 1968." You know, that's such a vivid description of the brutality and terror of war. And that's - there's a lot of that in the book. But that particular incident also, I think, highlights some of the things that you see in the war and particularly the ignorance and self-deception of a lot of military commanders. So that's what I like about this - is that it gets the detail and some of the big picture. So we'll get to that. But I want to start here by talking about a young woman, an 18-year-old young woman who was a Viet Cong fighter in the Hue area. Her name was Che Thi Mung.

BOWDEN: Right.

DAVIES: Tell us about her, why she was so committed to the Viet Cong.

BOWDEN: Well, she was an 18-year-old village girl. Her family had fought for independence against the Viet Minh years earlier. Her grandfather had been arrested. Her father had spent time in jail.

DAVIES: The Viet Minh were those who fought against the French when they occupied...

BOWDEN: Right.

DAVIES: ...Indochina in the '50s.

BOWDEN: In the 1950s. And so here we were, you know, 14 years later. A new generation was fighting against - this time it was the Americans, who were perceived as foreigners, invaders who were trying to rule the Vietnamese people. Her older sister had joined the Viet Cong and had gotten killed. And after her sister was killed, the South Vietnamese came to the village and rounded up everyone related to her, including Che. And Che was taken and interrogated. She was waterboarded, basically, and was extremely proud of the fact that she had not told them anything. She herself had joined the Viet Cong since her sister's death, and she knew a lot about what was going on in the village. You know, she's about my age or a little older than I am, in her 60s now. And she's still extremely proud of having endured and not given up anything.

DAVIES: In the fall of 1967, the commanders came to her and said, something big is happening.

BOWDEN: Right.

DAVIES: We have a role for you. What was it?

BOWDEN: And they recruited her and 10 other girls from local villages. And the idea was for them to move into the city of Hue and spy on the Americans and the South Vietnamese. And so she moved in with a family and lived in the center of the city, selling conical hats on the streets and basically observed the comings and goings of American troops from the compound, the MACV Compound in the southern part of the city and other...

DAVIES: That's the American military compound, yeah.

BOWDEN: Right - and other, you know, military locations. So she knew that something big was coming. But her job was just to observe and report back every evening.

DAVIES: Right. There would eventually be an invasion, and she would have a role in guiding these troops through these streets which she knew so well. Let's talk a little bit about where the war was in 1968, who the combatants were, what the American military presence was in Vietnam.

BOWDEN: Well, Lyndon Johnson had really upped America's involvement in the war three years earlier, in 1965, from playing the role strictly as advisers to the South Vietnamese troops to actually waging war themselves. And so by 1968 - actually, by 1967, there were half a million American troops there, an enormous American presence. I mean, Vietnam had become, for all intents and purposes, a Vietnam colony.

And, you know, what had happened as a result of this tremendous investment was really not much. They had slowed the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, but they hadn't stopped them. And the war was really kind of at a stalemate, even though the general in charge, General William Westmoreland, had made a trip to the United States in late 1967 and assured everybody that victory was really just around the corner.

DAVIES: He had the trust and confidence of Lyndon Johnson. The president really believed what Westmoreland was telling him.

BOWDEN: Right.

DAVIES: One of the things that you saw in that area - that stage of the war - was that American airpower was used with great ferocity and impact. Why didn't that work? What was the impact of this incredible level of explosives that were dropped on the country?

BOWDEN: Well, we were killing a lot of people. And it was definitely hurting the North Vietnamese. But we couldn't really stop Hanoi from waging the war because they're - frankly, how do you - remember the fake, great quote was, "bomb them back to the Stone Age." And this was an agricultural society. It didn't have a big infrastructure. They had very few targets.

And so one of the things that our pilots would complain about is they were sent out to do these bombing missions. And they would bomb a little bridge, and three days later, it would be rebuilt and back up and running. So they would complain that there, you know, weren't that many targets. And it was dangerous because they were getting shot down at a fairly alarming rate. So, you know, I think the - other than the top generals, I think there was a great deal of frustration felt by the troops themselves.

DAVIES: So you have this situation where you have South Vietnam, which is the country that is the anti-communist government that we are supporting. It's filled with local fighters, the Viet Cong, as well as North Vietnamese regulars from the communist-led government in Hanoi. They are filtering down, fighting the Americans all the time. And the war is at kind of a stalemate. The North Vietnamese had a plan for a big offensive, a game-changer. What was it?

BOWDEN: Well, they decided to launch attacks on just about every city in South Vietnam. So the North Vietnamese strategy was to infiltrate large numbers of troops throughout the South and launch on the eve of Tet, their big holiday, attacks in all of these cities. The largest of the offensive was planned for Hue.

DAVIES: And Hue held a special place in the country's cultural history. Tell us about it.

BOWDEN: Well, it's - it really is a beautiful city and, in ages past, was the imperial seat for the unified country of Vietnam. It had, you know, the citadel, which was a giant fortress which contained the imperial palace, which is where the emperors used to live and reign. The city itself was home to the major universities. In Vietnam, it was a big Buddhist center and also fairly large Catholic Center. It was the home to a lot of intellectuals. And so it had a deep cultural meaning in Vietnam that, I think, frankly escaped the American command.

DAVIES: And it had largely been unmarred by the war, right?

BOWDEN: That's right. Out of - partly out of respect for the institutions in Hue, for the historical treasures, the Buddhist pagodas, the imperial palace. Hue had been kind of an oasis. And troops who were stationed there, American troops, you know, saw it as a rear position. You know, they weren't expecting to be shot at or to encounter much hostility.

DAVIES: Mark Bowden's new book is "Hue 1968: A Turning Point In The American War In Vietnam." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with writer Mark Bowden. He is the - a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, also the author of the book "Black Hawk Down." His new book about a pivotal battle in the Vietnam War is "Hue 1968." The Citadel, this fort - Hue was a city of about 140,000 people. Half of them lived inside this - it's maybe not exactly what we would think of as a fort. Describe it a little bit.

BOWDEN: Well, it's an enormous fortress that encloses almost a square mile. And as you said, it was densely populated. There were only nine entrances in and out of the citadel. The walls are 30, 40 feet high and 30 or 40 feet thick. There's a moat all the way around it. It looks like something medieval, although it was actually built very early in the 19th century. It's a formidable structure. The Japanese took it during World War II. You know, it was a relic from another era. And if you go to Hue, it gives the city this kind of ancient feel.

DAVIES: The North Vietnamese army units and the Viet Cong wanted to surprise the Americans and South Vietnamese, which meant they had to get a lot of arms and troops in position secretly. Explain how they did that.

BOWDEN: Stealthily. They recruited local people. And they smuggled arms into the city on duck boats, you know, laying weapons and ammunition underneath the decks of these boats and bringing them in that way. The - they had to also assemble, ultimately, up to 10,000 troops. And so there were North Vietnamese units who spent months marching down, carrying very heavy loads of ammunitions and supplies from the north on the mountain trails, down the Ho Chi Minh trail to the mountains just outside of the city of Hue. So - and then they had...

DAVIES: Just sort of carrying them on their backs for hundreds of miles.

BOWDEN: Carrying them on their backs - and they had, you know, Viet Cong cadres who would carry into the city arms and ammunition, so that they could stockpile warehouses full of these things because they knew and anticipated there would be a ferocious counterattack after they took the city. And they had to be able to hold out for, you know, as long as they could. And so they knew they'd need a lot of weapons and supplies.

And, you know, it was interesting to hear how they did it. I mean, Americans carried meals ready to eat. The Viet Cong carried, actually, live pigs on these treks. And they would slaughter them and eat them along the trail. And then they would drug them while they carried them so they didn't make any noise so they could move stealthily. This was a extraordinarily thorough, well-thought-out preparation that went on for many months. It actually started in the summer of 1967. So by January of '68, when this all began, everything was ready.

DAVIES: So the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese moved thousands of troops and munitions into position to attack Hue, the old imperial capital, hoping to surprise the Americans and the South Vietnamese. Did they?

BOWDEN: Totally. They took over the city with very little actual fighting. They had to overcome the guards at the entrances of the Citadel in a few places. And in some instances, those were fairly significant firefights. But because it was the eve of the holiday Tet, the South Vietnamese had sent many of their troops home for the holidays because in years past, there had been a truce over the holidays. And the last place they expected a big attack was in Hue.

So once the guards at the gates to the Citadel were overcome, the invading troops just took over everything, and they marched right into the southern half of the city, which is as populous as the Citadel. And it's the very modern kind of government center of Hue. They just walked straight up the streets into the city and took everything.

By the end of, like, four or five hours, they had the entire city except for a besieged South Vietnamese military post inside the Citadel and also a very small - we're talking about a maybe two- or three-block radius or diameter - American base which was called the MACV, Military Assistance Command Vietnam compound, where there were maybe 300 or 400 American troops who were basically holed up like the Alamo.

DAVIES: In the city of Hue, the communist forces took over. And they expected that the civilian population would rise up in support, finally drive the American colonialists out. What was the experience?

BOWDEN: Well, with all these military units that went into the city, they had their political commissars, whose job it was, once they took the city, to basically set up a new government in the city and to hunt down and punish the people of Hue who had worked for or allied themselves with the Saigon regime. So there were two things going on.

They were setting up, you know, their own revolutionary government, and they were - had propagandists out, lecturing the people through megaphones, calling them out into the streets. And they expected that people would happily join them in this war for liberation and in turning over their neighbors, who had - were traitors in their eyes, who had been working with the Americans and the South Vietnamese.

DAVIES: And they were conscripted to dig trenches - because they certainly expected an American counterattack - to provide food and shelter for the troops.

BOWDEN: Right. And, you know, they even told them at one point they wanted - even though they didn't have arms for all the people, they wanted people to take broomsticks and paint them black so that when American forces arrived, they would see a united citizenry out in the streets and armed and ready to fight them. And this, of course, was madness. I mean, the people living in Hue saw it for what it was and were horrified. And a lot of them tried to get out.

DAVIES: OK. So there were - was political education. There was conscription for service. How brutal was the purge, in effect, of those who they believed were cooperators?

BOWDEN: It got worse and worse. I mean, initially, only the most egregious traitors were executed. But, in time, a kind of mob rule set in. And so a couple of factors were at play. You had, I think, the ideological fervor of the young idealists who were determined to purge the citizenry of, you know, evil doers. And then you had, I think, a growing frustration when the local people didn't do as expected and, I think, an anger toward the citizens of Hue. And then there was, I think, just opportunists who took advantage of the opportunity to get rid of the guy down the street who had angered them at one point or another. And, you know, there were vendettas.

And so it ended up with hundreds to thousands of people being marched off and executed. And I think the violence that was perpetrated against the citizens of Hue turned a lot of people against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese in subsequent years. You know, it was a disaster, I think, from both sides - both from North Vietnamese side and the American and South Vietnamese side.

DAVIES: You know, you write in the book that the Viet Cong were regarded by many anti-war activists in the United States as freedom fighters. You say the Viet Cong were actually pretty vicious.

BOWDEN: They were. And, you know, there were plenty of people like Che Thi Mung and Nguyen Van Quang who were idealists - young idealists - who were fighting for the freedom of their country.

DAVIES: She's the 18-year-old girl. He was the guy who smuggled the arms in on the boats.

BOWDEN: Yeah. And I think they were every bit as well-intentioned as the young Marines that were fighting against them. But the hardcore leadership of the North Vietnamese - of North Vietnam and of the Viet Cong - were very serious and brutal revolutionaries who were determined to punish those who opposed them and to use fear as a tool, you know, to rally the citizenry. And, you know, they had been doing this for some time.

DAVIES: Mark Bowden's book is "Hue 1968: A Turning Point In The American War In Vietnam." After a break, he'll talk about the horrific toll the battle took on Vietnamese civilians, and the U.S. assault to retake the city. Also, Justin Chang reviews Kenneth Branagh's remake of Agatha Christie's "Murder On The Orient Express." I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Tomorrow's Veterans Day, and we're listening to my interview with Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down," about his new book "Hue 1969." It's a detailed account of the bloodiest single battle of the Vietnam War and a turning point in the conflict. Communist forces seized the old imperial Vietnamese capital of Hue in 1968 as part of the Tet Offensive, a set of coordinated surprise attacks on cities throughout South Vietnam.

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DAVIES: You know, one of the things that you write about is the deception and self-deception within the American military, telling politicians that they're winning the war, that the other side is suffering so many casualties, they can't go on. Now, suddenly, this imperial city, Hue, is under the enemy's control. Did this deception continue? How did they respond?

BOWDEN: This was frankly, Dave, one of the things that most surprised me about the story. General Westmoreland had no inkling that this was going to happen and, in fact, had many times explained that nothing like this could happen because they simply - the enemy lacked the numbers of troops, and they couldn't put themselves in that sort of position. And I get it. I mean, anyone can be faked out in a war.

But when the city was taken, basically, the American command refused to believe it had happened. And this wasn't just a public-relations ploy. In the cables that Westmoreland and his commanders were sending to Washington, they were saying there was only a few hundred Vietnamese sort of dead-enders who were holed up here and there in the city. And they'll be chased out in a day or two. And this led to small units of American Marines being set to attack a huge - an overwhelming force, well-entrenched. And they got slaughtered.

And it didn't just happen once. It happened over and over again. And even though these young company commanders - these captains - in Hue were informing their superior officers that they were up against an overwhelming enemy force and that they had taken the entire city, no one would believe them. They continued to try to fight this one-sided, suicidal battle. And a lot of Americans got killed as a result.

DAVIES: Yeah. There was a force that came up from the South that was chewed up by the Vietnamese troops they encountered. Then there was another that was sent down from the North. And that was one of the units that was trapped, surrounded by these North Vietnamese fighters, which included the soldier that you read about at the beginning. He was trapped in the foxhole, watching mortars rain down on other soldiers. What happened with that unit that came from the North?

BOWDEN: Well, that battalion marched south. And their objective was to basically march down Route 1, which ran straight through the middle of Hue, and assail the citadel from the outside, basically seal off the enemy troops that were inside the fort. And they got less than a mile or two before they came under heavy fire. It turns out they were marching straight toward the central command post for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong and, literally, into thousands of enemy soldiers. So they ended up pinned down in the fields, being mortared, being attacked. And then the enemy surrounded them. So they were literally out there on an island. And I should add they had no air support. The weather was so bad that they couldn't get aircraft up and over them. They were stranded without the kind of artillery and air support that they depended on.

DAVIES: And when they and these other units that were being decimated reported to the commanders, what was the response?

BOWDEN: The attitude was they were panicking under fire - that things couldn't be as bad as they claimed they were. They wanted them to continue attacking. And the commanders on the ground who could see exactly what was going on knew that it would be suicidal to press on. So they eventually organized themselves and managed over - you know, through a long night - to walk out through the darkness - very daringly walked straight through the encirclement. Half of them managed to escape. The rest of them had either been killed or wounded and evacuated.

DAVIES: So the communist forces took control of the city. And for a while, the American counterattack was undermanned because commanders didn't realize how serious the situation was. Eventually, they did. And it's fascinating. You write that the commanders that were sent there with enough troops and firepower had to realize that they had to fight a different kind of war to take Hue back.

BOWDEN: Yeah. And, really, the hero of that struggle is Colonel Ernie Cheatham, who was a former NFL football player who had gone into the Marine Corps after playing for the Baltimore Colts and the Pittsburgh Steelers. And he was given - or demanded, really, because some of his men had been sent away, and he was determined to get them back under his control. He felt they were being misused. He was sent into Hue to organize things and take the city back. And he spent the night before he went in - actually looked up old Marine Corps manuals about urban fighting.

The last time Marines had fought in a big city was in Seoul during the Korean War. And so he read up and learned that the proper way to assault a building or a fortified position was to reduce the position, basically to destroy the building and do it with as heavy weapons as you can bring to the scene. Use gas to force people out and then attack.

DAVIES: Tear gas.

BOWDEN: Use tear gas to force people out. And then he began methodically - block by block - essentially destroying the city as he marched forward and taking back one block after another. Behind him was just a - ruins, just acres of ruins. So there were still plenty of firefights. And there were plenty of Marines getting killed and wounded as they took the city. But it worked. It was clear after the first day or two that this strategy or these tactics were going to be successful.

DAVIES: You know, it's one thing to use those tactics on military forces. But this was a city of 140,000 people. A lot of them stayed...

BOWDEN: Right.

DAVIES: ...Dug, you know, bunkers in their homes.

BOWDEN: Right.

DAVIES: What happened to them when this kind of assault occurred?

BOWDEN: A lot of them got killed. And I estimate that, you know, 5,000 to 10,000 civilians were killed in this battle. They - inside the citadel, they were trapped. There was literally no way for them to get out of the way. And so the only thing they could do were to dig these bunkers under their houses and try and ride things out. Of course, if their house or bunker took a direct hit, it would kill everybody in it. So it was a brutal killing ground. In the southern part of the city, there were hundreds and hundreds of civilians basically roaming the streets like ants on a hot plate, you know, trying to find a safe place. And there weren't many.

DAVIES: Mark Bowden's new book is "Hue 1968: A Turning Point In The American War In Vietnam." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with writer Mark Bowden. He's a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His new book about a pivotal battle in the Vietnam War is "Hue 1968."

You know, I don't want to question anybody's commitment or patriotism or bravery. But some of the command decisions made there just were - I mean, they make you want to weep.

BOWDEN: It was a reflection of arrogance. You know, the American military, going into Vietnam, was the most powerful military force in the world, probably. I mean, the Soviet Union had a pretty big army, as well. But they were the victors in World War II. They were victors in Korea. There was this idea that America was this invincible power.

And the very thought that these peasants in Vietnam could organize and fight effectively against, you know, air cav units that would come in on helicopters with guns blaring and the tremendous air power that the United States could bring - it was just inconceivable to these American commanders that they were in for a really serious fight. It became very believable to the Americans on the ground who found themselves facing down, you know, superior enemy forces. But even when they tried to convince their superior officers what they're up against, they were often disbelieved.

DAVIES: And what about the Tet Offensive in the rest of the country? What course did it take?

BOWDEN: Well, interestingly, you know, Hue got relatively little publicity at the time, even though it was by far the largest battle fought in the Tet Offensive. And a big part of that was that the military command kept denying that it was actually happening. But there were attacks in Saigon, dozens of other cities - over a hundred, actually - all across the country.

And as these attacks were reported, it just shocked the American people. And they were shocked because they had been fed a line about the war by General Westmoreland, by President Johnson, by his administration, you know, that this was going to be a fairly easy affair. Now, suddenly, they turn on their TV and pick up the newspaper. And they see the entire country of South Vietnam is under attack. And casualty figures, you know, jump way up. It was ultimately, Dave, the turning point for Americans in the war in Vietnam.

DAVIES: There were a lot of American and other Western media throughout the country. And many got to Hue, including Gene Roberts, the former editor of The Inquirer. I know that you worked with him.

BOWDEN: Yeah.

DAVIES: Eventually, Walter Cronkite.

BOWDEN: Yeah. You know, Walter got fed up by the Tet Offensive because he had been a supporter of the War in Vietnam, and he had been in his broadcasts in the evening essentially delivering the official line on what was going on there. He believed, you know, General Westmoreland and President Johnson.

And - but when the Tet Offensive happened, he realized - he's an old combat correspondent from World War II - that the story he was being told - in fact, the story he was delivering to the American people did not appear to be true. So he went on his own fact-finding tour in Vietnam and, in fact, interviewed Westmoreland, who assured him that Hue was under control. There was nothing really serious going on there.

So then he went to Hue, and he landed there right in the middle of this horrific battle. And he could see with his own eyes that he had been lied to. So he came back to the United States. And he delivered his famous homily about how Vietnam was not a winnable war. It was a stalemate. And the best we could hope for was a political solution.

DAVIES: So in the end, the American counterattacks - the South Vietnamese counterattacks - drove the communist forces out of the cities. But it changed the course of the war. It changed American support for the war. What kind of damage did it inflict on the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese?

BOWDEN: It heavily damaged them. You know, and I think that, you know, from a purely military perspective, some of the criticism of what happened immediately afterwards is on target. If the United States, for instance, had launched an aggressive counterattack or invaded North Vietnam, which is what a lot of people wanted it to do, you know, they had significantly reduced the capabilities of the North Vietnamese at that point.

And they would've had a hell of a fight on their hands. But they might have been able to make progress. In fact, what happened was, you know, President Johnson announced he was not going to run for president again. He was fed up, I think, dealing with the whole thing. He tried initiatives to end the war. He offered a bombing halt. And it was a signal, really, for a lot of Americans who were fighting in South Vietnam that, in fact, there was no chance that the United States was ever going to win this war. I point out in the book that, after the Tet Offensive, it was no longer an argument over how to win. It was an argument over how to leave.

DAVIES: And for some listeners who didn't live through this, just tie up the story of how the war ended.

BOWDEN: Well, the war dragged on for another six or seven years. President Nixon got elected in 1968 with a secret plan to end the War in Vietnam, which turned out to be spreading the war into Laos and Cambodia, which kicked off the regime of Pol Pot and the genocides in Cambodia. Another half - you know, probably another half million Vietnamese were killed. Tens of thousands more Americans were killed over a protracted period as the United States began gradually withdrawing forces under Nixon's Vietnamization program. And what happened was when the Americans began to withdraw, the South Vietnamese couldn't stand up against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. And in - what was it? 1974? '75.

DAVIES: Five. Yeah.

BOWDEN: The - Saigon fell. And the Americans and the South Vietnamese lost the war.

DAVIES: Why did you focus on this battle and telling this story?

BOWDEN: Well, you know, I think my preferred way to work in writing about something as sweeping as the War in Vietnam is not to write the seven-volume history of the entire war but to find a dramatic and pivotal moment in that story. And you can, I think, if you dig deep enough, use that event as a kind of lens to write about the whole experience of the War in Vietnam. What investigating this taught me was that, in fact, I think it was right to oppose this war. It was a mistake.

It reflected a triumph of ideology over reality in Washington, this anti-communist ideology which completely ignored the realities of Southeast Asia and Vietnam's history and what actually was happening there. And I think this is kind of a periodic thing that happens in American life, where, you know, these concepts of the world and America's role in the world lead us into conflicts that - and then we collide with reality. This has happened recently in American history. So, you know...

DAVIES: Let's talk about that a little. I mean, you know, I think there is this phenomenon where, in the State Department and other parts of the American government, there are veterans who know the local custom and culture and politics and the economy. And when big things happen, they are often shunted aside, and decisions are made from the top. Do you see these mistakes being repeated in Iraq, Afghanistan?

BOWDEN: Absolutely. In the case of Vietnam, I think David Halberstam recorded this definitively in his book "The Best And The Brightest" - how, over a period of a decade or more, Southeast Asian experts - people, as you say, who spoke the language and who lived there and who knew its history and culture - were purged from the State Department and from the administration in Washington.

By the time Johnson was president, if you dared to speak against the American effort in Vietnam, you'd gone soft. You were soft on communism, you know, and you were out on your heels. Yeah, I think the same thing happened after 9/11. You know, the idea that the United States was in this terminal battle with radical Islam across the planet required us to, you know, invade Afghanistan and invade Iraq. And I think, at that point, people who were advising caution and restraint were regarded as unpatriotic and not - were not being listened to. I think we're in danger of it happening today.

We have the Trump administration, which I think, you know, has its own inflexible, ideological view of the world and is also a very anti-intellectual administration. So people with knowledge, people with experience who speak the language are viewed as tainted precisely because they happen to know what they're talking about. And I think when these things happen, we very often as a country make dreadful mistakes.

DAVIES: Well, it's a remarkable book. Mark Bowden, thanks so much for speaking with us.

BOWDEN: Always a pleasure, Dave. Thank you.

DAVIES: Mark Bowden's book is "Hue 1968." Coming up, Justin Chang reviews director Kenneth Branagh's remake of "Murder On The Orient Express." This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF HOLT VAUGHN'S "BITTER SUITE")

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Agatha Christie's "Murder On The Orient Express" was filmed in 1974 by Sidney Lumet with an all-star cast featuring Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Ingrid Bergman and Sean Connery. Now it's been adapted again, this time by the director Kenneth Branagh, who heads up a similarly star-studded cast that includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp and Judi Dench. Film critic Justin Chang has this review.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: In "The Simple Art Of Murder," his 1950 takedown of English detective fiction, Raymond Chandler sneered that the solution to Agatha Christie's "Murder On The Orient Express" was so ridiculous that only a half-wit could guess it. I'm relieved to learn I'm not a half-wit. When I first read the novel some 20 years ago - the first of many Christie's I would devour as a young mystery fan - I was blindsided by the ending, a happy victim of the author's limitless ability to surprise. Only when Hercule Poirot assembled the suspects in the dining car and laid out his conclusions did the story's intricate mosaic of implication snap into place.

No one who has read Christie's book or seen the popular 1974 film will have any trouble guessing the ending of director Kenneth Branagh's handsome new adaptation. This "Murder On The Orient Express" does sport a few distinct modern touches, notably a more ethnically diverse cast and a sensitivity to racist attitudes that feels more 2017 than 1934 when the story is set. But the movie, fluidly shot on 65 mm film by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos has a sumptuous, Old World charm.

Michael Green's screenplay stays faithful to the twists and turns of Christie's busy plot machinery, not tampering with it so much as hastening it along. The result isn't an especially vital or imaginative rethink of the material, but it doesn't have to be. It's creaky but durable entertainment that moves in inspired fits and starts, always ready with a droll line of dialogue or a clever visual flourish when your attention starts to wander.

As for Branagh, you sense that he spent less of his time fussing around behind the camera than putting on a good show in front of it. He plays Hercule Poirot himself, a risky decision that pays off. I wasn't sure at first how Branagh would fare next to memorable past Poirots like Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov and, best of all, David Suchet who played the famous Belgian sleuth for 25 years on British TV. But Branagh sinks into the role immediately. He emphasizes not just Poirot's mental agility but also his very human, irritable side, his near-pathological insistence on neatness and symmetry. It's why he can't abide murder and the moral disorder it brings into the world. Branagh conveys all this beautifully, even saddled with a French accent and a gray-white mustache so scene-stealing you start to wonder if it qualifies as a murder suspect. Those whiskers get him recognized early on in Istanbul by an English governess named Mary Debenham, played by Daisy Ridley of "Star Wars" fame.

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DAISY RIDLEY: (As Mary Debenham) I know your mustache from the papers. You're the detective Hercule Poirot.

KENNETH BRANAGH: (As Hercule Poirot) Hercule Poirot - I do not slay the lions, mademoiselle.

RIDLEY: (As Mary Debenham) Mary Debenham, monsieur. I'll forget a name but never a face - not yours anyway.

BRANAGH: (As Hercule Poirot) You come from Baghdad?

RIDLEY: (As Mary Debenham) It's true. No detail escapes his notice.

BRANAGH: (As Hercule Poirot) Your ticket.

RIDLEY: (As Mary Debenham) Ah.

BRANAGH: (As Hercule Poirot) I might also ask you if you enjoyed your time there as a governess. The chalk on your sleeve and the geography primer - a governess or a cartographer - I made my gamble.

CHANG: Both Poirot and Ms. Debenham will soon find themselves on board the Orient Express, making their way from Istanbul to Calais in the company of more than a dozen other passengers. There's the gossipy, much-married Mrs. Hubbard played by Michelle Pfeiffer with more exposed nerve endings than Lauren Bacall brought to the role. Penelope Cruz turns up as an intense Spanish missionary. Judi Dench is all scowling imperiousness as the Russian princess Dragomiroff, though the superb Olivia Colman is disappointingly given less to do as her lady's maid. The male passengers include a German-accented Willem Dafoe as an eccentric professor and Leslie Odom Jr. as Dr. Arbuthnot, who may have a personal connection to one of the other passengers.

Most unpleasantly, there is Ratchett, a man with many enemies played by Johnny Depp with a scarred face and a voice of gravel. Before long, Ratchett will be found stabbed to death in his compartment shortly after the train gets stuck in a snowdrift, stranding the passengers and making it clear that the killer could not have escaped. And so at the insistence of the train line's excitable director played by Tom Bateman, Poirot takes up the investigation, interrogating the other passengers and gradually untangling a web of hidden identities and uncanny coincidences.

The sense of mounting suspicion and paranoia to some extent works against the actors who never fully gel as an ensemble. But individually, they rip into their roles with gusto. Josh Gad is especially good as Ratchett's shifty secretary, an early suspect whose attempts to escape triggers an ill-advised action scene.

Branagh, well-versed in the challenges of opening up Shakespeare for the screen, tries to punch up the material with pulpy action-movie beats. The early scenes of the train barreling down treacherous mountain paths play like outtakes from the Ice Age thriller "Snowpiercer." He trusts Christie's story enough not to alter it too drastically but not enough to let it stand fully on its own.

The most compelling angle of this particular whodunit remains its motive. Ratchett, it turns out, was a remorseless criminal who more than deserved his bloody fate. But acts of retribution don't sit well with Poirot. And long after he has ceased pondering the crime's logistical riddles, he is troubled by its ethical implications. "Murder on the Orient Express" may be an ingenious parlor trick, an elaborate put-on. But in its final moments, Branagh's movie offers an unexpectedly stirring reminder that morally speaking the art of murder isn't always as simple as it appears.

DAVIES: Justin Chang is a film critic for The Los Angeles Times.

On Monday's show, Father Greg Boyle talks about his work as the founder of Homeboy Industries - cafes, bakeries, groceries, diners that hire former East LA gang members and people released from prison to help them start new lives. We'll also talk about how and why he became a Jesuit priest and what it means to him to find God in all things. He's written a new memoir called "Barking To The Choir." Hope you can join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE MOLE'S "IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (FRONT TITLES)")

DAVIES: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman and Julian Herzfeld. Our associate producer for digital media is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE MOLE'S "IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (FRONT TITLES)")

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