All Eyes on Khe Sanh
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By John T. Correll forward combat base at Khe Sanh land, MACV commander, who persuaded eyes of the nation and the eyes of the entire in January 1968 was rough and tem- President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Joint world—the eyes of all of history itself—are porary, a fortifi ed sprawl of trenches Chiefs of Staff of its value. Westmoreland on that little, brave band of defenders who and sandbag bunkers with a concertina believed in the importance of Khe Sanh, hold the pass at Khe Sanh,” he said. wire perimeter and an airstrip running but he was also using the marines as bait to Khe Sanh was surrounded. The only down the back side. lure the North Vietnamese into a decisive way in or out was by air. The garrison was It was in a mountain valley in a remote set-piece battle. sustained through the siege by airlift and corner of South Vietnam, just below the Such a battle seemed in prospect Jan. airdrop and the NVA—which outnumbered Demilitarized Zone and eight miles from 21 when the North Vietnamese Army the marines by more than four to one— the Laos border. attacked Khe Sanh. It was the precursor came under devastating counterattack by The principal garrison was four US of the Tet offensive and the concurrent air strikes, including carpet bombing by Marine Corps battalions, there at the in- strikes on more than 100 population Air Force B-52s. sistence of Military Assistance Command centers and military installations all over On Feb. 9, the New York Times reported, Vietnam. The marines had been at Khe South Vietnam. “High military offi cials said yesterday that Sanh in varying strength since 1966, but For the next 77 days, Khe Sanh held the United States was prepared to defend they did not share MACV’s assessment the attention of the world as the longest Khe Sanh at all costs.” of its importance. battle of the Vietnam War unfolded there. Khe Sanh not only held; it was also a re- “When you’re at Khe Sanh, you’re not No event during Tet stimulated more news sounding defeat for the North Vietnamese. really anywhere,” said Marine Corps Brig. coverage. Khe Sanh was the subject of They failed to take the base and sustained Gen. Lowell E. English in 1966. “It’s far fully 25 percent of all Vietnam fi lm reports far greater casualties than they infl icted. away from everything. You could lose it on network TV evening news in February However, the tactical US victory occurred and you haven’t lost a damn thing.” and March. in the context of the strategic calamity of The main advocate for holding Khe Johnson kept a scale model of Khe Sanh Tet when US commitment to the Vietnam Sanh was Gen. William C. Westmore- in the White House situation room. “The War disintegrated. A C-130 delivers a skid of supplies to Khe Sanh in a low-altitude parachute ex- traction. Airlift and airdrop kept the base alive while air strikes, including B-52 carpet bombing, held the enemy back. 60 AIR FORCE Magazine / March 2016 Khe Sanh was the Newsweek cover story on March 18. The siege gener- ated more press coverage in the United States than any other aspect of the Tet offensive. By March, Johnson had dropped his can- didacy for reelection, halted the bombing of North Vietnam, and opened negotiations to seek a peaceful settlement to the war. By summer, the United States had aban- doned Khe Sanh, redeployed the forces, and closed the base. In an interview 20 years later, Westmo- reland was asked which of his decisions he was proudest. “The decision to hold Khe Sanh,” he said. GIAP AND HIS LEGEND Everybody on the US side—includ- ing Westmoreland—was certain that Khe Sanh and Tet were the handiwork of North Vietnam’s great military hero, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and that he was attempting to repeat his famous victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu. He was reported to be present at Khe Sanh, personally directing the battle. In fact, Giap had been shunted aside. He opposed the Tet strategy and was not Click Americana Americana Click image USAF photo AIR FORCE Magazine / March 2016 61 even in Vietnam when the operation began. There were defi nite similarities. In 1954, stream that ran parallel with the perimeter, He returned in February 1968 from his the Viet Minh army commanded by Giap but was about 150 yards outside. self-imposed exile in eastern Europe but laid siege for 56 days to Dien Bien Phu, a At the beginning of 1968, the main remained on the sidelines. French army outpost in a remote mountain complement at the combat base was four The driving force behind the Tet of- valley. Land access was cut off and Giap’s Marine battalions that also occupied fensive was Le Duan, fi rst secretary of artillery bombarded the base relentlessly. fi ve hills—designated by their height in the Vietnamese Communist party, who However, there were differences. meters—to the north and west. The Long had managed to marginalize both Giap Whereas Giap controlled the hills at Vei Special Forces camp, several miles and the aging North Vietnamese leader Dien Bien Phu, the marines occupied the away, was defended by four companies of Ho Chi Minh. He recruited Gen. Van Tien key hills around Khe Sanh. The biggest Montagnard irregulars and 24 US Army Dung to implement his strategy. difference was airpower: airlift, airdrop, advisors. Le Duan’s plan was called GO-GU close air support, and heavy bombing. In addition, the Special Forces and a (General Offensive-General Uprising) At Dien Bien Phu, Giap’s artillery closed battalion of South Vietnamese rangers and anticipated that dramatic large-scale the airstrip. At Khe Sanh, airplanes and had their own compound, FOB-3, along attacks would spark a mass uprising to helicopters continued to land during the the south side of the main base and were overthrow the South Vietnamese regime siege. French bombers did little damage further deployed around the eastern end. in Saigon. It supplanted the strategy of Ho in 1954, but the air strikes at Khe Sanh, The marines distrusted indigenous forces and Giap, which emphasized a protracted especially those by the B-52s, were enor- and would not allow the Vietnamese inside struggle. mously effective. their lines. The Special Forces were not “It remains unclear whether Hanoi particularly welcome either. intended Khe Sanh as a diversion to pave THE FOGGY MOUNTAIN TOP Strength estimates for the battle and the way for Tet, or if the countrywide Khe Sanh was supposed to be the far siege vary, but the matchup was about attacks were supposed to preoccupy the western end of the “McNamara Line,” a 7,000 defenders—6,000 marines plus allies while Khe Sanh was overrun,” said string of strong points and barriers across the indigenous troops—against a North Vietnam War historian John Prados. Vietnam below the DMZ ordered by Sec- Vietnamese Army attacking force of some Westmoreland himself was in no doubt. retary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 30,000. “I believed then, and I continue to believe 1966. The project was never completed. The airstrip, built by the Seabees, was that the ‘General Uprising’ was in reality a The marines went to Khe Sanh in Oc- 3,895 feet long and made of pierced steel feint, a secondary attack,” he said in 1993. tober 1966 and increased their presence planking. The runway overshot the base Westmoreland was aware of Giap’s stated during a series of attacks and challenges perimeter on the eastern end by 150 yards, opposition to the plan but in his memoirs in 1967. There had been no land access with machine guns covering the exposed dismissed it as “camoufl age, a planned to the base since August 1967 when the extension. deception.” North Vietnamese cut National Route 9, Air Force twin-engine C-123 transports Khe Sanh was compared constantly to a glorifi ed name for the one-lane dirt road did not need the entire runway to land. Dien Bien Phu. “As the enemy build-up that ran through Khe Sanh village. A side They could turn off onto a parking ramp, at Khe Sanh developed, almost every mail road branched off toward the combat base. but the four-engine C-130 turboprops had from the United States brought me letters The base was situated on a plateau, about to go all the way to the end and taxi back, warning that I was inviting another Dien four miles wide, with rugged mountains tracked by mortar shells all the way. Bien Phu and urging me to abandon Khe and densely vegetated jungle on all sides. Nearby, a deep ravine dropped to lower Sanh,” Westmoreland said. The sole source of drinking water was a elevations, forming a channel through USAF photo Artillery bombardment was relentless, but the marines, in their trenches and fortifi ed bunkers, took relatively few ca- sualties. They responded effectively with their own artillery, armor, and rifl e fi re. 62 AIR FORCE Magazine / March 2016 which moist air rose, creating fog and of the Lunar New Year holiday. The North Army perspective. MACV regarded the mist. The sun seldom burned through until Vietnamese and the Viet Cong struck in Marines as ill-suited for anything except late morning, so the airfi eld was usually locations from the DMZ in the north to “over-the-beach operations” and thought below minimum conditions for landing the Mekong Delta in the south.