The Battle for Hue During the Tet Offensive in early 1968, North Vietnamese troops captured the city of Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam, rich with the country’s history and culture. It took nearly a month of brutal house-to-house fighting for U.S. and ARVN troops to retake the city, 80 percent of which had by then been destroyed. Here U.S. Marines are pinned down near the center of Hue. © Bettmann/Corbis.