Combat Mission, Episode 8: Hue City on Netflix

 
I ran across an interesting 13 part TV series called Combat Misison that claimed to tell the story of a handful of famous battles of the last half century or so in the words of the participants. It also claimed to talk about little known conflicts.

I was hoping at the time that this might mean something like coverage of the brushfire wars in Africa in the late 20th century, coverage of conflicts in SE Asia, or the ME. I was thinking perhaps that this might include stories of British, French, American, Canadian, South African, and other forces engaged in some of these small wars.

Ah well, that theory didn't work out so well. The battles were all American. Many of them were from the recent engagements in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Vietnam. That's not bad, it's just been done before to my mind. Still, Hollywood produces most of these things, so I suppose an American-centric perspective is inevitable.

I selected the SLA Gunfight in LA as my choice, but apparently my mouse-fu was weak as the Battle for Hue came up. I knew a bit about the battle for Hue from watching other documentaries on it, but I decided to watch anyway.

In the spirit of honest review, I have to say this production had both pros and cons. On the plus side, it did give you a good feeling for the fight for the South side of Hue city and the situation the various Marine units faced as they arrived at Hue, generally unprepared.

The visuals and the first hand accounts of participants (mostly Marines) does give a perspective on the experience that is a little less academic than most documentaries. This brings a certain first-person perspective that has value in understanding how the experience was for its participants.

Also on the plus side, there was a lot of footage and the recreations were not bad either. Unlike the unreality of most Hollywood battle scenarios, where participants are artificially close for cinematic reasons, the sort of urban fighting encountered in Hue did produce exactly this sort of tete-a-tete situation.

One did develop an appreciation for what a role heavy weapons play in urban fighting and the ability to deploy them. One also developed an appreciation for chemical warfare in the form of tear gas as it was employed successfully in urban warfare in this battle. I hadn't realized from prior documentaries there was a chem-war aspect to Hue.

The show did also give one a good feeling for the costs of urban fighting - half the Marines who went into Hue were injured or killed (221 were slain). That gave a clear accounting of the meat-grinder accounting of urban warfare (whether we call it city fighting, MOUT, FIBUA, or whatever term you wish to hang on it).

On the minus side, this documentary was, like many Hollywood products, entirely one sided. There was respect for the toughness of the NVA and their tactical acumen, but there was no first-hand representation of the North Vietnamese side.

I think this is a great failing of many US documentaries; They only present historical events from the American viewpoint. I think this trend helps to foster the idea the other side's perspective is irrelevant which is a bit short-sighted and myopic. They certainly could have used some input from some of the participants on the other side to truly understand this battle.

The episode didn't dwell on the arrival of the Marines in an unprepared state as an intelligence or tactical failure, although it seems like perhaps they should have. If you are brought in as reinforcements to a fight, you should have a better logistical preparation and intelligence appreciation than what those Marines had. That probably could have helped ameliorate the eventually casualty count somewhat.

The episode pay much attention to the ingenuity of coping with the small alleys and courtyards in Hue as much as other documentaries I've seen on the subject did; In those other documentaries, you saw them using these small electric movers (of the sort you might see in airports) and some similar small gas powered vehicle such as jeeps and such to improvise ways to move 106mm Recoiless Rifles to where they were needed on the battlefield.

The episode paid a lot of its attention to the battle for South Hue and then summed up rather quickly in moments by saying the battle went on and the Marines took North Hue and the (presumably) the bridge over the river, but without describing any of that. I think this is a lacking and probably means the episode's name should have been South Hue City as that was really all that was covered in detail. I still don't know what happened to the RVN troops that were cutoff in the compound in North Hue after watching the full episode.

From a technical perspective, some of the show was fairly grainy. I notice that digital streaming (be it Netflix of Satellite) seems to struggle at times with conventional TV (standard def) presented on higher definition hardware.

Whatever technique they have for digitizing seems to not do low or variable light conditions (shadowed faces, lit by reflections, night situations) very well.

I don't know how much of the not-so-laudible visual quality is the digitization, how much is the lighting, how much might be the original copy they have to work from, or how much is Netflix tuning the streaming resolution to manage bandwidth carefully, but I did find it distracting.

Overall, I'd give this a 3.3 out of 5. It dis present some good first-hand accounts and a good picture of the fighting in the South part of the city, so that is certainly a justification for watching it. However, one should realize the gloss over some failures, present a US-centric (or US-only) view on the battle, and the focus is almost exclusively on South Hue city. Worth seeing, but watch with the provisos firmly in mind.