The Lost Battalion of TET: Breakout of the 2/12 Cavalry at Hue Review

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(More customer reviews)I don't know Mr. Krohn, so I am taking him at his word that he was in the thick of the fight. Surely if that were not true someone would call him on it. He received medals for his actions, and it is a federal crime to falsely claim to have received a medal. So, assuming that his book is accurate, here is my review (also posted for the hardback):
Krohn was the intelligence officer for a battalion of the fabled 1st Cav Air Mobile Division that got caught with its pants down when the NVA staged its surprise attack during the Tet holiday ceasefire. As far as I can tell it was not his fault that the attack came as a surprise. They knew something was coming but not how bad it would be. The division had moved its headquarters and left its big guns behind. When the NVA launched its offensive Krohn's battalion was sent on a march to relieve the Americans in Hue. They left their backpacks with their ponchos and other critical gear behind to be flown in later. They marched into an NVA regiment that was guarding the NVA command and control center for the attack on Hue and were ordered to march across an open field and attack, as the author says much like in the Charge of the Light Brigade. (I am not a vet so please excuse me if I don't have the terms down). Krohn's battalion was surrounded and outnumbered, with limited ammo, food, water and other necessities. The Army which usually provided heavy artillery support couldn't because the tubes were not in place, and when they did arrive the ammo still hadn't come in. Krohn's battalion fought off repeated attacks until they were so weakened they knew they would die if they stayed, and in a heroic night march they slipped through the NVA lines.
Krohn is a talented writer who had a central vantage point to a fiasco. He clearly loves the men he served and suffered with and is bitter, with justification, at the REMF's that let them down. One of his friends in the rear was so enraged at the lack of support that he pulled a .45 on another officer to get supplies out to the field. The battalion suffered 60% casualties. Krohn was discouraged from writing this book because it made the top brass in the division look so incompetent. He wrote it anyway and has done a great service. If Clinton had read it maybe the fiasco recounted in Blackhawk Down would have been avoided, and probably a lot of other similar tragedies that have not yet come to light.
p.s. - I have a friend who was a JAG officer with the Cav and he told me the story years ago about being responsible for moving the law library to Camp Evans just before the Tet Offensive, and when going though Hue seeing sullen military aged men who were not working, just standing around like they were waiting. Of course what he saw were NVA infiltrators. He got through unharmed. He also told me that he saw the men forming up to march to Hue and felt bad for them having to go into the battle.
Bottom line: I think Mr. Krohn has written a very good book that should be studied by Obama and the real REMF's as well as the generals and colonels that send these men into war.


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February 3, 1968: There was no compelling reason for a U.S. infantry battalion to assault a fortified North Vietnamese Army force two hundred yards away with no artillery or air support. The defenders had every advantage....A harrowing firsthand account of one of the earliest and bloodiest engagements of the Tet Offensive, this revised edition of Charles A. Krohn's masterwork of warfare gone tragically wrong remains as vital and incisive as when it first appeared, its lessons more relevant than ever. Why an ill-equipped U.S. infantry battalion was ordered to attack an overpowering North Vietnamese force -- a military foul-up resulting in more than 65 percent casualties for the 2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry -- is the bloodstained mystery Krohn lays bare even after the U.S. Army attempted to wipe the incident from official records. Captured here, too, are the supreme efforts of one bold commander to save the lives of his men and bring the doomed mission back from the brink of total disaster.

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