Relief at Last: Operation Pegasus, 1-14 April 1968

Relief at Last: Operation Pegasus, 1-14 April 1968

With all the bloodshed and bitterness faced by the Marines at Khe Sanh, the reader might wonder, where the heck the relief force was. Planning for a ground relief operation began on 25 January 1968, when Gen. Westmoreland directed General John J. Tolson, commander of the First Air Cavalry Division, to create an operational plan to save the Marines. This proved to be a daunting task since Route 9 was the only viable overland road from the east, was in terrible disrepair and mostly under the control of the NVA. Tolson did not want this assignment, since he believed that the best plan was to use his division to attack the enemy in the A Shau Valley. However, the relief of Khe Sanh was only the first part of Westmoreland’s overall scheme. He envisioned moving into Khe Sanh and using it as the jump-off point for a “hot pursuit” of enemy forces into Laos and, eventually, even an invasion of the North.
By 2 March, Tolson had created Operation Pegasus. It called for the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment and the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment to commence an armored assault from Ca Lu some 10 miles east of Khe Sanh and roll west on Route 9. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Brigades of the 1st Air Cavalry Division were to employ air-assault tactics at vital spots along Route 9 to form fire support bases and cover the Marine advance. Planners called for these units to be supported by 102 pieces of artillery. The 11th Engineer Battalion would accompany the Marine advance to repair the road as they moved forward. Later revisions added the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment and elements of the 3rd ARVN Airborne Task Force to the operation.¹⁰⁰
Privately, the Marines, who never wanted to hold Khe Sanh and who had been criticized for the manner in which it had been defended, hated the plan. They consistently maintained the battle was not a siege and they had never been really isolated. Gen. Cushman expressed his ire at the “implication of a rescue or breaking of the siege by outside forces.” All of this notwithstanding, the operation began on 1 April. As it turned out, enemy resistance was light, and the main issue proved to be heavy morning cloud cover that kept the helicopters grounded until later in the day. As the relief effort progressed, the Marines at KSCB left their positions and began to patrol further out. The most intense engagement took place on 6 April, when Air Cavalry units ran into a NVA blocking force and fought a day-long engagement. The next day, other units of the 1st Air Cavalry captured the old French fort near Khe Sanh village. On 8 April at 0800, members of the relief force and the Marines at KSCB finally linked up. Three days later, the commander of the 11th Engineers officially opened Route 9 to traffic.¹⁰¹

That same day, his part in the plan complete, Gen. Tolson directed his forces to undertake immediate actions to initiate Operation Delaware, an air assault into the A Shau Valley. At 0800, on 15 April, U.S. leadership officially ended the relief operation. They had lost 92 killed and had 667 wounded with five missing. A total of 33 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed and 187 wounded. Formal estimates put NVA casualties at 1,100 killed and 13 captured.¹⁰²

Also on 15 April, Operation Scotland II began which involved the Marines at the combat base attacking the NVA outside the camp. The dying had not ended for the following day a Marine company began a patrol near the Hill 689 in some tall vegetation. Here they were ambushed and massacred by concealed NVA soldiers. Soon, two more companies were sent to support them but they too, were hammered by the enemy troops and forced to retreated back to the KSCB having 41 killed and 32 wounded. Two of 15 missing Marines were later rescued by helicopters. The battalion commander was relieved of duty.¹⁰³
The 1st Air Cavalry Division and its 400 helicopters also conducted airmobile operations deep into enemy territory. The fighting was heavy throughout this period and, during Scotland II, 413 more Marines were killed by end of June 1968. This operation continued until the end of the year and caused 72 additional Marines deaths. In spite of this fact, none of these casualties were included in the official body count. In fact, U.S. casualties, during the ten weeks of Operation Pegasus, were more than twice the casualties officially reported during the “siege.”¹⁰⁴
After the KSCB’s initial relief, Col. Lownds and the 26th Marines left their camp and relinquished defense of the base to the 1st Marine Regiment. On 23 May, Col. Lownds and his regimental sergeant major received a Presidential Unit Citation from President Johnson on behalf of the 26th Marines. General Westmoreland continued to believe the fire base should be maintained until he left Vietnam on 11 June. General Creighton W. Abrams, his successor, waited one week, out of courtesy, and then began Operation Charlie, the destruction and evacuation of KSCB. The U.S. forces finished this task on 6 July.¹⁰⁵
Work on closing the base began in earnest on 19 June 1968, as the remaining Marines packed up all salvageable materials and demolished everything else. Throughout, the enemy continued shelling the KSCB, and on 1 July, they even made a company-sized infantry attack against the base perimeter. Two Marines died in the attack. On 5 July, in a brief ceremony, senior base officers formally closed the Combat Base. That same day, in one more cruel tragedy, five Marines were killed in fighting near the base camp. Finally, the next, night the last Marines left. Their egress was temporally halted for several hours when an NVA artillery round severely damaged a bridge on Route 9. After several hours delay, as engineers repaired the bridge, this somber gathering completed its journey down Route 9 to the east.¹⁰⁶
Even after most of the Marines departed, some remained in the area in an effort to recover the bodies of their fallen brothers. On 10 July, PFC Robert Hernandez of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was manning an M-60 machine gun position when it took a direct hit from an enemy mortar. He was killed. He became the last of 10 Marines and 89 NVA who died in July none of whom were included in the official U.S. body count. It was on 12 July, that the last Americans left the Khe Sanh area. Mercifully, the battle for Khe Sanh was finally over.¹⁰⁷

The NVA saw things differently. The official history of the 304th Division says that on “9 July 1968, the liberation flag was waving from the flag pole at Ta Con [Khe Sanh] airfield.” Four days later, the chair of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Ho Chi Minh, sent a message to NVA forces in the area lauding “our victory at Khe Sanh.”¹⁰⁸ Their official history stated:

On June 26, 1968, the enemy announced he was withdrawing from Khe Sanh. Our armed forces rapidly tightened their siege ring, mounted shelling attacks, suppressed the enemy’s efforts to transport troops by helicopter, and conducted fierce attacks to block the overland route, forcing the enemy to prolong his withdrawal. On July 15, 1968, our soldiers were in complete control of Khe Sanh.¹⁰⁹
They claimed the siege continued well into late July and, when it ended in a great victory they had killed 1,300 U.S. troops and shot down 34 aircraft. In spite of this obvious exaggeration, no one can deny that the KSCB and the entire area were now in the hands of the NVA. After six months of bloody and bitter fighting, the U.S. had abandoned what, at one point, was supposed to be the key to a military victory in Indochina. Now, like a dagger at the heart of South Vietnam, it was a jumping off point for deeper Communist penetration into the Republic of Vietnam.¹¹⁰
News of the closure of the KCSB opened the door to the U.S. press to ask why it was vacated. They demanded to know if it had been so vital in January what had happened in six months to lead to its closing. U.S. officials in Saigon explained that “the enemy had changed his tactics and reduced his forces; that NVA had carved out new infiltration routes; that the Marines now had enough troops and helicopters to carry out mobile operations; that a fixed base was no longer necessary.” While there may be truth to this, it would soon become a moot point since, within a year, “Vietnamization” had become the cornerstone of Richard M. Nixon’s policy, and “U.S. military participation in the war would soon be relegated to a defensive stance.”¹¹¹
Khe Sanh by the Numbers
In late March, the Communists had begun their draw down. By April the Marine regiment withdrew down the reopened Route 9. After three months of bitter bloodshed, it was over. The U.S. goal at Khe Sanh had been to kill large numbers of NVA soldiers. To this end, they seemed to have been very successful. The official enemy body count totaled 1,602, and leaders at MACV placed the number of enemy dead at 10,000 to 15,000. In addition, these same commanders allowed that around 200 Marines had died defending KSCB. However, this does not count all those who fought around Khe Sanh, during the relief effort or during the two months after the battle was declared over. If we add the numbers of U.S. service personnel killed that Peter Brush so painstaking calculated for more than 30 years after the battle, this number should total between 900 and 1,000.¹¹² Thus, in a war that focused on kill ratios and body counts as a measure of success, Khe Sanh was considered a victory by the American military. In later years, Captain Dabney, who saw so much of battle up close, declared, “Most body counts were pure, unadulterated bullshit. Generals manipulated a ‘good kill’ by flipflopping numbers, and a certain kind of dishonesty was bred.”¹¹³
Conclusion: Was it A Ruse or Dien Bien Phu 2?
While this author has made it clear there are comparisons between the sieges at Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh, it is important to note there were also important differences. To be sure both the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh, the French paratroopers at Dien Bien Phu were stationed at their precise locations, so they would act as “bait” for the Vietnamese Communist forces. In both cases, the French commander Henri Navarre and MACV Commander Gen. William Westmoreland hoped to draw Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap into a conventional battle in order to destroy the Viet Minh and, later, the NVA main army forces. In the case of Dien Bien Phu, the French could not have picked a poorer position. Their belief in the inferiority of their enemy and its leaders led them to pick low ground and fail to take the high ground around their position. They were outnumbered and had less artillery support. Superior airpower might have overcome this problem, but their air assets were limited and their aircraft relatively old.¹¹⁴
Unfortunately for the French, western hubris convinced them they could not lose. One U.S. observer at Dien Bien Phu reported that the French base could, “withstand any kind of attack the Viet Minh are capable of launching.” Indeed, Gen. Navarre, in spite of the concerns of his subordinates, was completely confident his forces would win because of their superior fire power and their ability to resupply the firebase using the old Japanese airfield at Dien Bien Phu. Once the Viet Minh shut down the airstrip, resupply became tenuous and the enemy’s superior artillery and troop numbers forced the French to surrender on 7 May 1954. The defeat at Dien Bien Phu led the French to withdraw from Indochina.¹¹⁵
As for Khe Sanh, the Americans held the high ground, had better artillery coverage and superior air assets both in terms of aerial resupply and CAS. While Giap made the Americans sweat, in retrospect, he had little chance of another Dien Bien Phu. While Tet would eventually lead to President Johnson’s departure from office and America’s withdrawal four years later, the fighting in 1968 did not lead to an immediate Communist victory. It forced them to pull back, reconsider their tactics, and lick their wounds from the loss of so many men and supplies.¹¹⁶
In what scholars and journalists have come to describe as the “Riddle of Khe Sanh,” the question remains as to whether the NVA attack on the KSCB was a diversion or an attempt at another Dien Bien Phu. Neither answer seems to adequately explain the events that transpired in this tiny little corner of South Vietnam. Ironically, if Giap’s priority was to capture the base, he would not have needed the 22,000 men he sent Khe Sanh in the fall of 1967. He could have overwhelmed the few hundred American defenders with only a fraction of that number.¹¹⁷
If he had access to sufficient intelligence, he should have concluded that the Americans would be likely to reinforce the base in response to a massive buildup of PAVN forces, pulling men from other areas of Vietnam. What he may not have known was that there was a disagreement between the Army and the Marines regarding the value of sending large numbers of reinforcements to Khe Sanh. If Giap did have intelligence regarding this, he had no way of knowing what the outcome of the conflict between the two services would be. Had the Marine position against sending reinforcements and advocating abandonment of the base prevailed, Khe Sanh would have been but lightly garrisoned or abandoned when Giap's units arrived, and his strategy would have been for naught. His army, instead of creating a diversion, would have diverted nothing, since the U.S. would not have sent troops to a base they planned to abandon.¹¹⁸
One reasonable explanation may be that Giap’s primary motivation at Khe Sanh was to do both. That was to divert large numbers of U.S. forces away from the populated coastal areas. In this, he was successful. But the desire to achieve a victory over the Marines must have also been a major consideration. Giap’s forces tenaciously remained in the fight too long, fought too hard and sustained too many casualties to believe the creation of a diversion was the only motive.
Even with the claim of victory by the U.S. at Khe Sanh and during the Tet 1968 fighting in general, the psychological victory of the Vietnamese Communists during this period led to the beginning of the end for the United States in Vietnam. It was during the 1968 Tet Offensive that opposition in the U.S. to the war in Vietnam, in terms of regarding involvement as a mistake, first rose above 50 percent and exceeded the level of support. Approximately one fourth of all the television film reports on the evening news programs in the U.S. during February and March, 1968, were devoted to describing the situation of the Marines at Khe Sanh.¹¹⁹
In truth, only Giap can say for sure what his ultimate goal was at Khe Sanh. Of course, he has, ever since the battle, claimed it was only diversion. Then again, this claim preserved his reputation. Surely, the government in Hanoi knew about the anxiety and concern U.S. leaders and citizens had over Khe Sanh, and they must have made Gen. Giap aware of this. Thus, having achieved his diversion by early February, Giap had little to lose by seeking a victory. One need only recall that during the battle, President Johnson declared, “The eyes of the nation and the eyes of the entire world  the eyes of all of history itself  are on that little brave band of defenders who hold the pass at Khe Sanh.” With knowledge in hand, Giap must have reasoned that a U.S. defeat at Khe Sanh might possibly cause history to unfold as it had at Dien Bien Phu. Thus, with nothing to lose (except the lives of his men), Giap pursued the goal of overrunning the Khe Sanh Combat Base as long as it seemed remotely possible. Once it did not he withdrew.¹²⁰
Was it Worth it?
As we have seen, in April 1968, the Marines at Khe Sanh departed and were deployed elsewhere in I Corps. Two months later, the new leadership at MACV opted to abandon the KSCB. The engineers bulldozed the camp and the airstrip. It appeared that no one had ever been there. The Americans did this to prevent the Communists from taking propaganda pictures of the combat base. In July the last Marine departed Khe Sanh. In the aftermath, both sides claimed victory and passed out medals to their combatants. In the glow of history, it is clear that neither adversary won a definitive victory. While the NVA occupied the area for a while even they abandoned it to fight battles in other parts of I Corps. In one respect, Khe Sanh, which had been such a desperate fight proved, in the end, to have been really unimportant. To be sure, the significance of the battle cannot be comprehended if one examines the battle by itself. After all, it was a part of the Tet Offensive which was, in turn, a component of the year-long Communist WinterSpring Offensive.
For many American leaders, the battle had appeared to provide the best chance draw the enemy into a conventional battle and annihilate NVA forces at a rate above which they could be replaced. At Khe Sanh, the U.S. seemed to attain the best enemy body counts and kill ratios of the war—or so they reported. As noted, the official NVA body count was 1,602. However, outspoken Gen. Tompkins also observed that the Americans had collected only 117 individual and 39 crew-served weapons. He surmised that the body count was “false.” As we have also seen, Gen. Westmoreland believed that the PAVN had lost between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers.¹²¹
The reader should also recall that the official U.S. casualty figures were placed at 205 KIA, 1,668 WIA, and one MIA. In the 45 years since the battle, no reputable researcher has accepted these numbers. In the immediate aftermath, Chaplin Ray Stubbe put the KIAs at 476. He also was clear to point out this did not account for other KIAs which, over the intervening years, were added up by experts like Peter Brush to include: 219 killed at Lang Vei, 25 killed at Khe Sanh village, 125 during the relief of Khe Sanh, and 52 in plane crashes, ambushes, etc. All totaled, allied casualties were approximately 1,000 KIAs and 4,500 WIAs.¹²²
Another determinant of worth has to be the use of material resources. No matter what the number of enemy casualties might have been, one thing is clear and that is the fact that the U.S. expended massive volumes of firepower against enemy forces. The artillery units at KSCB, alone fired 158,891 rounds in direct support of Marine forces. They certainly met the Fire Support Coordination Center’s motto—“Be Generous.”¹²³

The 7th Air Force fighter-bombers flew 9,691 sorties, dropping 14,223 tons of bombs and rockets. Marine aircraft executed 7,078 sorties and expended 17,015 tons of ordnance, while Navy aviators flew 5,337 sorties and dropped 7,491 tons of bombs. Added to this were the 2,548 sorties flown by B-52s. They unleashed a incredible 59,542 tons of munitions around Khe Sanh. These B-52 ARCLIGHT raids delivered the equivalent of a 1.3 kiloton nuclear device every day of the siege. Putting PAVN force estimates at around 30,000, the U.S. expended over five tons of artillery and aerial munitions for every NVA soldier at Khe Sanh.¹²⁴

In the end, what is most sobering is that, in many ways, the massive amounts of ordnance used and the apparently large number of enemy killed did not really matter. From the moment that Ho Chi Minh and Gen. Giap began their fight with the French until the day the NVA took Saigon in 1975, what was demonstrated repeatedly was that body counts, even if close to reality, made little, if any, difference. To quote Peter Brush, “Leaders of the Vietnamese Communists were willing to absorb losses of this magnitude in order to continue, and win, their struggle.”¹²⁵
Thus, in retrospect and to the point of the paper, it cannot be overstated to say, once again, that if the struggle for Khe Sanh was supposed to be a NVA “ruse” it was a successful one since significant amounts of U.S. military assets were diverted to this isolated area of South Vietnam. Nevertheless, in a strictly military sense, this diversion had little effect on the outcome of the fighting during Tet 1968. Ironically, the biggest Communist victory in 1968 was the psychological damage Khe Sanh and Tet did to the U.S. public and political psyche, and that was an unintended consequence. If Khe Sanh was meant to be another Dien Bien Phu, it can only be called a NVA strategic failure. Tragically, for the most part, the battle for Khe Sanh affected the military outcome of the war very little. In this regard, it was generally a setback for both sides.

Perhaps the most reveling piece of evidence as to the way the Communists viewed Khe Sanh can be seen on a masonry monument erected by the Vietnamese well after the fact. The text specifically alludes to Khe Sanh as another Dien Bien Phu and surely indicates that they deemed the battle as the victory that enabled them to win the war.¹²⁶ The English translation of the inscription reads:

Liberated base monument the area of Tacon Pont [sic] base built by U.S. and Sai Gon puppet. Built 1967. Air field and well-constructed defense system. Co Luong [town] dong ha [county] Quang Tri [province]. U.S. and army puppets used to monitor the movement and tried to stop assistance from the north into the battle of indo china (3 countries). After 170 days and nights of attack by the surrounding liberation army, Tacon (Khe Sanh) was completely liberated. The liberation army destroyed the defense system for the battle of indo china. 112,000 U.S. and puppet troops killed and captured. 197 airplanes shot down. Much war material was captured and destroyed. Khe Sanh also another Dien Bien Phu for the U.S.¹²⁷
In the spring of 1994, New York Times journalist Malcom W. Browne traveled to the former Marine combat base at Khe Sanh where he found 72 Communist graveyards for NVA troops who fell in Quang Tri Province alone. At one point during the visit, a Khe Sanh village People’s Committee official, after gazing that vast meadow covered with tombstones turned to Browne and observed, “We paid dearly for this land.” As Peter Brush later declared, “Of that there can be no doubt.”¹²⁸
Some Final Thoughts
If we accept the concept that war is an extension of diplomacy then, no matter who won the combat at Khe Sanh, the effects of the battle led to America’s eventual withdrawal and a Communist victory. Thus, while there is truth in the U.S. claim of victory by the U.S. at Khe Sanh and during the Tet 1968, the unintended psychological victory of the Vietnamese Communists during this period led to the beginning of the end for the American presence in Vietnam. Indeed, during and after the Tet Offensive, public opposition to the U.S. involvement first grew to more than 50 percent. It would grow over the next few months as the average American now joined young protesters in demanding U.S. withdrawal. However, as bad as this may have been it could have been much worse. One is left to speculate the outcome had the NVA interdicted the KSCB water supply forcing the Marines to evacuate and inflicting heavy casualties upon them in the process. Would Khe Sanh have been America’s Dien Bien Phu?¹²⁹
Only days after the Marines left Khe Sanh, Westmoreland requested 200,000 more men to, as he put it, “finish off the Commies.” Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, with the approval of the President, turned down the request. Khe Sanh in particular and Tet in general, had disheartened the U.S. public that now questioned the cost and worth of Vietnam to America. By 1969, despite the relative military success of the U.S. during the Tet Offensive, Nixon began “Vietnamization,” a policy that would culminate in American withdrawal in January, 1973.¹³⁰

1NOTES
^Peter Brush, “The Battle of Khe Sanh, 1968,” [hereafter “Khe Sanh, 1968”] in Marc Jason Gilbert and William Head, eds., The Tet Offensive, (Westport Connecticut: Praeger Press, 1996), p. 191, [hereafter Tet Offensive].

2^Ibid.

3^Donald Oberdorfer, Tet! (Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, 1971, 1984), pp. 250-251, [hereafter Tet!]; Peter Braestrup, Big Story! (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 493, [hereafter Big Story!].

4^Philip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946-1975, (Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1988 and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 486, [hereafter Vietnam at War].

5^James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, Where the Dominos Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945-1950, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 187.

6^Ambassador Bui Diem, “My Personal Recollections of the Tet Offensive,” in Gilbert & Head, The Tet Offensive, p. 133.

7^For details on Mau Thanh Tet, see Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 191-213; Braestrup, Big Story!; Oberdorfer, Tet!; Ngo Vinh Long, The Tet Offensive and its Aftermath (Ithaca, NewYork: Cornell University Press, 1993); Tran Van Tra, Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre, Vol. 5, Concluding the 30-Years War, (Ho Chi Minh City: Van Nghe Pub., 1982); Robert Pisor, The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh, (New York: Norton Press, 1982), [hereafter End of the Line].

8^For details on Khe Sanh, see William Head and Grinter, Lawrence, eds., Looking Back on The Vietnam War: A 1990s Perspective on the Decisions, Combat, and Legacies, (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), [hereafter Looking Back]; John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe, Valley of Decision, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), [hereafter Valley].

9^Shelby L. Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965–1973, (New York: Dell, 1985), pp. 35-48, [hereafter American Army].

10^Pisor, End of the Line, pp. 15-16.

11^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 191-192; Earl H. Tilford, Jr., “Bombing Our Way Back Home: The Commando Hunt and Menu Campaigns of 1968 to 1973,” in Head & Grinter, eds., Looking Back, pp. 123-144; William Head, “Playing Hide and Seek with the “Trail:” Operation Commando Hunt, 1968-1972,” Journal of Third World Studies, (Spring 2002) Vol. XIX, No. 1, pp. 101-116.

12^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 192; Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 1324.

13^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 192.

14^Ibid.; General William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: 1976), p. 336, [hereafter Soldier Reports].

15^Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Command History 1965, Annex N. Saigon, 1966, p. 18, [hereafter MACV History]; Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 140–146; Clark Dougan, Stephen Weiss, et al., Nineteen Sixty-Eight, (Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1983), p. 42, [hereafter Nineteen Sixty-Eight].

16^MACV History, pp. 18-19.

17^Jack Schulimson, Leonard Blaisol, Charles R. Smith, David Dawson, The U.S. Marines in Vietnam: 1968, the Decisive Year. Washington DC: History and Museums Division, United States Marine Corps, 1997), p. 60, [hereafter USMC in Vietnam, 1968]; Major Gary L. Telfer, Lt.Col. Lane Rogers and V. Keith Fleming. U.S. Marines in Vietnam: 1967, Fighting the North Vietnamese (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, United States Marine Corps, 1984), pp. 129-131, [hereafter USMC in Vietnam, 1967].

18^Terrance Maitland and John McInerney, A Contagion of War, (Boston: Boston Publishing, 1983), pp. 164-165, 183; Shelby Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965—1973, (New York: Dell Books, 1985), pp. 160-170. For a detailed account of the Battle of Dak To, see Edward F. Murphy, Dak To (New York: Pocket Books, 1995), pp. 3-10.

19^Dave Richard Palmer, Summons of the Trumpet: The History of the Vietnam War from a Military Man’s Viewpoint, (New York: Ballentine, 1978),  pp. 213–215, [hereafter Summons of the Trumpet]; Dougan, Weiss, et. al., Nineteen Sixty-Eight, p. 432.

20^General Willard Pearson, The War in the Northern Provinces 19661968, (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1975), p. 6; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 193; Captain Moyers S. Shore II, The Battle for Khe Sanh, (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1969), pp. 5-6, 11, [hereafter Battle for Khe Sanh].

21^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 17; Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 155. For specifics on the “Hill Fights,” see Telfer, Rogers and Fleming, USMC in Vietnam, Chapter 4 and Edward F. Murphy, The Hill Fights: the First Battle of Khe Sanh,.(New York: Presidio Press, 2004), [hereafter Hill Fights].

22^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 193.

23^Ibid., pp. 193-194; Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 270271; Peter McDonald, Giap: The Victor in Vietnam (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), p. 279, [hereafter Giap].

24^Pisor, End of the Line, p. 112.

25^Westmoreland, Soldier Reports, p. 128; New York Times, The Pentagon Papers (NY: Bantam Books, 1971), pp. 616617, [hereafter Pentagon Papers].

26^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 47.

27^Dougan, Weiss, et. al., Nineteen Sixty Eight, pp. 42-43.

28^Military Institute of Vietnam, translated by Merle Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam (Lawrence Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002), p. 216, , [hereafter Victory in Vietnam].

29^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 215.

30^Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, pp. 72, 258–259; Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, pp.30-31

31^Dougan, Weiss, et. al., Nineteen Sixty Eight, p. 44

32^John Prados, “Khe Sanh: The Other Side of the Hill,” The Veteran (Vietnam Veterans of America) July/August 2007, http://www.vva.org/veteran/0807/khesanh.html.

33^Ibid.; Schulimson, et. al., USMC In Vietnam, 1968, p. 269.

34^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 286; Pisor, End of the Line, p. 152

35^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 319–320, 329.

36^Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, p. 276.

37^For details of these actions, see Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, pp. 53-71; Debriefing Interview, Col. D. E. Lownds by Col. R.H. Mample, 29 Jul 68, Item Number 992AU0696, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University, [hereafter Lownds Interview].

38^Many of details on these events are from the personal memories of Peter Brush who has spoken and written extensively on the subject. See, Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 194-195; Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, pp. 33-42.

39^MACV, Command History, 1966, Annex M. Saigon, 1967, p. 60; Jacob Van Staaveren, Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1961–1968, (Washington DC: Center of Air Force History, 1993), pp. 230, 290; Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, p. 67.

40^Lownds Interview; Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, pp. 67-68.

41^See Note 38.

42^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, pp. 42-45; Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 251-255; New York Times, January 24, 1968, pp. 1, 3; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 195.

43^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 159.

44^Westmoreland, Soldier Reports, p. 236.

45^For validation of the fact that the North Vietnamese leaders feared an invasion, see MHIV, Victory in Vietnam.

46^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 47.

47^Dougan, Weiss et. al., Nineteen Sixty Eight, p. 42. For details of the battle, see Bruce B. G. Clarke, Expendable Warriors – The Battle of Khe Sanh and the Vietnam War, (Westport, Connecticut & London: Praeger International Security, 2007) ; Jacob Van Staaveren, Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1961–1968, (Washington, D.C.: Center of Air Force History, 1993); Gordon L. Rottman, Khe Sanh 1967–68, Oxford University: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2005); and James

Warren, The Mystery of Khe Sanh in Robert Cowley, ed., The Cold War: A Military History, (New York: Random House, 2005)

48^Westmoreland, Soldier Reports, p. 316.

49^Davidson, Vietnam at War, pp. 552553.

50^Ibid., p. 553; Westmoreland, Soldier Reports, p. 102; Pisor, End of The Line, pp. 235-236.

51^Pisor, End of the Line, p. 86.

52^Ibid., pp. 72, 78; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 196.

53^Oberdorfer, Tet!, pp. 126127; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 196-197.

54^Davidson, Vietnam at War, pp. 567569.

55^William P. Head, War From Above the Clouds: B-52 Operations during the Second

Indochina War and the Effects of the Air War on Theory and Doctrine , (Air University Press, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 2002), pp. 17-27, [hereafter B-52 Operations].

56^Ibid.

57^Ibid.

58^For more on the air war and ARC LIGHT, see J.C. Hopkins and Sheldon A. Goldberg, The Development of the Strategic Air Command, 1946-1986, (Offutt AFB, Nebraska: SAC/HO, 1986); USAF Special Study, by HQ SAC, “Activity Input to Project Corona Harvest-ARC Light Operations, 1 Jan 65-31 Mar 68,” 3 Vols. (Declassified. 31 May 90); Carl Berger, ed., The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973: An Illustrated Account, (Washington, D.C.: Office of USAF History, 1984) [hereafter USAF in SEA: Illustrated Account]; Earl H. Tilford, Jr., Setup: What The Air Force Did in Vietnam and Why, (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University Press, 1991); John Schlight, The Air War in South Vietnam: The Years of the Offensive, 1965-1968, (Washington, D.C.: Office of USAF History, 1988), [hereafter Years of the Offensive]; Bernard C. Nalty, Air Power and the Fight for Khe Sanh, (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1986); John Morocco, Thunder from Above: Air War, 1941–1968, (Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1984).

59^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 197.

60^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 231233.

61^Ibid.

62^Ibid. For a detailed analysis of the siege of Dien Bien Phu, see William P. Head, “The Significance of Dien Bien Phu and the End of the First Indochina War, 1953-1954,” Virginia Review of Asian Studies, Spring 2012, pp. 18-43, http://www.virginiareviewofasianstudies.com/ archived-issues/2012-2/, [hereafter Dien Bien Phu].

63^Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 562; Paul Dickson, The Electronic Battlefield (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University, 1976), p. 74; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 198-9; Head, “Dien Bien Phu.”

64^Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 562; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 199; Head, “Dien Bien Phu.”

65^Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 563; Peter McDonald, General Giap: The Victor in Vietnam, (New York: W.W. Norton Inc., 1993), p. 282, [hereafter Giap]; Robert J. O'Neill, General Giap (North Melbourne, Australia: Cassell Publishers Co., 1969), pp. 195-196.

66^Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 567-569; D. Gareth Porter, “The 1968 ‘Hue Massacre’,” Indochina Chronicle, Vol. 3, (June 24, 1974), p. 8.

67^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 397; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 201; Head, “Dien Bien Phu.”

68^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 201.

69^Ibid., pp. 201-202; Davidson, Vietnam at War, pp. 564565. For an examination of the use of tactical nuclear weapons at Khe Sanh, see Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 291293 and Pisor, End of the Line, pp. 261262.

70^Richard Ehrlich, “The U.S.’s Secret Plan to nuke Vietnam, Laos,” 17 April 2008, Asia Times on line, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JD17Ae01.html.

71^Letter, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense to President Lyndon B. Johnson, 19 February 1968. The original letter came from a personal archive maintained by Raymond P. Anderson Jr., who served with the 109th Quarter Master Corps in Vietnam. He collected numerous formally classified and unclassified materials concerning the unit. Khe Sanh Declassified Documents, Ballinger, Texas.

72^Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1979), pp. 264265, [hereafter Irony].

73^Ibid.; Head, “Dien Bien Phu.” Quote in Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 202.

74^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 399.

75^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 202.

76^Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 567; Oberdorfer, Tet!, pp. 268-269.

77^Thomas L. Cubbage II, review of The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War, in Conflict Quarterly, Vol. XIII, No. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 7879.

78^Ibid.; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 202-203.

79^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 90.

80^Dougan, Weiss, et. al. Nineteen Sixty-Eight, p. 49. For a detailed account of tactical airlift during the Vietnam War, especially at Khe Sanh, see Berger, USAF in SEA: Illustrated Account , pp. 169-186 and Schlight, Years of the Offensive, pp. 276-287.

81^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 79

82^Ibid.; Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, p. 283.

83^“Khe Sanh,” Time Magazine, February 9, 1968, p. 16.

84^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 289290; Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 93; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 203.

85^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 74; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 203.

86^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 79; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 203; Head, “Dien Bien Phu.”

87^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 204; Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 282, 306. Pisor, End of the Line, pp. 188, 199. In the case of Brush’s article much of what he writes about the deprivations the Marines experienced came from his personal recollections.

88^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 204; Shore, Battle, p. 199.

89^This description of how the Marines received water came from Chaplain Ray W. Stubbe’s diary. He was a Lutheran chaplain of the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines at Khe Sanh. He provided a copy of the diary entry to Peter Brush in a personal correspondence from Stubbe to Brush, dated March 21, 1994. Brush’s recounting of this event is found in Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 204-205.

90^Ibid., p. 205; Davidson, Vietnam at War, pp. 568570.

91^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 364; Pisor, End of the Line, p. 202, original from Oral History, USMC, Major General Rathvon McClure Tompkins, 1973; Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 569.

92^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 373, 374, 375, 390.

93^Ibid., pp. 381, 382, 391; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 205-206.

94^The referenced manual was Field Manual (FM) 1011011/2, Staff Officers' Field Manual Organizational, Technical, and Logistical Data Planning Factors, Vol. 2, (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Dept. of the Army, 1987), pp. 28 & 29. Also see, Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 206.

95^Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, p. 277; Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 348.

96^Schulimson, et. al. USMC in Vietnam, 1968, p. 279; Col. Carlton Meyer, “Lost Battles of the Vietnam War,” G2mil, posted in 2011, http://www.g2mil.com/lost_vietnam.htm.

97^Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, pp. 281-282

98^Ibid., pp. 282-283.

99^Ibid., p. 283; Dougan, Weiss, et. al., Nineteen Sixty-Eight, p. 55; Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 131.

100^“Lyndon B. Johnson—The Final Days,” Profiles of U.S. Presidents, http://www.presidentprofiles.com/Kennedy-Bush/Lyndon-B-Johnson-The-final-days.html. Prados and Stubbe, Valley, pp. 418, 420. For further details, see Robert C. Ankony, Lurps: A Ranger’s Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, Revised Edition, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2009).

101^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 419, 428, 431, 437; Murphy, Hill Fights, pp. 239–240; Pisor, End of the Line, p. 108.

102^Schulimson, et. al. USMC in Vietnam, 1968, p. 286-287.

103^Dougan, Weiss, et. al., Nineteen Sixty-Eight, p. 54; Stanton, American Army, p. 246

104^Peter Brush, “Battle of Khe Sanh: Recounting the Battle Casualties,” Historynet.com, July 26, 2007, http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-khe-sanh-recounting-the-battlescasualties.htm. Original numbers in Vietnam Magazine, June 2007 issue, [hereafter “Battle Casualties”].

105^Schulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, p. 289; Pisor, End of the Line, pp. 238–242.

106^Brush, “Battle Casualties;” “Withdrawal from Khe Sanh,” Historynet.com 12 June 2006, http://www.historynet.com/the-withdrawal-from-khe-sanh.htm.

107^See Note 103.

108^MHIV, Victory in Vietnam, pp. 223, 229.

109^Ibid., p. 229.

110^Ibid., p. 229; Gordon L. Rottman, Khe Sanh 1967–68, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2005), p. 90.

111^Murphy, Hill Fights, p. 244.

112^Brush, “Battle Casualties;” Pisor End of the Line, pp. 236-237.

113^Pisor, End of the Line, p. 237 (Dabney quote); Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 451, 454.

114^Head, “Dien Bien Phu.”

115^Ibid.; Quote in Report of Special U.S. Mission to Indochina, February 5, 1954, Eisenhower Papers, “Cleanup” File, Box 16, quoted in George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 19501975, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 28. Also see, Bernard Fall, Hell in A Very Small Place (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967), p. 50; Lecture, Dr. William Head, Georgia Southwestern University, Americus, Georgia, April 10, 2013, “Bernard Fall: The Western Conscience in Indochina.”

116^Gilbert and Head, “Introduction,” in Gilbert and Head, Tet Offensive, pp. 2-3; Ambassador Bui Diem, “My Recollections of the Tet Offensive,” in Gilbert and Head, Tet Offensive, pp. 125-134.

117^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 173; Pisor, End of Line, pp. 61, 210, 240; Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 206-208.

118^See Note 117.

119^Gelb and Betts, Irony, p. 266.

120^For excellent examinations of the “Riddle of Khe Sanh,” see Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 173; Pisor, End of Line, pp. 61, 210, 240; James Warren, “The Mystery of Khe Sanh,” in Robert Cowley, ed. The Cold War: A Military History, (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 333; Dougan, Weiss, et. al. Nineteen Sixty-Eight, p. 38; Shulimson, et. al., USMC in Vietnam, 1968, pp. 67–68. Palmer, Summons of the Trumpet, p. 219; Victory in Vietnam, pp. 216–217; Murphy, Hill Fights, p, 235; Tim Page and John Pimlott ed., Nam – The Vietnam Experience, (New York: Orbis Press, Inc., 1995), p. 324.

121^Gelb and Betts, Irony, pp. 233-237.

122^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, pp. 453-454.

123^Shore, Battle for Khe Sanh, p. 107.

124^Prados & Stubbe, Valley, p. 297. Also, see Head, B-52 Operations, pp. 17-25.

125^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” pp. 207-208.

126^Telephone Conversation, Author and Peter Brush, 2002.

127^Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” End Note on p. 213.

128^First quote in Malcolm W. Browne, “Battlefields of Khe Sanh: Still One Casualty a Day,” New York Times, May 13, 1994, pp. A1, A6. Second quote in Brush, “Khe Sanh, 1968,” p. 208.

129^Gelb and Betts, Irony, p. 160; Oberdorfer, Tet!, p. 258.

130^Pisor, End of the Line, pp. 205-207.

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