Khe Sanh, Tet Hue City (1968)

Col. Peter Michael Gish’s grim, stark still life Helmets at Que Sanh II, painted in 1976, tells the story of the sacrifices made by Marines stationed at the combat base in vivid terms.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

Khe Sanh, Tet, Hue City (1968)

Few Marines ever held an exposed outpost longer, under more relentless pounding, than India Company of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, on Hill 881-South.

The wooded terrain feature, the most tactically critical of the hills overlooking the Marine Corps combat base at Khe Sanh, absorbed persistent North Vietnamese shelling and probing attacks throughout the grueling seventy-seven day battle for the western DMZ.

Captain William Dabney’s Marines would lose half their number defending 881-S but never their pride or willful humor.

For several stomach-churning months the reinforced 26th Marines at Khe Sanh occupied the center ring in what became an international circus of politics and propaganda – an epic siege in the late winter-early spring of 1968 following the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive.

Colonel David Lownds commanded more than 6,000 troops in his reinforced regiment and defended a hardsurface runway suitable for the largest multiengine supply planes. Khe Sanh was also well within range of the U.S. Army’s big 175mm guns at Camp Carroll and the Rock Pile. Hundreds of U.S. and Allied attack aircraft and helicopters remained on call in direct support.

Westmoreland identified two compelling reasons to defend Khe Sanh: Provide a killing ground for NVA troops and prevent an NVA flank attack against Dong Ha and Quang Tri City.

Yet unmistakable evidence of a North Vietnamese buildup near Khe Sanh in January 1968 proved worrisome. The NVA had little difficulty infiltrating down the Ho Chi Minh Trail along the Laotian-Vietnam border, then crossing laterally into the hills above Khe Sanh along what the Marines would call the Santa Fe Trail. NVA long-range artillery – heavy stuff, 130mm and 152mm in caliber – began plastering Khe Sanh from safe havens inside Laos.

Using the materials at hand, in this case totally appropriate to the subject, CWO Wendell A. Parks, USMC, created Tank in Hue in 1968 by burning his rendition of the scene into a wooden fuze box.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

When the NVA moved two very good divisions into the high ground above Khe Sanh, then cut the only overland supply road, Westmoreland became convinced that his counterpart in Hanoi, the now-legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap, intended to repeat his 1954 success against the French at Dien Bien Phu against the 26th Marines.

On the other hand, in a shadowy war in which the enemy rarely stood and fought, the defense of Khe Sanh at least provided a “target-rich environment” for Marine gunners and their friends in other services. The bombscarred hills and valleys around the combat base became the ultimate “free fire zone” of the war. Marines would take maximum joy in its good use.

The key features of the Khe Sanh battlefield were these. The combat base encircled the airstrip and overlooked the valley of the Rao Quan River to the north. Downhill from the base on the southern side ran Route 9 – east (now closed by the NVA) to Ca Lu and Dong Ha, west to the village of Khe Sanh, the Special Forces Camp of Lang Vei, and the Laotian border.

Four miles northwest of the combat base sat two hills whose peculiar topography dominated the battlefield, 861 on the right, 881-South on the left. The NVA now occupied 881-North in force.

This was the situation in late January 1968 as the Allied forces drifted toward the annual Tet holiday and the usual cease-fire announcement by the Viet Cong: The 26th Marines, now 6,600 men strong, with plenty of shooters and a superabundance of supporting arms within reach, waited expectantly for the main attack to develop. Both Westmoreland and President Johnson were convinced that Khe Sanh would be Vo Nguyen Giap’s main effort.

The NVA/Viet Cong Tet Offensive struck simultaneously in the dead of night and nowhere with such terrifying suddenness as downtown Saigon. Thousands of enemy troops seemed to pop out of thin air.

Hundreds of towns and villages across South Vietnam – in thirty-six of the nation’s forty-eight provinces – reported large-scale enemy attacks. Hue seemed to have fallen to particularly heavy attack. The country was in an uproar.

Soon combined ground forces of Americans, South Vietnamese, South Koreans, and Australians overcame their shock and methodically threw the Communist troops out of the cities, villages, and hamlets. Only at Hue did the situation remain in doubt. Hue was the ancient imperial capital, the cultural center of South Vietnam, seat of a great university, and site of the Citadel, whose immense brick walls and moats had been built in 1802 by the Emperor Gia Long.

Now 3,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops occupied the city, fortified behind those same brick walls. An enormous Viet Cong flag fluttered from the King’s Knight, the Citadel’s highest parapet.

The Communists seemed to hold the entire city except for two enclaves, the MACV [U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam] compound south of the Perfume River, and the 1st ARVN Division’s command post in the city itself. No one knew how many NVA or VC held the city. The battle for Hue would run twenty-five bloody days. A pair of infantry companies from the 1st and 5th Marines, accompanied by a platoon of tanks, tried bravely to retake control on the second day. The small force fought their way to the American compound, re-formed, then battled their way across the main bridge. The Marines were too few, too light to reach the Citadel, and fell back to the MACV compound to await reinforcements.

Vietnam was also a battle of artillery and supporting arms, especially near the demilitarized zone and at places like Hill 881-S and Khe Sanh. Sgt. Richard L. Yaco, USMC, depicts this side of the war in Music with Guns, 1969, acrylic on masonite.

Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps

Once their force grew to two battalions, the Marines began a street-by-street, house-by-house sweep along the south side of the Perfume River.

This was brutal, savage, heartbreaking fighting at point-blank range. Clearing the south bank and destroying two disciplined NVA battalions took a full week and proved costly.

NVA resistance was so fierce it still took ten days to close on the Citadel.

On February 22, the southeast wall of the Citadel fell to the Marines. The Leathernecks then stepped aside to let ARVN troops make the final assault on the sacred Imperial Palace.

At dawn on February 24, the flag of South Vietnam flew over the scorched and shattered Citadel. A week of mopping up followed before the Battle of Hue was declared over. The protracted fighting had cost the Marines 1,000 casualties; 142 died. The war in the north had gone far past “counterinsurgency.” Tet stunned America. Despite optimism so recently expressed by the Johnson administration and top military commanders, the public now realized that the promised end of the Vietnam War was nowhere in sight. It mattered little that the NVA regulars and VC guerrillas had been soundly beaten everywhere during the Tet uprising.

Within a month the administration began to crumble. Tet had unhorsed the whole caboodle …

Ironically, the only major American site not attacked during the Tet uprising was the Khe Sanh combat base.

For most of the 26th Marines hunkered down at Khe Sanh, the chief hazard was not the sudden sapper attack, scary as that might be, but the nigh-round-the-clock shelling of the compound by NVA gunners. The base was hit night and day by nine-foot-long rockets fired from Hill 881-North, heavy artillery shells fired from Laos, and medium mortar rounds fired from the ubiquitous 82mm tubes that closely surrounded the base.

Despite the protection of bunkers, helmets, and flak jackets, the clouds of whizzing shrapnel too often found human flesh. By the end of the first week of February, one Marine in ten at Khe Sanh had been hit.

Evacuating the critically wounded at Khe Sanh was never easy.

Each day Colonel Lownds had to orchestrate the evacuation of dozens of badly wounded or shell-shocked or acutely ill Marines, as well as the safe delivery of replacements and combat cargo – a staggering 185 tons per day. It was a logistical nightmare, exacerbated by two complex factors, enemy fire and bad weather.

Never in any previous campaign had Marine infantrymen been so lavishly supported by aviators of every stripe and service. On any given day, the skies above Khe Sanh resembled a towering thunderhead of jet aircraft, often 35,000 feet high, the pilots patiently flying holding patterns, cycling ever lower in the queue, as Phantoms, Intruders, Sky Hawks, Crusaders, Thunderchiefs, and Super Sabres sequentially delivered their bombs and rockets.

To their credit, the NVA fighters took all the Allies could dish out and still maintained the pressure on Khe Sanh. Rockets and artillery plastered the combat base relentlessly. On February 23 the base endured the worst shelling of the campaign – 1,307 rounds in eight hours.

And now the NVA siege trenches were getting closer, advancing inexorably 200 to 300 meters each night, reaching like deadly fingers toward the prize airstrip. Marines started listening for the unmistakable sounds of tunnels being dug underneath their lines, expecting anything, expecting the worst.

The heaviest NVA thrust against the compound itself occurred on February 29. Believing this to be the long-awaited main attack, Lownds released every weapon in the DMZ.

The riflemen complained of not having any targets left to shoot after the big guns got through blasting the attackers. There was an abiding sense of having faced and crushed a major challenge.

Ontos on Chu Lai beach search for a defensive position shortly after descending from the landing craft aboard USS Thomaston in June 1965. Although very lightly armored, the Ontos were used heavily in the later fighting in Hue City. The museum’s Ontos is depicted in this setting.

National Archives photo by the U.S. Navy

The siege of Khe Sanh would run its bloody course for several more weeks. Enemy gunners would continue shelling the compound; Marines would die; helicopters would fall spinning from the sky; jets would cartwheel in flames into hillsides; but there would be no more largescale ground attacks.

On Easter Sunday, April 14, the seventy-seven-day siege of Khe Sanh ended exactly where it began – in the contested saddle between the two critical peaks [Hills 881-North and 881-South].

The 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, swarmed up the steep slope under a stunning concentration of indirect and direct supporting fire. The NVA troops had been burrowing into this mountain for months; abruptly many were sealed up in their caves and bunkers for eternity. Those who struggled clear had no time to mount a coherent defense. Wild-eyed Marines were on them with thrusting bayonets. Cold steel wrapped up the fighting.

A Marine shinnied up a shell-shorn tree and tied on a huge American flag. Marines watching intently from every hill and bunker in the highlands cheered.

Subsequent news that the Khe Sanh combat base would be abandoned shocked the nation but surprised few Marines.

Defending Khe Sanh so resolutely cost the Marines 205 dead and 1,668 wounded. Losses among the ARVN, other Allies, and the air crews spiked the figures somewhat higher. But NVA deaths in this meat grinder easily totaled 10,000. They may have suffered 15,000 dead. The disproportionate figures beg the question, “Who was besieging whom?”

In a year of excruciating national despair, in the redbrown mud of this remote outpost, one small flame of duty, honor, and country flickered bravely in the spring rain.