Battle Of Leipzig -- October 16th - 19th, 1813 "Battle Of Nations"

 

In the turbulent spring of 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte was the master of Europe. But then, in what would prove an act of sheer hubris, the Corsican chose to invade Russia. The outcome is well known: The Russians traded their vast spaces for time, and their country itself crushed Napoleon’s legions. Those vast spaces, the winter and the hunger, wrecked the once glorious Grande Armée. Napoleon entered Russia with more than 500,000 fighting men; he returned, beaten and humiliated, with fewer than 100,000 half-dead skeletons.

His many enemies, even those who had been pretending to be his allies, saw their opportunity: First Prussia turned against him, joining with Russia, then Sweden, then Austria. A formidable coalition took shape, and its leaders began to believe that maybe, just maybe, with these forces and these odds, Napoleon could finally be brought to heel.

In the fall of 1813, however, Napoleon was not a beaten general, though he faced many challenges. His Grande Armée, having left so many frozen dead along the roads out of Russia, had to be rebuilt. Napoleon tried and France tried, and the result was an army of respectable numbers but of markedly inferior quality. The new recruits had scant training and precious little equipment, many of them marching to join their units in Germany without muskets or gear. The shortage of horses was especially painful. The war in Russia had decimated the army’s horses, and since France wasn’t horse country, replacements were hard to come by. All branches suffered, but the cavalry—eyes and ears of the army—most of all. Napoleon would never have a weaker cavalry than he did in 1813.

While the new coalition he faced was strong, it too faced serious challenges. And no one felt the pressure of those challenges more than the coalition’s commander, Karl Philipp, Prince Schwarzenberg, field marshal in the army of the Austrian emperor: “It really is inhuman what I must tolerate and bear,” Schwarzenberg wrote that summer, “surrounded as I am by feeble-minded people, eccentric projectors, intriguers, asses, babblers, and niggling critics.” Dozens of other generals, Russians and Prussians and Austrians, noisily offered their opinions. Worse yet, there were three monarchs at headquarters, breathing down his neck: Alexander I, tsar of Russia; King Frederick William III of Prussia; and Schwarzenberg’s sovereign, Emperor Francis I of Austria.

All those asses and babblers, though, were dedicated to the defeat of Napoleon. They just weren’t sure how to go about it. Prince Schwarzenberg possessed a cool head, but even he had his doubts. “When I reflect that opposed to me stands the greatest Leader of all times,” he told his wife on the eve of battle, “I must confess to you that my shoulders seem not strong enough to bear the load.” Yes, the coalition seemed to be keeping “the Ogre” Bonaparte at bay, but the prospect of bringing him to battle remained intimidating.

Nevertheless, in four days in October 1813, the armies of the Old Regime would accomplish just that. The Battle of Leipzig, soon to be known as die Völkerschlacht—“the Battle of the Nations”—fought in the sleepy villages and marshes around the old Saxon university town of Leipzig, marked the beginning of the end for Napoleon’s remarkable career. What makes the battle significant was that it was a near-run thing: Napoleon’s defeat was never a foregone conclusion. At the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon came within a hair’s breadth of pulling of one of his better escapes…and almost scored a victory.

The Russian debacle in 1812 had shaken Bonaparte’s self-confidence but hadn’t destroyed it, and in spite of all the setbacks, his optimism wasn’t entirely ground- less: His rank and file might be untested and badly supplied, but his command staff was experienced and efficient. His enemy, moreover, was far from perfect: It was a coalition army, and coalitions rarely functioned smoothly. There was nothing to suggest that its leaders would work together well—or at all. Still, in raw numbers, the constituent elements of the Sixth Coalition—Russia’s Army of Poland, Austria’s Army of Bohemia, Prussia’s Army of Silesia, and Sweden’s Army of the North—far outnumbered the French. And they were better fed, better disciplined, better supplied. At Leipzig, they would muster a total of 380,000 effectives and 1,500 field guns against Napoleon’s 225,000 and 700 guns.

French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte

 

As Napoleon, recovering from the blow dealt him in Russia, tried to reassert his authority in the German states, the initial furtive clashes between the opposing armies bore out the emperor’s high expectations. At Lützen (May 2, 1813) and at Bautzen (May 20–21), the French handily beat the united Russian-Prussian forces in Saxony. Even at Dresden (August 26), where he faced a much larger Russian-Prussian-Austrian army under Prince Schwarzenberg, Napoleon still managed to score a tidy victory.

 

 

 

 

But then the allies changed their strategy. Adopting the conservative “Trachenberg-Reichenbach Plan” favored by the Austrian high command, the coalition armies deliberately avoided any direct confrontation with Napoleon and his main army while taking every opportunity to pounce on smaller French forces led by the emperor’s lieutenants. The plan worked. Napoleon found that his enemies would not give him the battle he wanted, on his terms, while his subordinates suffered a string of small but costly defeats that the French could not afford: at Grossbeeren (August 23), Katzbach (August 26), Kulm (August 29–30), and Dennewitz (September 6). Waning French fortunes inspired one German state after another to turn against the French and join the coalition, while hunger, sickness, and small-scale actions whittled down French manpower. Giving up for the moment on his German ambitions, Napoleon reluctantly made the decision to fall back to the west, across the Elbe River. He would move north, where the countryside was relatively unravaged by war, and he cast his eyes on Leipzig as a defensible rallying point.

The coalition armies were hot on his heels—most of them, anyway. There was a touch of hesitation in the high command: After all, they were rushing to attack Napoleon himself, and they knew just how dangerous he could be. Schwarzenberg led the main body of Russians and Austrians from the southeast. The Swedish Army of the North—commanded by Napoleon’s former general Bernadotte, now the Crown Prince of Sweden—advanced at a pace that can only be described as “leisurely,” while General Blücher brought his Prussians from the northwest. Blücher, who hated Napoleon with an ardor that bordered on mania, was the most eager to bring the French to battle. “The three [allied] armies are now so close together,” he wrote on October 13, “that a simultaneous attack…might be undertaken.”

Napoleon quickly came to see the gravity of his predicament the very next day. As he rode into Leipzig to rendezvous with the Grande Armée, advance elements of the Army of Bohemia got tangled in a nasty but indecisive engagement with Joachim Murat’s French cavalry. Their fight didn’t change anything, but it confirmed what Napoleon suspected: He was in for a big fight.

On October 15, both sides busied themselves in preparation for battle the next morning, as each waited nervously for reinforcements to arrive. Napoleon in particular had reason to make haste. The roads south of town were already clotted with Austrian troops and green-clad Russians, in numbers roughly equal to his own, but the troops coming from the north—the Prussians and Swedes—worried him most. The emperor, though, assumed that Blücher and Bernadotte were still some distance away, at least two days’ march. In this he was entirely mistaken, the victim of poor cavalry and inept reconnaissance. It proved a decisive miscalculation.

The ground in and around Leipzig favored the French defenders. The town itself was unimpressive, with crumbling city walls that could not withstand a determined assault, but the topography around the town gave Napoleon the advantage. Tree small rivers—the Parthe, the Pleisse, and the Elster—came together in Leipzig. Ordinarily these would not have presented intimidating obstacles, but heavy autumn rains had swelled them to the point that they were virtually impassable, and French engineers destroyed most of the bridges crossing them. A chain of bald hills south and southeast of town provided a commanding position for artillery emplacements. Vast marshy areas separating the villages surrounding Leipzig would make troop movements difficult for an attacker. The French also had the advantages of fighting a battle along interior lines: While the enemy struggled to envelop the city, Napoleon could easily shunt reinforcements from one position to another.

Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher

 

Both commanding generals, Napoleon and Schwarzenberg, intended to attack, and in the same general location—around the villages south of Leipzig. Schwarzenberg initially ordered an assault through the marshes between the Parthe and the Pleisse where the French positions were clearly the strongest. His plan was horrible, so manifestly bad that the Russian commanders all but threatened revolt. To Antoine-Henri Jomini—formerly in Napoleon’s service, now in the tsar’s—Schwarzenberg’s plan bordered on the ludicrous. “One would imagine,” he wrote later, “that Napoleon [himself] must have dictated it in order to procure for himself the most decisive victory possible.” (Jomini would soon become famous as the interpreter of Bonaparte’s legacy to future generations of soldiers.)

 

 

Under much pressure, Schwarzenberg scrapped his plan. Instead, the allies would attack along a broader front, mostly focusing on the villages of Wachau, Liebertwolkwitz, and Markkleeberg, while the Hungarian general Ignaz Gyulai tried to force his way down the causeway that went straight into Leipzig from the west. Napoleon’s battle plans weren’t much different. Committing two-thirds of the forces he had at hand, including two corps that were guarding the northern and western approaches to Leipzig, he would try to drive in the Austrian-Russian right to the southeast and smash through the enemy’s center in the south.

What Napoleon didn’t plan for was a battle on multiple fronts.

The next morning, October 16, was wet and dark, with a steady soaking rain and heavy leaden clouds that never lightened during the course of the day. The battle began with an allied cannonade around 8 a.m., which took Napoleon by surprise. When he rode to the battlefield about an hour later to watch the action unfold, he saw the allied assault just beginning to surge forward: Four dense columns, under the overall command of Russian general Prince Wittgenstein, moved slowly and steadily toward the French line. 

The downpour impeded visibility, and the assault soon deteriorated into an uncoordinated series of piecemeal attacks. For the next two hours, the Austrian and Russian troops, supplemented with a handful of Prussians, tried to force a crossing of the Pleisse River and to wrest control of the southern villages from the French. Both sides fought stubbornly, viciously, and at close quarters, with the only tangible result being a high body count.

At Dölitz, where the Poles of General Józef Poniatowski’s French corps held the line, the dead piled up on both banks of the Pleisse from volleys exchanged at nearly point-blank range. In the streets of Wachau, French and Prussian foot soldiers fought from house to house in some of the bitterest hand-to-hand combat of the age. Wachau, Liebertwolkwitz, and Markkleeberg changed hands multiple times and were in ruins by the end of the day, their houses and shops burned by one army or the other. Neither side had made significant headway when the musketry began to subside around noon.

The French had held firm, but Napoleon had not yet launched the attack he had been planning. The allied assault had preempted his own, of course, but there was also the issue of reinforcements. Marshal Ney, commanding French forces north of Leipzig, was supposed to have sent Marmont’s VI Corps to bolster Macdonald’s forces on the French left flank. Noon was fast approaching and still Marmont was nowhere to be seen.

It wasn’t Marmont’s fault. Early in the morning it had become clear that Blücher’s Prussians were closer than anyone in the French lines would have imagined. No sooner had Marmont put his corps on the road south than the Prussian advance guard made contact with Ney’s forward elements. Marmont promptly halted his corps, did an about-face, and marched back north to face Blücher. Ney then chose Henri-Gatien Bertrand, commanding the French IV Corps, to go to Macdonald in Marmont’s place. But when Bertrand left his position at the village of Eutritzsch, Gyulai’s Austrians hit the French positions at Lindenau and Plagwitz guarding the causeway west of town. With the causeway under attack, Bertrand felt he could not be spared, so Ney canceled his marching orders, too.

The upshot of this was that Napoleon was denied the numbers that two full, strong corps—or even one—could have lent to the attack in the south. But he couldn’t wait for them forever. The French on the southern part of the battlefield had suffered heavy losses, and the survivors were showing signs of fatigue. 

Even before Wittgenstein’s attack had sputtered to an anticlimactic end, Napoleon had seen fit to commit nearly all of his reserves just to keep the line intact. Yet he still planned to attack, and while he waited in vain for the promised troops from the north, Bonaparte reformed his line for the assault: A massive artillery battery of 150 guns would pummel the enemy’s center, and while Macdonald rolled up the enemy’s right flank, Murat would lead a cavalry charge into the enemy center. This was classic Bonaparte, and the emperor had every right to think it would succeed.

The French attack began shortly after noon. Despite a few minor holdups, it proceeded as planned. The Austrians and Russians gave ground, grudgingly but steadily, driven back to the positions they had started from hours earlier. It went so well, even without the reinforcements, that at around 2 p.m. Napoleon gave the nod to Murat and to Druout, his artillery commander, and set the last phase in motion. 

Druout’s grand battery tore bloody gaps in the allied formations between Wachau and Markkleeberg. Ten Murat’s 10,000 horsemen raced into the milling mass as the infantry along the entire French line moved steadily forward. The French cavalry easily punched through the allied line. One division of French heavy cavalry destroyed two Austrian battalions, captured 26 allied cannons, and came within a heartbeat of capturing Tsar Alexander at his command post before being repulsed by Russian cavalry.

The French attack on the afternoon of the 16th was dramatic yet indecisive. Austrian reserves arrived just in time, bolstering the allied line. The success of the French cavalry charge, while very real, was ephemeral. No one followed up on Murat’s breakthrough. When the battle ground to a halt in late afternoon, it ended essentially as a draw.

 

Perhaps Napoleon still could have remedied the situation. Perhaps the emperor, by monitoring Murat’s impact on the Austrian line, could have sent in infantry in just the right place and at just the right time to keep the shattered allied troops from restoring their cohesion, as scholars have since insisted. But that is all speculative, because Napoleon, in fact, was not there. At 2:30, shortly after setting Murat in motion, the emperor mounted his horse and rode frantically to the north. He had just received word that Blücher’s Prussians had hit the French north of Leipzig.

After first making contact with Ney’s troops, Blücher had shied away, reluctant to bring on a general engagement when Bernadotte lagged so far behind. But he soon changed his mind, and just as the French onslaught around Wachau was unfolding, Blücher sent forward Yorck’s Prussian corps and Langeron’s Russians against the French. Here French (Marmont) and Polish (Dąbrowski) troops held a short line stretching from Möckern to Widderitzsch. As at Wachau, possession of the villages went back and forth over the course of the afternoon, but by evening Blücher had prevailed. Yorck and Langeron had succeeded in driving the French out of Möckern. Allied losses were heavy—more than 33 percent for Yorck’s command—but the fighting at Möckern was undeniably a French defeat.

A draw at Wachau, a defeat at Möckern…Bonaparte’s confidence had waned dramatically by nightfall on the 16th. His attendance to the fighting up north had likely precluded a victory, maybe even a truly decisive one, at Wachau in the south, and his presence in the north had not helped. There were so many missed opportunities, so many small blunders. There were blunders on both sides, and those on the allied side were probably the more grievous, but the cumulative effect of the French missteps was worse. Ney had decided to send two divisions from Souham’s III Corps to reinforce Macdonald in the south, then recalled them when the fighting broke out at Möckern, then felt badly about it and put Souham back on the road again. Souham did not get to Wachau before nightfall, and hence his two divisions served no useful purpose. Instead of fighting, they spent most of the 16th marching and changing direction.

The Battle of Leipzig could have ended there. It should have ended there. The French had suffered slightly smaller losses—25,000 men to the allies’ 30,000—but then Schwarzenberg was anticipating the arrival of much larger bodies of fresh troops, including Bernadotte’s army of more than 70,000. Napoleon decided to retreat once more, west, to the Rhine and the natural boundaries of his France. Retreat…but not immediate retreat. The emperor evidently didn’t want to escape that badly, and besides he had made a play for extra time by offering Schwarzenberg a brief armistice. The allies rejected the offer out of hand: Clearly Napoleon was closer to defeat than he let on; why else would he ask for a cease-fire?

Napoleon knew the odds facing him and was well aware that they were getting worse with every passing hour. He knew that retreat was the only viable option available to him. And yet he dallied. Reynier’s VII Corps arrived from the east, bringing the total strength of the Grande Armée to just over 200,000. Bernadotte’s Swedes and Russians under Levin August von Bennigsen, who were scheduled to arrive the next day, brought the allied army up to more than 300,000 men. Leipzig was by then completely encircled. The allies watched and waited, but apart from some very limited skirmishing, the 17th passed quietly. Napoleon could have retreated during the night. But he did not, and the allies prepared to crush the French at will the next day.

 

The noose tightened on the afternoon of October 18. Schwarzenberg planned a series of attacks, to hit all French positions simultaneously and with overwhelming numbers. It didn’t proceed that way. Instead, as in the first assault two days earlier, the allied attack went off piecemeal. 

 

In the morning, there were limited actions in the southwest and the west; by afternoon the engagement had become a general one. Bernadotte’s Swedish army, after taking its time getting to the battlefield, took up position immediately to the east of Blücher’s force, and Bennigsen’s Russians moved into line just south of Bernadotte. The French steadily gave ground there during several hours of fighting; no back and forth this time but a measured retreat that took the French positions very close to Leipzig itself.

Late in the afternoon two entire infantry brigades from Reynier’s corps—Saxons, allied with the French—moved forward toward the allied lines with fixed bayonets, in perfect order, cheered on by their French comrades whose spirits soared to see this impromptu attack. The cheers died in their throats when they saw Prussian troops receive the Saxon onslaught not with volleys but with wild shouts of their own, and embraces too. The Saxons, tired of their alliance with the French, had simply defected, right in the middle of a battle.

When darkness brought an end to the fighting on the evening of the 18th, only the causeway through Lindenau lay open to the French. Napoleon was not going to wait for daybreak to get out of the trap in which he had allowed himself to be caught. At around 2 a.m. on October 19, the dejected Grande Armée formed up in marching order and started west over the causeway. Some 30,000 troops, three full army corps, would hold Leipzig and cover the retreat. Five hours later, allied patrols discovered the movement, but not until nearly 10 a.m. were they able to contest the retreat. By then it was too late. 

Most of the emperor’s army had crossed the Elster causeway to safety. It was not Napoleon’s greatest moment, to be sure, but neither was it his worst. The army had fought an honorable battle against a superior enemy. It had come very close to defeating that enemy, uncomfortably close in fact. And now, as the French rearguard fought a valiant action in the streets of Leipzig against its pursuers, Napoleon and the bulk of his army were executing a well-ordered retreat, under hostile fire, while crossing a river.

Bad reconnaissance and bad luck, mostly the latter, turned what should have been a simple French victory into a draw on the first day of the battle. And bad luck would hound Napoleon on the last day. To slow the enemy pursuit, Napoleon had taken the routine precaution of rigging the causeway bridges with explosives, so that after his entire army had crossed the Elster safely the bridges could be blown. 

 

After they had crossed. Unfortunately, the general to whom Bonaparte had entrusted the task of destroying one of the bridges passed the assignment down to a colonel, who in turn passed it down to a corporal. That panicked corporal lit the fuse at precisely 1 o’clock that afternoon, when the bridge was still crowded with French soldiers, and a full 30,000 French troops had yet to cross. 

With a deafening boom the bridge rose in the air and disintegrated, as soldiers and horses were blown to bits or thrown into the Elster. Some swam to safety. Others, like corps commander Poniatowski, one of Napoleon’s most capable subordinates, drowned. Poniatowski’s loss was keenly felt; the emperor had promoted him to Marshal of France only days before.

 

The Battle of Leipzig was over. Its effects would be felt for a very long time. The Grande Armée was badly mauled in this, the bloodiest battle of the Napoleonic Wars: 45,000 killed or wounded, another 36,000 taken prisoner, out of a total force of around 225,000. Fifteen French generals lost their lives. To Carl von Clausewitz—the great philosopher of modern war, who was present at the battle as a staff officer with Prince Wittgenstein—Blücher alone deserved credit for defeating Napoleon. 

Still, the defeat did not end Napoleon’s career—as the 1813 campaign itself had demonstrated, it would take a lot more than a shattered army to finish of Bonaparte. But the Leipzig failure closed Germany to Napoleon, as those few German states still paying homage to France quickly saw the error of their ways and cast their lot with the victors. When Napoleon took to the field again the following year, it would be to defend the borders of his much-reduced France.

What makes Leipzig intriguing is not merely its finality—the fact that it did more to end a career, an empire, an era than even the more celebrated defeat at Waterloo less than two years later. Leipzig was a missed opportunity for Napoleon Bonaparte, still a brilliant commander with a substantial chance of victory. It is possible to imagine a very different outcome for the Grande Armée at Leipzig, an ending ultimately precluded by serendipity and hubris.

 

Suggested Reading: 

Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany: The Franco-Prussian War of 1813 Pt. 01 -- Michael V. Leggiere 

Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany: The Franco-Prussian War of 1813 Pt. 02 -- Michael V. Leggiere 

Napoleon at Leipzig: The Battle of the Nations 1813 -- George Nafziger 

 

 

General Lucian K. Truscott -- January 9th, 1895 - September 12th, 1965 "The Rock Crusher"

 

 

In his Maxims of War, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote, “It is exceptional and difficult to find in one man all the qualities necessary for a great general. What is most desirable, and which instantly sets a man apart, is that his intelligence or talent are balanced by his character or courage.” In North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France, Lucian King Truscott, Jr., proved himself just such a man.

The future general began simply enough when he arrived on January 9, 1895, in Chatfield, Texas. Although the family soon moved to Oklahoma, he would always claim to be a Texan at heart. The grandson of an immigrant from Cornwall, England, he nearly died at a young age when he was playing in his father’s office. His father, Lucian King Truscott, Sr., was a physician in Chatfield and was busy in another room when his son decided to taste something that looked good in his father’s office. His choice was a poor one, however, and he swallowed some carbolic acid. His father heard his screams and saved his life, but that day he earned one of his trademarks, a raspy, gruff voice that one observer called “a rock-crusher.”

The Truscott family moved to Oklahoma when the land boom began in 1901. Here, young Truscott came into contact with the U.S. Cavalry, an attachment that would last a lifetime.

To help his parents support him and his three sisters, he decided that he and his mother would both attend the Summer Normal School at Norman, Oklahoma. The goal was to acquire a teaching certificate. By age 16, having lied about his age, he was teaching school at Stella, Oklahoma. Later, after another family move, he taught in Onapa, Oklahoma.

Despite his success in achieving a trade, he was restless. This was no doubt what caused him to enlist in the Army Reserves program in which, after two years as a lieutenant, he would become a Regular Army officer.

Lieutenant Truscott’s first assignment was to the 17th Cavalry on the U.S.-Mexican border near Douglas, Arizona. Here he gained on-the-job experience with the vagaries of morning reports, sick reports, duty rosters, and troop administrative requirements. By the time World War I ended, Lieutenant Truscott was an experienced, if combat-deficient, Army officer. Concerned that he would soon have to return to civilian life, he was relieved to learn that his regiment was being shipped to Hawaii for garrison duties. But before he shipped overseas, Lieutenant Truscott acquired something far more important to his life and career.

Sarah Nicholas Randolph was the fourth-generation granddaughter of President Thomas Jefferson and, as such, she had a comfortable life and lofty social standing. Lieutenant Truscott was soon in love, and under the pressure of a move to Hawaii, the two were married on April 5, 1919, in Cochise County, Arizona. With the wedding came a promotion to first lieutenant. In Hawaii he took up polo and became a highly regarded horseman, something he would later have in common with another rising star, George S. Patton. 

In a shrinking postwar army, Lieutenant Truscott nevertheless earned a promotion to captain. The interwar years were typical for the Truscotts. After Hawaii came California, then back to Douglas, Arizona. Texas was next, the fourth move in three years. In 1925, Captain Truscott was ordered to attend the Troop Officers’ Course at the Cavalry School in Fort Riley, Kansas where he later served as an instructor. 

In 1934, after serving as a troop commander of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment at Fort Myer, Virginia, where he met Majors Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton and participated in dispersing the “Bonus March” on Washington, he was selected to attend the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, another prestigious stepping stone to high command. His performance earned him promotion to major, along with an instructorship that lasted until 1940.

In September 1940, the newly promoted Lt. Col. Truscott transferred to the developing armored force. Soon after, Colonel Truscott was off to Fort Lewis, Washington, where he renewed his friendship with Colonel Eisenhower. Together, the two men participated in maneuvers in California. Both would also later participate in the 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers.

After these large-scale maneuvers, Truscott found himself back in Texas, assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. When word came of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Truscott was promoted to full colonel. While training with his troops Colonel Truscott received an urgent call from General Mark Clark of the War Department who ordered him to report to Washington immediately.

Upon arrival in Washington, Truscott was surprised when General Clark asked if he wanted to become a British commando. These light raiding forces had been developed by the British while they bided their time to rebuild their military strength. General Clark went on to explain that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed to invade Europe in 1943 and, in the meantime, U.S. forces would establish within their organization a group of U.S. commandos.

Truscott was sent to General Eisenhower for details. Eisenhower explained that Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall believed that the U.S. Army lacked combat experience throughout its ranks. To achieve this goal, a group of American officers were being sent to England to observe and learn from the experienced British. Colonel Truscott would lead the group that would observe the British Combined Operations Headquarters, the top headquarters for the commandos. 

After studying every document he could lay his hands on regarding the British situation and listening in on War Department meetings about American plans for the European invasion, Truscott set off for London. As he flew via Canada to England, he received promotion to brigadier general in May 1942. His group began to absorb the organization of the British commando structure from Admiral Lord Louis Montbatten, and he was invited to sit in on planning conferences for the cross-Channel invasion. He observed commando training and exercises.

The lack of American infantrymen in England at the time and the continuing movement of American units to training bases caused General Truscott to create a unit that could then instruct others rather than pulling men out of existing units. As a result, the 1st Ranger Battalion was created.

In June, General Truscott was advised of a plan to land a large raiding force at the English Channel port of Dieppe in German-occupied France. Since several commando units would be involved in this operation, Truscott had 50 of his newly trained rangers added to the invasion forces. It would result in the first American combat losses in the European Theater. He observed the bitterly opposed landing from offshore.

General Marshall arrived in London in July, and Truscott was summoned to give a detailed report on every aspect of his stay in London to date. Later, he would attend a meeting with Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, and Clark to go over the same information. Using this data, General Marshall had a tentative plan drawn up for the Allied invasion of Europe. Disagreements between the Allies were resolved, albeit temporarily, by a decision to invade French North Africa in 1942. Truscott and his staff became involved in the planning of the new operation and worked with Eisenhower and Patton on the details.

General Patton was pleased to see his old friend. After asking Truscott what he had been doing in London, Patton said, “Dammit, Lucian, you don’t want to stay on any staff job in London with a war going on. Why don’t you come with me? I will give you a command.” Truscott replied that he was eager to get in on the fighting, but he would need Eisenhower to release him. Patton quickly obtained Truscott’s release and placed him on his staff where he became deeply involved in the planning of Operation Torch, the North African invasion.  

With the planning completed, Truscott returned to the United States for his new duties. These involved his command of Sub-Task Force Goalpost, a heavily reinforced regiment from the 9th Infantry Division scheduled to land at Port Lyautey in French Morocco. Organizing an efficient task force took all of Truscott’s time, although he did manage to see Sarah and Lucian III, who was now a West Point cadet. 

With a force of 9,079 officers and men, Truscott’s Sub-Task Force Goalpost landed against minimal opposition on November 8, 1942, and seized Port Lyautey and its vital airfields. There were problems, of course. During the approach, the task force lost its direction. H-hour had to be delayed while the assault waves reorganized. Heavy seas slowed matters as well. Some boats missed their assigned beaches. At daybreak, French planes strafed the beaches. Overall, though, the invasion succeeded, and the objectives were soon secured. The French surrendered on November 10. This success earned Truscott promotion to major general.

Sub-Task Force Goalpost

 

With the invasion complete, Sub-Task Force Goalpost was disbanded. This left Truscott without a command, so he went to Eisenhower in search of a new one. He was told to “wait around for a few days.” Concerned with the slow progress of American forces toward Tunis, Eisenhower made Truscott his deputy chief of staff to control operations with the British First Army. This was a difficult job, requiring the cooperation of the American, British, and French forces involved. This posting would prove an essential part of the eventual Allied victory in North Africa.

 

 

 Once again, Truscott’s outstanding performance earned him a new job, this time commanding the 3rd Infantry Division. The division had an outstanding World War I record and had been stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, in the interwar years, where both Eisenhower and Truscott had served with it. The division had participated in the North African invasion under Maj. Gen. Jonathan W. Anderson. When the latter was promoted to command of X Corps, Eisenhower gave the division to Truscott in April 1943.  

Truscott’s first steps were to improve the training and physical endurance of his new command. As he remembered, “I had long felt that our standards for marching and fighting in the infantry were too low, not up to those of the Roman legions nor countless examples from our own frontier history, not even to those of Stonewall Jackson’s ‘Foot Cavalry’ of Civil War fame,” he wrote. Adopting a tactic of the rangers and commandos, he ordered his men to march at the rate of four miles per hour.  Despite initial skepticism, the new rate, soon dubbed “The Truscott Trot,” was achieved by all units of the 3rd Infantry Division and helped make it one of the best combat units of the war.

Alerted for Operation Husky, the coming invasion of Sicily, the division began a new training cycle. The 3rd Infantry Division assaulted Sicily as part of the newly created Seventh Army under Patton. The landings were lightly opposed, and the division quickly moved inland. On the third day of Operation Husky, Truscott was already up front with his leading units, pressing them forward. As he observed one battalion attack an enemy position, his driver advised him that standing in the middle of the road with binoculars was inviting incoming fire. The group retired to a nearby ditch.

Soon Patton came calling. He was frustrated that his army was under orders to pace the advance of the adjoining British Eighth Army under General Bernard L. Montgomery. The two men talked the situation over and felt that the Seventh Army could easily conquer the western half of Sicily with the prize of its largest city, Palermo, if given permission. Together, the two men decided upon a “reconnaissance-in-force” to the west to, as General Truscott wrote, “clear up the situation.” Thus began the “Race for Palermo.”

A few days after the capture of Palermo, the 3rd Infantry Division was back fighting the Germans in mountainous eastern Sicily. Progress was slow and costly. This time Patton sent his deputy, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Keyes, to order Truscott to have one of his battalions conduct an amphibious landing behind the German lines. Truscott agreed with the idea, but insisted that it be within supporting distance of the main division force. This soon became a point of disagreement and resulted in a rather famous episode in Truscott’s career.

3rd Infantry Division soldiers marching through Palermo

 

The first date for the landing was postponed when German aircraft destroyed one of the landing craft. When the next scheduled date was postponed by Truscott because he felt that the bulk of the division was still too far away to support the isolated battalion, Keyes appeared and demanded the landing proceed. He reported to Patton that Truscott did not want to carry out the landing. An hour later, Patton came screaming into the 3rd Infantry Division command post.

 

Truscott recalled the scene. “He was screamingly angry as only he could be. ‘Goddammit, Lucian, what’s the matter with you? Are you afraid to fight?’ I bristled right back: ‘General, you know that’s ridiculous and insulting. You have ordered the operation, and it is now loading. If you don’t think I can carry out orders, you can give the division to anyone else you please. But I will tell you one thing, you will not find anyone who can carry out orders which they do not approve as well as I can.’” Truscott’s reply calmed Patton immediately, and the two men settled down to discuss how best to relieve the amphibious force.

Lieutenant Colonel Lyle W. Bernard’s 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, itself at two-thirds strength, was reinforced with three batteries from the 58th Field Artillery Battalion, a platoon of the 10th Combat Engineer Battalion, and a platoon of Company C, 753rd Tank Battalion. As Truscott feared, the battalion took severe punishment in its isolated beachhead, and the division, despite its best efforts, took longer than expected. Seven of the eight artillery pieces were lost as were several tanks and other vehicles. But the battalion survived. By August 16, the division was on the hills overlooking Messina. The battle for Sicily was over.

Initially relieved that his division would not be in the assault phase of the invasion of southern Italy, Truscott was soon ordered by his new commander, Maj. Gen. Mark Clark of the Fifth U.S. Army, to be prepared to land farther north once the Allied advance made progress in that direction. But the strong German defense of the Salerno beachhead soon changed such plans. In less than a week, Truscott was ordered to prepare his division to land at Salerno and join the battle there. While his men sailed to Italy, Truscott went to the beachhead to see things for himself and confer with General Clark. Traveling by PT-boat, he visited the beachhead, saw the strong defenses, and received orders to assign his division to the Fifth Army’s VI Corps once ashore.

During the battles along the German Winter Line at Cassino, Truscott learned of an old plan, Operation Shingle, that had been discarded and now suddenly revived. The VI Corps, along with the 3rd Infantry Division and the British 1st Infantry Division, was to land at the town of Anzio, on the coast behind the Winter Line.

The initial landings in January 1944 went surprisingly well and caught the Germans by surprise. But as always, they recovered quickly and soon had the beachhead surrounded. During the early days of the battle, Truscott was wounded in the leg when an enemy shell exploded nearby. Saved from serious injury by his favorite cavalry breeches and boots, he remained on duty after medical treatment.

The attack to break out of the beachhead failed when unexpected German reinforcements stopped the advance. During this attack, General Truscott suffered a personal blow when three ranger battalions assigned to his division for the attack were overwhelmed by the enemy. The Allies went on the defensive. For several weeks, the VI Corps would struggle to save its beachhead from increasingly heavy enemy assaults.

 Truscott was asleep in his headquarters on the evening of February 16, 1944, when he was awakened by Colonel Carleton. He had a message from General Clark that relieved Truscott of command of the 3rd Infantry Division and appointed him deputy commander of the VI Corps. 

Truscott arrived at the VI Corps headquarters to find Lucas and his staff concerned over the latest German counterattack, which threatened to push the Allies into the sea. He observed that there seemed to be “a feeling of desperation, of hopelessness” prevalent in the headquarters. “My optimistic assurance that nothing ever looked as bad on the ground as it did on a map at headquarters did little to dispel the pall-like gloom.” Truscott contacted the division commanders, learned the situation, and was satisfied that each had done all he could, and that in fact, the situation was not as bad as first feared.

Troops of 15th Regiment disembarking at Anzio

 

A few days later, Clark visited the beachhead and invited Truscott to accompany him on a tour of the frontline units. During the ride, Clark intimated to Truscott that in a few days Lucas would be relieved of command of VI Corps, and that Truscott would replace him. Truscott recalled, “I replied that I had no desire whatever to relieve Lucas, who was a personal friend, and I had not wanted to leave the 3rd Infantry Division for this assignment. I had done so without protest because I realized that some of the command, especially on the British side, had lost confidence in Lucas.”

Continuing as deputy corps commander, Truscott had some ideas to improve the Allied position. He called in the corps artillery officer, Brig. Gen. Carl A. Baehr, and asked how the artillery was employing its guns. Disturbed by what he heard, he called for the 3rd Infantry Division’s artillery operations officer, Major Walter T. (“Dutch”) Kerwin. After Kerwin explained how the division massed its guns against enemy attacks, Truscott ordered him, accompanied by Baehr for authority, to make similar arrangements for all corps and other divisional artillery units.

On February 22, 1944, Clark returned to the beachhead and met with Truscott, ordering him to assume command of VI Corps the next day. Truscott repeated his earlier arguments against relieving Lucas, but was informed that the decision had been made. Later, after Lucas had been informed of his relief by General Clark, Truscott expressed his regrets as to how things turned out. Lucas expressed no hard feeling against Truscott, and the two men remained friends until Lucas’s death.

As corps commander, Truscott had to deal with problems relating to both the American and the British troops under his command. Further, Clark had established an advanced Fifth Army headquarters at the beachhead, and this brought its own problems in assigning space, priorities, and rights of way.

By May, the VI Corps was heavily reinforced and ready to break out of the Anzio beachhead. The original plan had VI Corps striking east to cut the line of retreat of the German Tenth Army. The opening attacks went well, and General Truscott was ecstatic. After viewing the progress of the attacks, he returned to his command post where Clark’s chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Donald W. Brann, was waiting. The new orders required Truscott to turn the bulk of VI Corps north to capture Rome. Only a token force was to be left to try to cut the German escape route.

Truscott “was dumbfounded. I protested that the conditions were not right. This was no time to drive to the northwest where the enemy was still strong; we should pour our maximum power into the Valmontone Gap to ensure the destruction of the retreating German army.” But the orders remained, and Truscott obeyed, participating in one of the war’s most controversial episodes.

With the capture of Rome, the VI Corps stood down for a brief rest. The months of July and August were spent training and planning a new operation, the invasion of southern France. This time Truscott and his VI Corps were under a revived Seventh Army commanded by Lt. Gen. Alexander (“Sandy”) Patch, a veteran of the Pacific War. Allowed to pick his own combat units for the operation, Truscott chose his favorite 3rd Infantry Division and the equally battleworthy 45th Infantry Division, which had fought under his command at Anzio. The third division was the 36th (“Texas”) Infantry Division, which had led the breakout at Anzio. 

Truscott planned and executed Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, with little difficulty. The landings were lightly opposed, and the drive inland began quickly. The push toward the Belfort Gap went as planned, and the Germans were too busy withdrawing to make much of a defensive stand. Things continued to go well as the VI Corps entered the Vosges Mountains near the German border. As winter slowed operations, Truscott was visited by Eisenhower, who told him, “Lucian,  I am going to assign you to organize the Fifteenth Army. You won’t like it, because this Army is not going to be operational. It will be an administrative and training command, and you won’t get into the fighting.”

General Edward H. (“Ted”) Brooks would take over VI Corps while Truscott returned to the United States for a well-earned rest before returning to command the new army. After two years of fighting in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and southern France, General Truscott was finally going home.

3rd Division Patch

 

He thoroughly enjoyed his visit. Besides spending time with his wife, he visited West Point to see his son, Lucian III. As he was preparing to return to Europe, he was suddenly called to Washington. While at the War Department, he learned that the unexpected death of a British senior commander had resulted in a series of promotions and moves that would now affect him. One of the unexpected moves was the promotion of General Clark to command the Fifteenth Army Group in Italy. That left a vacancy in command at Fifth Army. General Marshall asked Truscott, “How do you feel about going back to Italy?” Surprised, Truscott replied, “Sir, I will do the best I can wherever you wish to send me.”

 

Taking his faithful staff, Truscott assumed command of the Fifth Army in Italy. With 300,000 soldiers under its command, including at various times Britons, South Africans, Polish, New Zealanders, Brazilians, and soldiers of other nationalities, Truscott’s Fifth Army pushed against the new German Winter Line, captured Bologna, broke the back of German resistance at the Gothic Line, and pushed into the Po River Valley, dispersing the German Tenth and Fourteenth Armies. It was a part of the force that accepted the first surrender of a German army group in World War II when Army Group C surrendered to Allied forces in Italy.

With the defeat of Germany, Truscott returned to Texas and then volunteered for the war in the Pacific. He was assigned to a group of high-ranking officers who were directed to visit China and prepare to serve there until the defeat of Japan. But even as the group was conducting inspections, Japan surrendered. The war was over. His assignment to command a group of Chinese armies against Japan was moot.

Returning to Italy, Truscott learned that Fifth Army headquarters was to become inoperative. He said goodbye to his faithful staff and decided to visit his friend Patton, then on occupation duty in Germany. Expecting to be sent home to an unknown assignment, Truscott was suddenly caught up in another of Patton’s indiscretions. As he was making the rounds of farewells, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, caught up with him. Eisenhower wanted to see him immediately. Truscott reported to Eisenhower and learned that he was to replace Patton as commander of the Third Army. For the final time, Truscott protested, but agreed that for the good of the service Patton had to go.

The exchange between two longtime friends went without rancor. When introducing Truscott to the Third Army, Patton said, “A man of General Truscott’s achievements needs no introduction. His deeds speak for themselves.” And so they did.

Campaigns Of 3rd Division during World War II

 

As the commander of the Third Army on occupation duty, Truscott was faced with new challenges. Tens of thousands of displaced persons needed caring for. He became involved in Cold War politics when, for reasons of their own, some Americans claimed that the Army was abusing or neglecting these unfortunate people. Alerted to the coming storm, Truscott invited newspaper reporters to visit the camps and report accurately on the conditions. Additionally, he was responsible for the trials of Nazi war criminals. He also was responsible for opening a university program for refugees under the auspices of the United Nations. Many who knew him were surprised at his rapid adjustment from combat leader to government administrator.

In early 1946, General Truscott received word that Sarah was seriously ill at Walter Reed Army Hospital. He remained home for 10 days, until he was convinced Sarah was getting well. On the return flight to Germany, he became ill. An electrocardiogram indicated a heart attack, and the doctor ordered several weeks of bed rest. Told that his condition was not improving, Truscott retired on September 30, 1947, after 30 years in the United States Army. He later briefly served as a deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Promoted to the rank of four-star general on the retired list, Lucian King Truscott, Jr., died at the age of 70 on September 12, 1965.

 

 Suggested Reading: 

Command Missions: A Personal Story -- Lucian K. Truscott 

The Last Cavalryman: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. -- Harvey Ferguson 

Dogface Soldier: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. -- William Keefner 

 

 

 

 

The Battle Of Cowpens -- January 17th, 1781 "Give Them The Bayonet"

 

 

By 1780 the British— stymied in their efforts to put down the rebellion of their American colonies by destroying George Washington’s Continental Army in New York and New Jersey—had switched to a “Southern strategy.” By subduing Georgia and the Carolinas, they hoped to rally what they imagined was the Loyalist majority there before turning in due course toward Virginia and points north to defeat Washington. Back in December 1778, British forces had taken Savannah, Georgia, and then in 1780, British General Henry Clinton had moved to capture Charleston, South Carolina, in May before he sailed off to New York City. Clinton left Lord Charles Cornwallis in charge of the day-to-day fighting. 

The British remained in control of much of the area, handing American General Horatio Gates a humiliating defeat at Camden, South Carolina, in August 1780. The Continental Congress had appointed Gates without consulting George Washington, despite obvious friction between the two generals. After Gates’ cowardly retreat at Camden, Congress allowed Washington to appoint the skilled and courageous Nathanael Greene as Gates’ replacement to command the Southern forces.

Thin, polite and bookish, Greene had been a Quaker ironmaster from Rhode Island before he got caught up with the American radicals in 1773. In his 30s, the former pacifist became a regular at Henry Knox’s Boston bookstore, where he quenched his thirst for military history and expanded his study of tactics. 

He went on to serve in the Rhode Island Assembly. After helping to raise a regiment, Greene, despite some initial distrust of him among the rank and file because of a pronounced limp (of unrecorded origin), had become brigadier general of the Rhode Island militia. He attracted the attention of General Washington during the siege of Boston in 1775. Washington, who appreciated Greene’s intelligence, grit, energy and even temper, also realized Greene had the essential military ability to see what was wrong and fix it on the fly. As he rose in Washington’s estimation, he rose in rank. He was a major general when Washington asked him to accept the Southern command.

Before Greene’s arrival in the Southern theater, Cornwallis had driven the American army from South Carolina and was well on his way to taking North Carolina as well. Accompanied by Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton, who headed up the British Legion (a Tory unit) and the regular light infantry, and Major Patrick Ferguson, who headed the Tory militia, Cornwallis took Charlotte, N.C., at the end of September. The colonel was dubbed “Bloody” or “Butcher” Tarleton for his habit of turning his Tory troops loose on Patriot prisoners of war, who were given what the rebels called “Tarleton’s quarter,” which was no quarter at all. Americans fighting on both sides, especially in the Carolinas, often were frontiersmen, and the Revolution in the South displayed all the bitter slaughter of a civil war.

In early October 1780, Cornwallis’ advance was halted by tough Scots-Irish settlers from over the mountains in what is today Tennessee. After the defeat at the Battle of Kings Mountain, the British general pulled his troops back down into South Carolina, ending (though no one then realized it) Tory influence in North Carolina once and for all. Nevertheless, as Greene became aware immediately upon his arrival in North Carolina in December, Cornwallis’ army outnumbered the Americans by a ratio of 3-to-1. Greene therefore continued the guerrilla tactics that had proved effective so far. As he described it, “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”

Greene dispatched the best commander he could find, Daniel Morgan, to harass British positions in the western wilderness of South Carolina while Greene himself supported operations (most of them mounted by partisans) in the north-central portion of the state. By thus dividing his forces in the face of a superior enemy, he violated one of the major tenets of military strategy. But ultimately his plan worked, which sparked a debate among military historians ever afterward about whether he was brilliant or just lucky, which in military matters—as Napoleon Bonaparte pointed out—may amount to the same thing.

General Daniel Morgan

 

Born in New Jersey around 1735, Morgan had been a teamster in Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock’s army during the French and Indian War, which is where he met and befriended the young George Washington. Having distinguished himself at the 1777 Battle of Saratoga, Morgan retired in 1779, infuriated—as were Greene and Benedict Arnold—by Congress’ penchant for ignoring good commanders and promoting dunderheads. Greene stuck it out, Arnold turned traitor and the “Old Wagoner” took up farming. After the debacle at Camden, Morgan swallowed his pride and returned to the Continental Army as a brigadier general.

 

 

On January 16, 1781, Morgan, commanding 1,000 men, learned that Tarleton was nearby with 1,100 Tories and regulars. Understanding that retreat from the justly feared Tarleton would prompt his militia to disband and go home, Morgan decided both to fight it out and to arrange matters so that the militia could not run. He would make his stand at a place called Cowpens, little more than a backwoods cow pasture in northwest South Carolina.

It looked as if he’d chosen to fight in a trap. The plain he held was dotted with widely spaced trees that would prove no hindrance to the maneuverings of Tarleton’s superior horsemen. At his back lay the Broad River, which cut off any avenue of retreat. For the militia, who—as Morgan pointed out—might otherwise have vanished in the local bogs, the battle would be do or die. In another unconventional move, Morgan put his rawest militiamen in the front line, backing them up with seasoned men from Virginia and his veteran Continental troops. Morgan picked about 150 riflemen to form the forward skirmish line. Some 150 yards behind them were the 300 or so Virginia militia under Andrew Pickens. 

And back another 150 yards, on the crest of a hill, lay his main line of 400 Continentals under John Howard. Farthest to the rear, behind another hill, Morgan held his cavalry—conventionally frontline troops—in reserve. These hundred or so horsemen were led by the corpulent but capable William Washington. Washington (a distant relative of George) had won his bona fides in December 1776 at the Battle of Trenton, where he was badly wounded when, then but a captain, he and future president Lieutenant James Monroe led a charge right into the mouth of the enemy’s cannons, which they captured.

According to Morgan’s plan, the sharpshooters on the skirmish line were to open fire only at the last possible minute, when the enemy was within 50 yards. Then they were to aim at the officers—the “men with the epaulets,” Morgan explained. After delivering two volleys, they were to fall back on Pickens’ militia. These more seasoned troops were themselves to fire only two volleys, then retire around the American left and march to the rear of the main line up on the hill. Once behind the main line they were to re-form as a reserve.

Morgan personally informed each of his men about his plan and assured their safety; he did not want them to think the planned withdrawals were retreats and flee in panic. His daring tactics worked. Predictably, Tarleton’s forces charged headlong into battle. His Legion Dragoons rode straight toward the skirmish-line sharpshooters, and the militiamen’s scathing fire blasted 15 of the cavalrymen out of their saddles. As their riderless horses galloped off the field, the accompanying Tory cavalry also fled. 

Nothing Tarleton could say or do persuaded them to reenter the battle. Now the British, badly cut up, moved against the second line, consisting of Pickens’ more seasoned militia. The real test was yet to come. Tarleton’s troops—the 7th Foot, Legion Infantry and Light Infantry—came charging on. If the American militia showed the same reaction to British steel and fled, as it had at Camden, the battle would be over. Pickens’ men, however, stood their ground. They fired, loaded and fired again, sending two volleys into the Redcoat line before shearing off to the left as planned.

Lieutenant Colonel Banistre Tarleton

 

The American militia on the far right had the farthest to swing, and the British 17th Light Dragoons came thundering on them. Then, suddenly, out of the American rear rode William Washington’s horsemen, the cavalry Morgan had held in reserve. They fell on the shocked dragoons, sabers swinging, routing Tarleton’s men and chasing them off as all of Pickens’ militia gained the rear and reformed. 

Meanwhile, the British infantry, still overconfident, had misread Pickens’ orderly withdrawal as a typical militia retreat and came shouting forward against the main line of Howard’s Continentals. Kneeling on the hill, the Americans blasted away at the enemy rushing uphill to meet them. Still, the British came.

 

Tarleton sent in his 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser’s Highlanders, famously ferocious fighters, to his left, where they stretched beyond the American line. Howard saw the problem immediately— he was being outflanked. He called for his right-hand company to face about. But they misunderstood and instead of wheeling and forming a right angle to the main line and then turning to face the Highlanders’ flanking movement, they faced about and marched to the rear, the whole line following their lead.

According to Howard, Morgan came riding up, screaming, “What is this retreat?”

“A change of position to save my right flank,” Howard explained.

“Are you beaten?” Morgan yelled.

Howard snapped back: “Do men who march like that look as though they were beaten?”

Morgan nodded. Seeing that the line was under control, he issued Howard a fragmentary order and, pointing to the rising ground in the rear of the hollow, told him that that was the ground he wished Howard’s troops to occupy.

Meanwhile, Tarleton, like Morgan, misread what was going on. Sensing victory, he chased after the “retreating” troops, ordering Fraser’s 71st Foot to make the all-out sword-and-bayonet charge that was a Highlander tradition. His men broke ranks and ran forward. William Washington, who in chasing off the dragoons had advanced ahead of the American lines (not an unusual place for him to be), saw the poor order and the British confusion. He sent a message to Morgan: “The’re [sic] coming on like a mob. Give them one fire, and I’ll charge them.”

 

Morgan gave the order to the Continentals. They faced about and blasted away. Tarleton’s line, such as it was, crumpled, and Howard shouted, “Give them the bayonet.” Taking advantage of the confusion, Morgan ordered Pickens’ troops, who had returned to the American rear and re-formed, to swing around and behind Tarleton’s left while he ordered his cavalry around to the rear of Tarleton’s right. It was a classic double envelopment. Deep in the Southern wilderness, whether he knew it or not, Morgan had emulated the tactics used by the great Carthaginian General Hannibal to defeat the Romans at Cannae in southwest Italy in 216 BC during the Second Punic War.

The Americans cheered as they rushed forward with their blades just as Washington’s cavalry thundered down on the enemy’s flank and rear, and Pickens’ re-formed militia hit the Highlanders and cut them to shreds. The Battle of Cowpens was over. During the course of the fighting, there had been an inconclusive mounted skirmish between Tarleton and Washington, when the latter—once again ahead of his horsemen—was set upon by Tarleton himself and some of his mounted dragoons. Washington’s orderly deflected the sword attack of one dragoon while another, possibly Tarleton, shot Washington’s horse out from under him and then rode off.

At least those out front with Washington claimed it was Tarleton. Certainly the callow and cruel “Butcher” would have been hard to miss with his brilliant plumed helmet and bright green uniform as he slipped away, leaving behind nearly total defeat. Nine-tenths of his force had been destroyed: 100 killed, 229 wounded, 600 more captured. Of the 66 British officers engaged, 39 died. In contrast, only 12 Americans were killed and 60 more wounded. Little wonder Morgan’s victory inspirited the Americans.

Almost immediately, Tarleton began the litany of blame on others—his men, his cavalry, his commander Cornwallis— that appeared in his memoirs. He certainly never admitted the truth that he was totally surprised by the tactical genius of old Dan Morgan, America’s backwoods Hannibal, who had given Tarleton, as Morgan wrote a friend, “a devil of a whipping.” It was certainly a gem of a battle, and—strategically—it proved a turning point in Nathanael Greene’s war of attrition against Cornwallis.

Trying to recoup quickly, Cornwallis took steps to improve his position after Cowpens. He streamlined his army by jettisoning many supplies as excess baggage and pushed the pursuit of Greene’s army northward into North Carolina, all the way to the Dan River. There, Greene simply took all the boats in the area to cross the river, leaving Cornwallis stranded for the moment on the far shore, desperately short of supplies in a region where, in no small measure due to Cowpens, the support of former Tories was fast drying up. 

At Guilford Courthouse, N.C., on March 15, Greene pulled up to fight, aiming to duplicate Morgan’s success. By the end of the day, although Cornwallis held the field, the British commander had lost a fourth of his army. It was a Pyrrhic victory that led him to abandon the interior of the Carolinas altogether and head for Wilmington, N.C., on the coast.

Although he was reinforced and began a series of raids into Virginia, American opposition stiffened and, hoping in vain for more supplies and reinforcements from General Clinton in New York, Cornwallis eventually retreated to Yorktown, Va., arriving in August. In the meantime, George Washington was moving the bulk of his Northern forces south to link up with Greene’s army and surround Yorktown on land while the French navy, under Admiral François Joseph Paul DeGrasse, arrived to begin a naval blockade of the city. Finding himself boxed in, Cornwallis officially surrendered on October 19, 1781, ending the last major campaign of the American Revolution.

 

Suggested Reading: 

 A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens -- Lawrence E. Babits 

Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life -- Albert Louis Zambone 

Kings Mountain and Cowpens: Our Victory Was Complete -- Robert W. Brown 

American Hannibal -- Jim Stempel 

The Fight For Hue City -- January 31st - March 2nd, 1968 "General Offensive-General Uprising"

 

 

The city of Hue was the capital of a unified Vietnam from 1802 until 1945. With its stately, tree-lined boulevards, Buddhist temples, national university, and ornate imperial palace within a massive walled city known as the Citadel, Hue was the cradle of the country’s culture and heritage. As late as 1967, Hue remained an open city, unscathed by the various wars that since World War II had raged up and down the Indochinese peninsula. But when Communist leaders in North Vietnam felt compelled to alter their strategy and launch a massive offensive in South Vietnam in early 1968, Hue suddenly found itself the focus of some of the heaviest fighting of the Vietnam War.

Stung by reversals on southern battlefields and fearful of an American invasion of their homeland, North Vietnam’s Politburo members voted to abandon protracted-war tactics and mount a three-phase general offensive that would reverse the course of the war against the South Vietnamese and their American allies. When Defense Minister and Chief of Staff General Vo Nguyen Giap, vanquisher of the French in 1954 after a brutal eight-year war, voiced opposition to the offensive, command was given to General Nguyen Chi Thanh, leader of Communist Viet Cong guerrilla forces in South Vietnam. When Thanh died unexpectedly, Giap reassumed command and rapidly massed six North Vietnamese Army infantry divisions in South Vietnam’s northernmost province, Quang Tri.

In the fall of 1967, Giap launched a series of big battles near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that had two objectives: draw American forces north, away from the heavily populated coastal and lowland cities, and determine if the Americans would respond with an invasion of the north. A massive buildup of Communist troops and equipment in the south began. General William Westmoreland, commander of allied ground forces in South Vietnam, responded by sending more troops and firepower into the northern provinces, but he did not launch an invasion of Laos or North Vietnam. 

This gave Giap the confidence he needed to order the winter-spring offensive to proceed. Giap would find Westmoreland a far more tenacious commander than France’s Lt. Gen. Henri Navarre, who had allowed 15,000 of France’s finest troops to be surrounded and destroyed at Dien Bien Phu. Westmoreland, for his part, welcomed Giap’s deployment of sizable forces in outlying, sparsely populated areas where America’s massive firepower could be brought to bear.

The main effort of Giap’s preliminary phase began on January 21, 1968, at Khe Sanh in northwestern South Vietnam, where two NVA divisions lay siege to the U.S. Marine combat base there. Believing the Communists might be trying to achieve another Dien Bien Phu, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that Khe Sanh must be held at all costs. With all eyes on Khe Sanh, the Communists then launched the main offensive in the early morning hours of January 31. Some 84,000 NVA and Vietcong soldiers, brazenly violating the Tet (lunar new year) cease-fire, mounted simultaneous attacks on 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of six autonomous cities, including Saigon and Hue, 64 of 242 district capitals, and 50 hamlets.

With many South Vietnamese soldiers away on holiday leave, the Communists enjoyed widespread early success—even the grounds of the U.S. embassy in Saigon were breached. Within days, however, all of the assaults in the smaller towns and hamlets were turned back. Heavy fighting continued for a while in Kontum Province, Can Tho, Ben Tre, and Saigon, but after a week the offensive, by far the largest of the war to date, had been essentially halted everywhere except for Hue. There, the longest and bloodiest battle of the Tet offensive began to unfold.

 

General Vo Nguyen Giap

The third-largest city in South Vietnam with a wartime population of 140,000, Hue was located astride National Highway 1 just west of the coast, about 50 miles south of the DMZ, on one of the principal land-supply routes to allied troops. One-third of the city’s citizens lived north of the Perfume River in the Citadel. Just outside the walls of the Citadel to the east was the densely populated district of Gia Hoa. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Citadel was an imposing fortress, covering three square miles with a labyrinth of readily defensible positions protected by an outer wall 30 feet high and up to 90 feet thick. Many parts of the wall were honeycombed with bunkers and tunnels built by Japanese occupiers during World War II. At the south end of the Citadel lay another enclave, the Imperial Palace compound, a square with 20-foot-high walls that measured 800 yards per side.

The 1st ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) Division, commanded by Brig. Gen. Ngo Quang Truong, was headquartered in the fortified Mang Ca compound in the northeast corner of the Citadel. Unfortunately for Truong, who was regarded by many American advisers as one of the ablest senior commanders in the South Vietnamese armed forces, over half his division was on holiday leave and out of the city when the Tet offensive erupted. Most of Truong’s remaining units were spread out along Highway 1 from Hue north toward the DMZ. The closest South Vietnamese unit was the 3rd ARVN Regiment, with three battalions, five miles northwest of Hue. The only combat unit inside the city was the division’s Hac Bao Company, known as the Black Panthers, an elite all-volunteer unit that served as the division’s reconnaissance and rapid-reaction force. Security within the city was the responsibility of the National Police.

South of the river and linked to the Citadel by the six-span Nguyen Hoang Bridge, over which Highway 1 passed, lay the New City. This modern section was about half the size of the Citadel and included about two-thirds of the city’s population. It contained the hospital, provincial prison, Hue University, government administration buildings, and the MACV (U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam) compound, which housed 200 American and Australian military advisers to the 1st ARVN Division. The advisers were the only allied military presence in Hue when the battle began. Their lightly fortified compound lay on the eastern edge of the city just south of the Nguyen Hoang Bridge.

The nearest U.S. combat base was at Phu Bai, eight miles south on Highway 1. Phu Bai was a major Marine Corps command post and support facility, home to Task Force X-Ray, a forward headquarters of the storied 1st Marine Division. Commanded by Brig. Gen. Foster LaHue, assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division, the task force consisted of two Marine regimental headquarters and three battalions—the 5th Regiment, with two battalions; and the 1st Regiment, with one battalion. LaHue and most of the troops had only recently arrived in Phu Bai from Da Nang and were still getting acquainted with their area of operations when the attack on Hue began. There were U.S. Army units in the area as well. Two brigades of the elite 1st Air Cavalry Division (Airmobile), including the 7th and 12th Cavalry Regiments, were scattered over a wide area from Phu Bai in the south to Landing Zone (LZ) Jane just below Quang Tri in the north. The 1st Brigade of the famed 101st Airborne Division, recently attached to the 1st Cavalry Division, had recently arrived at Camp Evans, north on Highway 1 between Hue and Quang Tri.

Opposing the allied troops in the region were at least 8,000 well-trained, well-equipped Communist soldiers. The majority were NVA regulars armed with a vast array of weapons, including brand-new AK-47 assault rifles, RPD machine guns, B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, rockets, mortars, and recoilless rifles. The NVA were backed by six Vietcong main force battalions, including the 12th and Hue City Sapper Battalions (a typical VC main force battalion numbered between 300 and 600 veteran, skilled soldiers). The Communists had prepared extensive plans for the assault on Hue, which would be directed by General Tran Van Quang, commander of the B4 (Tri Thien-Hue) Front. The plan called for a division-sized assault on the city while other units cut off access to block allied reinforcements.

With detailed information on civil and military installations within Hue, the Communists divided the city into four tactical areas and prepared a list of 196 specific targets. Communist assault troops received intensive training in urban warfare tactics before the offensive began. Vietcong cadres also prepared detailed lists of “cruel tyrants and reactionary elements” to be rounded up during the early hours of the attack. The list included South Vietnamese government and military officials, civil servants, American civilians, educators, clergy, foreigners, and other so-called “enemies of the people” who were to be relocated into the jungle outside the city once they were apprehended. The Communists were well aware that the bad weather that traditionally accompanied the northeast monsoon season would hamper allied aerial resupply operations and close air support, which would otherwise have given the allies in Hue a significant advantage.

A wave of premature attacks—possibly launched because North Vietnam’s calendar differed from South Vietnam’s—began shortly after midnight on January 30-31. All five provincial capitals in II Corps and the city of Da Nang in I Corps were attacked. The Vietcong assaults began with mortar and rocket attacks, followed by massed ground assaults by battalion-sized units backed in some areas by NVA regulars. The attacks were not well coordinated, and by daylight almost all the Communist attackers had been driven from their objectives. Although American forces were placed on maximum alert and similar orders were issued to all ARVN units, the allies still responded without any real sense of urgency. Orders canceling leaves came too late or were disregarded. At 3 am on January 31, NVA and Vietcong forces launched a countrywide general offensive.

After learning of the premature attacks, Truong still believed the enemy would not attack Hue directly. Accordingly, he positioned his remaining troops around the city to defend outside the urban area. When the Communist attack began, the only regular ARVN troops inside the city were the Black Panther Company, guarding the Tai Loc airstrip at the northwestern corner of the Citadel. Large numbers of Vietcong guerrillas had already infiltrated the city, mingling with the throngs of people who had come to Hue for Tet. In the early hours of January 31, the guerrillas took up positions within the city and waited to link up with NVA and Vietcong assault troops.

Hue City Citadel

 

At 3:40 am, the Communists launched a rocket and mortar barrage from the mountains west of the city and followed it with a three-pronged ground assault. A four-man NVA sapper team, dressed in ARVN uniforms, killed the guards and opened the western gate to the Citadel, allowing the lead elements of the 6th NVA Regiment to enter the old city and launch the main attack. 

 

As Communist fighters poured into Hue, the 800th and 802nd Battalions of the 6th Regiment rapidly overran most of the Citadel. Truong and his staff held off the attackers at the 1st ARVN Division compound, while the Black Panther Company held its position at the eastern end of the airfield. After the 802nd came close to penetrating the 1st Division compound, Truong ordered the Black Panthers to withdraw from the airfield to bolster his defenses at the division compound. Except for the 1st ARVN Division compound, by dawn of January 31 the NVA 6th Regiment held the entire Citadel, including the Imperial Palace.

Across the Perfume River in southern Hue, much the same situation existed. Allied advisers in the MACV compound awoke in the early-morning hours to the sound of bursting rocket and mortar rounds. Grabbing any weapons that were at hand, the advisers were able to successfully repulse the Communist ground assault on the compound, which lacked the cohesion of the attack against the Citadel. After their initial assault stalled, the 4th NVA Battalion of the 804th NVA Regiment, supported by local guerrilla companies and elements of the Hue City Sapper Battalion, maintained a virtual siege of the compound with mortars, rockets, and automatic-weapons fire.

While fighting raged around the MACV compound, two VC battalions took over the Thua Thien Province headquarters, police station, and other government buildings south of the river. At the same time, the NVA 810th Battalion took up blocking positions on the southern edge of the city to prevent reinforcements from that direction. By dawn, the NVA 4th Regiment controlled all of Hue south of the river except for the MACV compound and the LCU (landing craft utility) ramp on the waterfront northeast of the compound. At dawn on January 31, nearly everyone in the city could see the gold-starred, blue-and-red National Liberation Front flag flying over the Citadel. While Communist troops roamed the streets consolidating their gains, political officers marched with them, reading out names from their blacklists and instructing South Vietnamese and foreigners alike to report to a local school for relocation.

At the same time the Communists were attacking Hue, the Marines in Phu Bai had their hands full. Enemy rockets and mortars struck the airstrip, and enemy infantry units hit Marine and South Vietnamese units in the region. LaHue received reports of enemy strikes all along Highway 1 between the Hai Van Pass and Hue. Altogether, the Communists struck 18 targets. At this point, LaHue had little reliable intelligence on the situation inside the city. All he knew was that the 1st ARVN Division and MACV compound had been attacked. Because of Communist mortaring of the LCU ramp in southern Hue, the allies stopped all river traffic into the city.

With only a tenuous hold on his own headquarters compound, Truong ordered his 3rd Regiment, reinforced by two airborne battalions and a troop of armored cavalry, to fight their way into the Citadel from their positions northwest of the city. After encountering intense small-arms and automatic-weapons fire, the units managed to reach Truong’s headquarters, arriving in the late afternoon. Costs were high, including 40 killed and another 91 wounded. Meanwhile, a call for reinforcements had gone out from the embattled MACV compound, but the plea was lost in the confusion caused by the simultaneous attacks. Lt. Gen. Hoang Xuan Lam, commander of South Vietnamese forces in I Corps, and Lt. Gen. Robert Cushman, III Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF) commander, were unaware of the enemy’s true strength inside Hue but were all too aware that reinforcements were needed on both sides of the river.

While Lam and Cushman prepared to reinforce their units in Hue, the Communists moved to prevent those reinforcements from reaching the embattled defenders. The NVA 806th Battalion blocked Highway 1 northwest of Hue, while the 804th and K4B Battalions took up positions in southern Hue and the 810th dug in along Highway 1 south of the modern city. Having received no reliable intelligence to the contrary, LaHue believed only a relatively small Communist force had penetrated Hue as part of a diversionary attack. Thus misled, he sent only one company to deal with the situation. Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines (A/1/1) was ordered to move up Highway 1 from Phu Bai by truck to relieve the surrounded advisers at the MACV enclave.

Heading north, the Marines of A/1/1 were joined by four M48 tanks from the 3rd Tank Battalion. When the convoy crossed the bridge that spanned the Phu Cam Canal into southern Hue, the Marines were hit with a withering cross fire from enemy automatic weapons and B40 rocket fire. The convoy was finally halted by the intense Communist resistance between the canal and the river short of the MACV compound. With Company A pinned down, Lt. Col. Marcus Gravel, battalion commander of 1/1, organized a reaction force made up of himself, officers from his command group, and G Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines. The relief force pushed north up Highway 1, reinforced by two self-propelled 40mm guns. Meeting light resistance, the force linked up with A/1/1 and, with the aid of four tanks and the 40mm guns, the combined Marine force fought its way to the MACV compound, arriving at 3:15 pm. Ten Marines were killed and 30 wounded.

Troops advancing in Hue, clearing Neighborhoods

 

Gravel received orders from LaHue to cross the Perfume River with his two companies and push through to the 1st ARVN Division compound in the Citadel. Leaving Company A behind to help defend the MACV compound, Gravel took Company G, backed by three of the original M48 tanks and several others from the ARVN 7th Cavalry Squadron, and moved out to comply with LaHue’s orders. Leaving the tanks on the southern bank of the river to provide direct fire support, Gravel and his small group of Marines attempted to cross the Nguyen Hoang Bridge. Another 10 Marines were killed or wounded as the relief force encountered a hail of machine-gun fire from a position at the north end of the bridge.

Two Marine platoons made it across the bridge and turned left, paralleling the river along the Citadel’s southeast wall. They immediately came under heavy fire from AK-47 rifles, machine guns, B40 rockets, and recoilless rifles from the walls of the Citadel. With his outnumbered force pinned down, Gravel was forced to withdraw. After two hours of intense fighting, the company made it back to the bridge, and by 10 pm the 1st Battalion had established defensive positions and a helicopter landing zone near the MACV compound along a stretch of the river. A third of the men in Company G had been killed or wounded.

With Truong fully occupied in the Citadel north of the river, Lam and Cushman agreed that ARVN forces should be responsible for clearing the Citadel and the rest of Hue north of the river, while Task Force X-Ray would take responsibility for the southern part of the city. Since the palace and historical buildings in the city were sacred to the Vietnamese people, the commanders imposed limitations on the use of artillery and close air support to minimize collateral damage, a decision that would lead to difficulties. Eventually, the restrictions would be lifted when it was realized that artillery and air support were needed to dislodge the tenacious Communist defenders from the city.

Cushman moved to reinforce Hue and seal off the enemy inside the city. On February 2, the 1st Air Cavalry Division’s 3rd Brigade was given the mission of blocking enemy approaches into the city from the north and west. The brigade airlifted the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry, into an LZ six miles northwest of Hue on Highway 1. By February 4, the cavalrymen had moved across country from the LZ and established a blocking position on a hill overlooking a valley four miles west of Hue that provided excellent coverage of the main enemy routes into and out of the city.

Meanwhile, the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry conducted search-and-clear operations along suspected enemy routes west of Hue. On February 7, they made contact with an entrenched NVA force and tried for 24 hours to expel the Communists. The enemy forces, however, stymied the cavalry’s advance with heavy automatic-weapon and mortar fire. For the next 10 days, the two air cavalry battalions engaged in heavy fighting with the entrenched enemy forces. Although they were unable to dislodge their foes, the cavalry units partially blocked the enemy’s movement and kept the NVA units from taking part in the battle raging within Hue.

The task of getting allied reinforcements into Hue was made more difficult by a change in the weather on February 2. Temperatures fell into the 50s and heavy rain began falling. Gravel’s Marines were ordered to attack and recapture the Thua Thien Province headquarters building and prison, located six blocks west of the MACV enclave. Gravel launched a two-company attack supported by tanks, but the Marines immediately ran into trouble. Heavy sniper fire erupted, along with 57mm recoilless rifle fire, which knocked out one Marine tank. The assault was stopped cold, with the Marines falling back to their position near the MACV building.

LaHue now realized that he had vastly underestimated the strength of the enemy forces south of the river. He called in Colonel Stanley Hughes, new commander of the 1st Marines, and gave him overall tactical control of U.S. forces in the southern part of the city. Assuming control of the battle, Hughes promised Gravel reinforcements and ordered him to conduct “sweep and clear operations to destroy enemy forces, protect U.S. nationals, and restore that [southern] portion of the city to U.S. control.” Accordingly, Gravel ordered Company F, 2/5, to relieve a MACV communications facility near the U.S. consulate that had been surrounded by Vietcong guerrillas. After fighting all afternoon and losing three men killed and 13 wounded, the Marines were unable to reach their objective, taking up night defensive positions and waiting for the morning to renew the attack.

MACV Compound

 

The next day, with additional reinforcements, the Marines finally relieved the MACV radio facility late in the morning. After three more hours of intense fighting, they reached the Hue University campus. During the night, enemy sappers had destroyed the railroad bridge over the Perfume River west of the city but had left untouched the bridge across the Phu Cam Canal. 

 

At 11 am, Company H, 2/5, commanded by Captain Ron Christmas, formed a convoy and crossed the bridge over the canal, backed by two U.S. Army trucks mounted with quad .50-caliber machine guns as well as two Marine “Ontos”’ tracked vehicles, each armed with six 106mm recoilless rifles. As the convoy neared the MACV compound, it came under heavy enemy machine-gun and rocket fire, and it responded with heavy fire of its own. Soon, H Company joined Gravel at his position near the MACV building. The NVA and VC gunners continued to pour machine-gun and rocket fire into the Marine positions. At the end of the day, two Marines had been killed and 34 wounded.

On the afternoon of February 2, Hughes decided to move his command group from Phu Bai into Hue, where he could more directly control the battle. Accompanying Hughes in the convoy was Lt. Col. Ernest Cheatham, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, who had been sitting frustrated in Phu Bai while three of his companies—F, G, and H—fought in Hue under Gravel’s command. Hughes quickly established his command post in the MACV compound. The forces at his disposal included Cheatham’s three companies from 2/5 and Gravel’s depleted battalion consisting of A Company, 1/1; a provisional company made up of one platoon of B Company, 1/1; and several dozen cooks and clerks who had been sent to the front to fight alongside the infantry.

Hughes directed Gravel to anchor the left flank with his battalion to keep the main supply route open. He then ordered Cheatham’s three companies to attack south from the university toward the provincial headquarters, telling Cheatham to “attack through the city and clean the NVA out.” Cheatham devised a plan for his battalion to move west along the river from the MACV building, attacking with Companies F and H in the lead and G Company in reserve. He soon found that the plan, though simple, was extremely difficult to execute. The distance from the MACV enclave to the confluence of the Perfume River and the Phu Cam Canal was almost 11 city blocks, each of which the enemy had transformed into a fortress that would have to be cleared building by building, room by room. The last time American Marines had been involved in urban combat had been in Seoul during the Korean War in 1950.

The Marines launched their advance toward the treasury building, but made slow progress. Each time they tried to advance, they were hit with a withering array of mortar, rocket, machine-gun, and small-arms fire from prepared positions in the buildings to their front. The Marines simply did not have enough men to deal with the entrenched enemy. By the evening of February 3, they had made little progress and were taking increasing casualties. The next morning, Hughes met with his two battalion commanders. He told Cheatham to continue the attack and Gravel to secure Cheatham’s left flank with his battalion, which now had only one company left after the previous day’s fighting. 

As Gravel ordered his Marines into position, they first had to secure the Joan of Arc school and church. His men immediately ran into heavy enemy fire and began fighting house to house. Eventually, they secured the school, but they continued taking fire from enemy gunners in the church. Reluctantly, Gravel gave the order to fire on the church, and Marines pounded the building with mortars and 106mm recoilless rifle fire, finally killing off or driving away the defenders.

Snipers using a Winchester Model 70 Rifle

 

With Gravel’s men in position to screen his left flank as far as the Phu Cam Canal, Cheatham began his attack at 7 am on February 4. It took 24 hours of heavy fighting just to reach the treasury building. Attacking the rear of the building after blowing holes through adjacent courtyard walls with 106mm recoilless rifle fire, the Marines finally recaptured the treasury. 

 

Faced with rapidly deteriorating weather, the Marines found themselves in a nightmarish room-by-room, building-by-building struggle to clear an 11-block area south of the Perfume River. Small groups of Marines moved doggedly from house to house, blowing holes in walls with rocket launchers and recoilless rifles, then sending in fire teams and squads to clear each building room by room.

Progress was slow and costly. On February 5, Christmas’s H/2/5 Marines recaptured the Thua Thien provincial capital building after a particularly vicious battle. Using tanks and 106mm recoilless rifles mounted on mechanical mules (flat-bedded, self-propelled carriers about the size of a jeep), the Marines advanced against heavy automatic-weapon, rocket, and mortar fire. Using their own mortars and CS gas, a crowd-control agent, the Marines overwhelmed the defenders in mid-afternoon. The provincial headquarters had served as the command post of the NVA’s 4th Regiment, and with its loss the Communist defense south of the river began to falter.

Despite the Marines’ quick adaptation to street fighting, it was not until February 11 that the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines reached the confluence of the Perfume River and the Phu Cam Canal. Two days later, the Marines crossed to the western suburbs of southern Hue, aiming to link up with troopers of the 1st Cavalry and 101st Airborne who were moving toward the city. By February 14, most of Hue City south of the river was in American hands, but mopping-up operations would take another 12 days due to continued sniper, rocket, and mortar fire. The fight for southern Hue cost the Marines 38 dead and 320 wounded; the bodies of over 1,000 NVA and VC soldiers were strewn about the city south of the river.

While the Marines fought house to house to retake the southern part of the city, heavy fighting north of the river continued. Despite the efforts of the American units trying to seal off Hue from outside reinforcement, Communist soldiers and supplies continued to flow into the Citadel from the west and north and even on boats coming down the river. On February 1, the 2nd ARVN Airborne Battalion and the 7th ARVN Cavalry recaptured the Tay Loc airfield, but only after suffering severe casualties and the loss of 12 armored personnel carriers. Later that day, Marine helicopters ferried part of the 4th Battalion, 2nd ARVN Regiment, into the Citadel from Dong Ha. Once on the ground, the ARVN attempted to advance but found the going difficult. By February 4, their advance north of the river had essentially stalled among the houses, alleys, and narrow streets adjacent to the Citadel wall, leaving the Communists still in possession of the Imperial Palace and most of the surrounding area.

On the night of February 6-7, NVA troops counterattacked and forced the ARVN troops to pull back to the airfield. At the same time, the NVA rushed additional reinforcements into the city. Truong responded by redeploying his units, ordering the 3rd ARVN Regiment to move into the Citadel and take up positions around division headquarters. By the evening of February 7, Truong’s forces inside the Citadel included four airborne battalions, the Black Panthers, two armored cavalry squadrons, the 3rd ARVN Regiment, the 4th Battalion of the 2nd ARVN Regiment, and a company from the 1st ARVN Regiment. Despite the heavy buildup of forces, Truong’s units still failed to make any headway against the dug-in North Vietnamese, who had burrowed deeply into the walls and the tightly packed buildings. It seemed that nothing could stem the flow of Communist reinforcements moving into the city.

With his forces stalled, Truong appealed to the Americans for help. On February 10, Cushman ordered LaHue to send a Marine battalion to the Citadel. The next day, after LaHue ordered Major Robert Thompson’s 1st Battalion, 5th Marines to move to the northern part of the city, Marine helicopters lifted two platoons of Company B/1/5 into the ARVN headquarters complex inside the Citadel. A day later, Company A and five M48 tanks, along with a third platoon from Company B, made the journey by landing craft across the river from the MACV compound along the moat to the east of the Citadel through a breach in the northeast wall.

MPs help a wounded comrade to Safety

 

The next day, Company C joined the battalion as well. Once inside the Citadel, the Marines were ordered to relieve the 1st ARVN Airborne task force in the southeastern sector. At the same time, two battalions of Vietnamese Marines moved into the southwest corner of the Citadel with orders to sweep west. Aware of the allied buildup, the Communist forces prepared to hold their positions at all costs. The next day, after he conferred with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, Lam authorized allied forces to use whatever weapons were necessary to expel the enemy from the Citadel—only the Imperial Palace remained off limits to artillery and air support.

The mission of the 1/5 Marines was to push their way down the east wall of the Citadel toward the Perfume River, with the Imperial Palace on their right. At 8:15 am on February 13, with heavy rain falling, Company A moved out and followed the wall in the direction of a distinctive archway tower. As the Marines neared the tower, NVA soldiers opened up with rockets and automatic weapons from concealed positions dug into the base of the tower. The thick masonry of the tower’s walls protected the Communist defenders from the heavy fire directed at it. The fresh Marine unit had just arrived, and the men found themselves unfamiliar with city fighting, surrounded by houses, gardens, buildings two and three stories high, and paved roads littered with abandoned vehicles.

After losing 15 killed and 40 wounded, the Marine advance against the south wall stalled; Thompson pulled A Company back and sent in B and C Companies. Once more the Marines were raked by intense small-arms, machine-gun, and rocket fire that seemed to come from every direction. Backed by air strikes, naval gunfire, and artillery support, the Marines inched forward. The fighting within the Citadel proved even more savage than the Marines had encountered in the battle for southern Hue. That night, Thompson requested continued artillery strikes to soften up the area for the next day’s assault.

At 8 am on February 14, the Marines renewed the attack, but made almost no headway against the entrenched Communist defenders. Not until the next day, after Company D, 1/5 was inserted into the fighting by boat, was the wall tower finally recaptured. Six more Marines were killed in action and more than 50 wounded. That night the NVA retook the tower for a short time, but D Company, commanded by Captain Myron Harrington, counterattacked and reclaimed it.

Troops clearing out pockets of NVA & VC resistance in Hue

 

On the morning of February 16, Thompson’s Marines again advanced along the Citadel’s southeastern wall. From that point until February 22, the fighting seesawed back and forth while much of the Citadel was pounded to rubble by close air support and artillery. 

 

Bitter hand-to-hand fighting erupted on many occasions, the defenders occupying row after row of single-story, thick-walled masonry houses jammed close together and backed by solid walls riddled with spider holes and other fighting positions. M48 tanks and Ontos tracked vehicles found it extremely difficult to maneuver in the narrow streets and alleys of the Citadel. 

The Marines’ 90mm tank guns were ineffective against the concrete and stone buildings, their shells often ricocheting off the thick walls. The tank crews switched to concrete-piercing fused shells that resulted in excellent penetration. From that point, the tanks proved invaluable. The savage block-by-block fighting was reducing Hue to ruins. Many enemy troops killed or wounded by the Marines lay where they had fallen, trapped in the rubble of homes and courtyards, attracting rats and dogs. Because of health concerns, the Marines formed details to bury the enemy dead as rapidly as possible.

By February 17, the Marines of 1/5 had suffered 47 killed and 240 wounded in five days of fighting, the battle so intense that U.S. Navy medics and doctors had a difficult time keeping up with the casualties. The next day, his depleted battalion exhausted and almost out of ammunition, Thompson rested his troops in preparation for a renewal of the attack. The following morning, 1/5 began inching forward toward the Imperial Palace, paying dearly for every inch of ground taken.

While the Marines were fighting their way toward the palace, a South Vietnamese Marine task force entered the battle. Beginning at 9 am on February 14, these fresh troops launched their attack from an area south of the 1st ARVN Division headquarters, moving in a westerly direction. Ordered to make a turning movement to the left in order to take the southwest sector of the Citadel, they made little progress, encountering fierce enemy resistance as the two sides engaged in vicious house-to-house fighting. 

In two days, the South Vietnamese Marines advanced fewer than 500 yards. North of the Vietnamese Marine units, the 3rd ARVN Regiment, in the northwest sector of the Citadel, was having problems as well. On February 14, Communist forces broke out of the salient west of the Tay Loc airfield and cut off the 1st Battalion, 3rd ARVN Regiment in the Citadel’s western corner. It would take two days of bitter fighting for the ARVN to break the encirclement.

 

Marines taking a break during the Fighting

The Communist forces were having problems of their own. On the night of February 14, a U.S. Marine forward observer, working with ARVN units inside the Citadel and monitoring enemy radio frequencies, learned that the NVA was planning a battalion-sized attack through the west gate of the Citadel. He alertly called in fire from Marine 155mm howitzers and naval gunfire on preplanned targets around the west gate and the moat bridge leading to it, catching the NVA battalion coming across the moat bridge. 

A high-ranking NVA officer and a large number of reinforcements were killed. U.S. intelligence then learned that the NVA/VC were staging out of a base camp 12 miles west of the city and that reinforcements from that area were entering the Citadel using the west gate. Acting on this information, elements of the 1st Air Cavalry Division launched coordinated attacks on the city from their blocking positions to the west. On February 21, the 1st Cavalry troopers moved up and successfully sealed off the western wall of the fortress, depriving the defenders of incoming supplies and reinforcements and precipitating a rapid deterioration of the enemy’s strength inside the Citadel.

By February 22, the NVA held only the southwestern corner of the Citadel. A fresh U.S. Marine unit, Capt. John Niotis’s Company L, 1/5, was brought in for the final assault on the Imperial Palace. Leading his Marines along the wall and breaching the outer perimeter of the palace, Niotis and his men were hit by devastating fire from the remaining defenders. Niotis pulled his troops back for another assault. While the Marines prepared for their next assault on the imperial city, it was decided, in the name of political expediency, that a South Vietnamese unit should liberate the palace.

On the night of February 23-24 the 2nd Battalion, 3rd ARVN Regiment launched a surprise attack westward along the wall in the southeastern sector of the Citadel. The NVA were caught off guard but quickly recovered. A savage battle ensued, the South Vietnamese valiantly pressing their attack. Deprived of their supply centers to the west, the Communists were forced to pull back. Part of the ground gained by the South Vietnamese was the plot upon which the Citadel flagpole stood. At dawn on February 24, the South Vietnamese flag replaced the Vietcong banner that had flown over the city for 24 days. Later that day, after the 1st ARVN Division reached the outer walls of the Citadel and linked up with elements of the 1st Air Cavalry, the last Communist positions were rapidly overrun by the allied forces and abandoned by the Communists, who fled westward toward sanctuaries in the jungles of Laos.

Grenadier searching for the Enemy

 

On March 2, the battle for Hue, the longest sustained infantry battle of the war to that point, was officially declared over. Losses were high. In 26 days of fighting, the ARVN lost 384 men killed, more than 1,800 wounded, and 30 missing. The U.S. Marines suffered 147 dead and 857 wounded, while U.S. Army units lost 74 dead and 507 wounded. The allies claimed that over 5,000 Communists, whose total forces during the fighting within the city had risen to about 12,000 men, had been killed inside the city and another 3,000 killed in battles in the surrounding areas. Much of the once beautiful city lay in ruins; 40 percent of the city was destroyed and 116,000 civilians were left homeless.

The Tet offensive and its attendant attack on Khe Sanh was a staggering failure for the Communists. Of the 84,000 troops committed to Tet, nearly 58,000 had been killed. The Communists had expected the ARVN to crumble, but it had fought hard and well; nothing resembling a general uprising took place. But although the allies had won a great tactical victory, the Tet offensive turned the tide of the war in favor of the Communists. The offensive created a political crisis within the Johnson administration, which became increasingly unable to convince the American public that the Communists had suffered a devastating defeat. All the optimistic assessments made prior to the offensive by the Pentagon and the administration came under heavy criticism and ridicule. On March 31, Johnson stunned the American people by announcing that he would not run for reelection. Moreover, he was severely curtailing the bombing of North Vietnam and would pursue peace negotiations with the enemy, virtually admitting that the war had been lost.

Even the North Vietnamese admitted they had suffered a terrible defeat—more Communist soldiers died in 1968 than did American soldiers during 10 years of involvement. The Communist strategy of bringing local VC cadres into the streets resulted in an unmitigated disaster. Instead of sparking a countrywide insurrection, it ended up a bloodbath, virtually destroying the Vietcong infrastructure in the south and eliminating the VC as an effective fighting force.

Troops taking a break during the vicious fighting for Hue

 

The keys to the failure of the general uprising were easy to discern: Hanoi had underestimated the mobility and vastly superior firepower of the allied forces; Hanoi’s battle plan was too complex and difficult to coordinate; and instead of concentrating their forces on a few specific targets, they attacked everywhere, resulting in their forces being defeated piecemeal. After the catastrophe, NVA General Tran Van Tra stated bluntly: “We did not correctly evaluate the specific balance of forces between ourselves and the enemy, did not fully realize that our capabilities were limited, and set requirements that were beyond our actual strength.”

Hanoi, however, soon realized that its huge sacrifices had not been in vain. Tran Do gave some insight into how defeat was transformed into victory: “In all honesty, we didn’t achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans and their puppets, and this was a big gain for us. As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention—but it turned out to be a fortunate result.” Despite the overwhelming tactical victory achieved by the allies in Hue and on other battlefields throughout South Vietnam, in the end the Tet offensive proved a strategic defeat for the United States. Ironically, the overwhelming victory achieved by the allies in the Tet offensive marked the beginning of the end for the American presence in Vietnam.

 

Suggested Reading: 

The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War -- Doug Stanton 

The Tet Offensive: A Concise History -- James Willbanks 

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam -- Mark Bowden