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It is pouring rain. I am standing at the entrance of my hotel in Hue, Vietnam, having just exited my room that smells musty and a sterile hallway that resembles a scientific laboratory. I am keen to get out and explore the city, but am faced with a deluge of water that is cascading off awnings and gushing down the road. I am within sight of the Imperial Enclosure but want to explore the residential area within the Citadel, with its two-metre-thick and ten-kilometre-long walls. After hiring a raincoat, I head off – water sloshing through my sandals. The grey skies lend an oppressive air to the city. This is not surprising when you consider the fact that a fierce and bloody battle played itself out in the city during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Hue was taken over and held by the Communists for several weeks before US troops and the South Vietnamese army combined to regain control. The Citadel was the target of rockets, bombs and hand to hand fighting. Within about a month, approximately 10,000 people, mostly civilians were killed in Hue. I’m not sure if a city can still be grieving forty years after such a loss of life, but that day, it felt as if Hue was. Residents sitting in doorways turned to look at me with eyes that remembered pain, but had not recovered their sparkle. Wherever I wandered in the city, there was a stillness. I could see slices of homes through open doors- TVs murmuring, pots being stirred, children playing, but as if in hushed tones. Maybe the rain was the reason, but I felt a sadness that I have not felt in a city before. As I approached the Perfume River, a man appeared to be selling relics of the war. Apparently, many mass graves, shrapnel and other grisly reminders have been, and are still being dug up within the walls of the city. I do not know if the relics the man sold were genuine. They certainly looked the part. There were rusty water canteens, tattered uniforms and most poignantly of all, identification “dog tags”. Parts of the chains and tags themselves seemed to have been “rubbed” until shiny. I could picture those tags bouncing and swinging on chests whose hearts thumped with fear and adrenaline. I pictured bullets entering those same chests and the life blood pumping out into the streets of this city. I felt an overwhelming urge to buy all those dog tags and post them back to the families who had waited in vain for their loved ones to come home. The raindrops continued to fall, rolling down the cheeks of the city. Hue has loved and lost, and in that moment, I fully felt its pain.