Don McCullin to Publish Final Vietnam Book at 90, Revisiting 1968 Hue Battle

Q: How did a supposed 24-hour mission in 1968 trap Don McCullin in a lifelong nightmare that still haunts him every night?

A mission Don McCullin was told would last 24 hours became 11 days inside the 1968 Battle of Huế, one of the longest and bloodiest urban battles of the Vietnam War, and the experience left him permanently traumatized. McCullin entered Huế during the Tet Offensive expecting a brief operation with U.S. Marines. Instead, he was trapped in relentless house-to-house combat, heavy incoming fire, devastated streets and mass civilian suffering. The battle ultimately stretched from late January to early March 1968, with huge casualties on all sides and thousands of civilians killed, making it a defining shock of the war. What haunts him is not only what he photographed, but what he lived through at close range. In Huế he made his famous “Shell-shocked US Marine” image, capturing a soldier so stunned that, McCullin said, he did not even blink across five frames. He also recalled the moment he crossed from witness to participant: after photographing a badly wounded Marine pinned down under fire, he put down his cameras, lifted the man onto his back and carried him to safety along the old medieval wall. McCullin has said Huế “never leaves” him and that he relives the battle every night when he goes upstairs to sleep. That is why he says war photographs should unsettle viewers rather than become comforting icons: for him, Huế was not an assignment that ended after 24 hours, but a personal nightmare that has lasted nearly six decades.

3 articles · Updated · CBS New York · Sep 21

McCullin, 90, says his final book "Vietnam" will draw on thousands of images from his 1960s and early-1970s assignments, including never-before-seen photographs alongside his best-known work.
The retrospective centers on the 1968 Battle of Hue during the Tet Offensive, where he made the haunting "Shell-shocked US Marine" image after what he said became an 11-day ordeal rather than a planned 24-hour operation.
McCullin said the book is meant to unsettle viewers rather than comfort them, arguing war photographs fail if they become too easy to accept as iconic images.
His account also underscores how war photography can collapse distance between witness and participant: after photographing a badly wounded Marine under fire in Hue, he said he put down his cameras and carried the man to safety.
The book arrives as a personal farewell from a photographer who says the battle still haunts him nightly, framing "Vietnam" as both historical record and a final statement on bearing witness.