House to House: Playing the Enemy's Game in Saigon, May 1968 - Hardcover

Just days before the opening of the peace talks, that other shoe finally dropped. While they had no chance of securing victory on the battlefield with their second wave of urban attacks, the communists expected to wreak substantial psychological damage, making apparent to the American public, if not to the U.S. military high command, the folly of fighting a foe that was seemingly immune to combat losses.

The second wave of attacks became known as the Mini-Tet Offensive. The name was a misnomer as far as the intensity of the combat was concerned. Although the communists concentrated on fewer targets than they had during Tet, Mini-Tet was the costliest two-week period of the Vietnam War in terms of American casualties.

Saigon was the Mini-Tet's primary target. In addition to penetrating the Cholon section of the capital, the enemy attacked the capital city's southern suburbs of District 8. In response, four battalions from the 9th Infantry Division were dispatched from their Mekong Delta battlefields to clear out the invaders. The result was a brutal house-to-house street fight.

Tenacious Viet Cong guerrillas dug in like termites, building bunkers inside and between houses, and knocking holes in adjoining walls so snipers could steal unseen from one building to another. There was no provision for retreat; the Viet Cong were on a suicide mission.

On the other side were equally tenacious American infantrymen who had to adapt themselves to city fighting after previously operating in the rice paddies of the Delta. The battle for southern Saigon lasted a week, the U.S. Army's only prolonged urban combat of the entire Vietnam War.

The battle ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division. They had fought with raw courage, earning numerous decorations, including four Distinguished Service Crosses, in the course of pushing the Viet Cong out of District 8. However, in fighting that eerily foreshadows American combat in Iraqi cities, the engaged battalions destroyed the neighborhoods they liberated. This destruction, and the attendant civilian casualties, resulted in an official investigation of the 9th Infantry Division for its sledgehammer application of artillery and air strikes within the capital of South Vietnam.

"'House to House' is the finest description of Vietnam combat, warts and all, in a decade. Exhuastively researched and brutally honest. Read this to understand how tough sustained fighting really is." -- Bing West, author of 'The Village' and 'No True Glory'

"Keith Nolan is an expert on the ground war in Vietnam. 'House to House' is his best work so far. Nolan writes like he was there and hasn't forgotten a single thing." -- Peter Brush, editorial writer for Vietnam Magazine

"Keith Nolan breaks new ground in Vietnam literature with this impressively researched account of the Mini-Tet Offensive. 'House to House' is as ear-grabbing as an AK-47 round whistling overhead." -- Zalin Grant, author of 'Survivors' and 'Over the Beach'

"In 'House to House,' a seminal account of urban warfare, Keith Nolan has surpassed the excellence of his earlier Vietnam battle studies. The book forms a pair with his jungle-combat classic 'Ripcord,' each a masterful blend of small-unit heroism and higher-level military careerism." --Colonel William Hauser, U.S. Army (ret.), author of 'America's Army in Crisis'