The streets smelled of cordite, burning houses and dead bodies, all under a cold, dark sky and a misty drizzle that French soldiers in the previous war had called “crachin,” or “spit.” Along the wall ahead of us loomed a stone edifice, the Dong Ba Tower, that had been reduced to rubble by artillery, airstrikes, even gunfire from ships off the Vietnamese coast. Still, a few North Vietnamese remained alive and dangerous in the rubble.

It took the Marines several days to breach the wall and enter the Citadel, but the combat didn’t end. The Communists refused to retreat or surrender, which meant that the Marines and South Vietnamese had to clear the city block by block, driving up the casualties on both sides, and among the many civilians unable to flee.

During lulls in the fighting, the Marines would shelter in abandoned houses, eat their combat rations, even shave in broken mirrors. Marines had never seen urban fighting like this, and they wouldn’t again until the Battle of Falluja, almost 40 years later.

On Feb. 19, I was wounded in a blast and had to be evacuated. The battle ended six days later. During the 24 days of fighting for control of Hue, the North Vietnamese and their Communist allies from the south lost 5,000 combatants; the South Vietnamese Army lost around 2,500; and the Americans lost 1,800, including 40 percent of Delta Company. Some 80 percent of the city was destroyed, and untold thousands of civilians died in the crossfire or from Communist reprisals carried out during the occupation.

H.D.S. Greenway, a former reporter and editor at The Boston Globe, is the author of “Foreign Correspondent,” a memoir.