Review of Asian Studies bloodshed and bitterness: the battle for khe sanh, biversion or a second dien bien phu?

Virginia Review of Asian Studies

BLOODSHED AND BITTERNESS: THE BATTLE FOR KHE SANH, BIVERSION OR A SECOND DIEN BIEN PHU?
WILLIAM HEAD

WR-ALC OFFICE OF HISTORY

ROBBINS AFB

Introduction

One of the most important battles of the Second Indochina War took place in the midst of the general Communist uprising of 1968. It focused on a U.S. outpost in South Vietnam on the border with Laos known to history as Khe Sanh. According to Peter Brush, one of the preeminent experts on the battle, late in 1967, General William Westmoreland, commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and General Vo Nguyen Giap commander of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) brought their forces into contact with each other. Brush believes that “Giap's and Westmoreland’s own tactical and strategic goals, combined with their perception of one another’s intentions, led them into combat at this particular time and place.”¹

Westmoreland believed Giap was trying to repeat his victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu, while Giap claimed Khe Sanh itself was only a diversion to draw U.S. forces away from the populated areas of South Vietnam. The irony is that, “Both sides claimed victory at Khe Sanh, fueling a debate that continues todaywas Khe Sanh a territorial imperative or a bait and switch?”²
The Tet Offensive:
No one can understand the battle for Khe Sanh without examining the concurrent events that comprised the Tet Offensive. In what proved to be the eventual turning point of the American War in Vietnam, the PAVN joined with its ally, the forces of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the South in a surprise attack on the major cities and towns in the Republic of Vietnam on 31 January 1968, during the customary cease-fire that accompanied the Vietnamese New Year.

The Tet Offensive was conceived as a joint military, political and diplomatic offensive called “Mau Thanh Tet or General Offensive, General Uprising,” to regain the initiative in the war and start a popular uprising to topple the South Vietnamese government. It featured the suspension of the guerilla war in the countryside in favor of a sustained assault on the urban centers of South Vietnam, including its capital, Saigon. This daring change of strategy sent a torrent of improved weapons and PAVN troops down infiltration routes into the South to bolster the NLF’s military arm, the Viet Cong (VC).

In October and November 1967, PAVN regular forces attacked the Con Thien Marine base near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), specifically the towns of Loc Ninh and Song Be near Saigon, and Dak To in the Central Highlands. U.S. troops repelled these attacks, but the enemy succeeded in luring U.S. and South Vietnamese forces away from southern cities. According to Giap this was all part of a broader strategy to distract and divert the U.S. forces while his own assault forces worked themselves into their assault positions.

At the same time, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in an effort to bolster sagging public support for the war, asked his ever-confident commander in the field, Gen. Westmoreland, to make a series of public appearances reassuring every-one of the inevitability of a U.S. victory. He told Congress, “We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” Both Westmoreland and Johnson believed that the enemy might launch an attack during Tet, but the General produced enemy casualty figures, whose accuracy has since been disputed, that appeared to prove the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was incapable of doing much damage.

At 0245 hours on 31 January 1968 in Washington, a suicide squad of 19 VC sappers blasted their way into the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, holding their positions for over six hours before being overpowered at 0915 hours. All totaled, the Southern capital, 27 of 44 provincial capitals, five of six autonomous cities, 58 of 245 district towns and over 50 major hamlets came under enemy attack. Over the next 2 ½ months, U.S. and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops steadily recovered the lost ground, though U.S. leaders were forced to commit large numbers of tanks, aircraft and artillery to the counteroffensive. Casualties were heavy on both sides.
The most ferocious battle was for the ancient Imperial capital of Hue, a historic city filled with Buddhist shrines, which was all but razed by the struggle. Roughly 8,000 enemy troops attacked Hue capturing the old Imperial Citadel in the heart of the city. Attackers in most cities were quickly defeated after the initial assault, but Hue was an exception. It took three bloody weeks to retake the city. U.S. and ARVN troops lost nearly 500 killed and the Communists almost 5,000 killed. Thousands of refugees clogged exit roads attempting to flee the holocaust. In the aftermath, 2,800 bodies, mostly civilians, many government officials, were found in mass graves in and around the city, the product of enemy executions. Later, special ARVN political units entered the city and conducted their own liquidation of suspected Communists.
At the close of the initial fighting, U.S. forces suffered 1,100 killed in action (KIA), ARVN losses were 2,300 and civilian dead numbered 12,500. The final phase in October- November 1968, proved to be the costly two months of the war for the U. S. They estimated Communist casualty figures were 160,000-175,000 killed or wounded. To the embarrassment of many U. S. officials, it soon became clear that these numbers exceeded the actual number of PAVN and VC forces committed to the fight. The NLF’s southern guerilla forces were, however, crippled and from that time forward, the PAVN did most of the fighting. This development also reflected the post-Tet shift in enemy strategy.
After the Tet Offensive, U. S. troops began their withdrawal from Vietnam, rendering the NLF’s guerilla strategy designed to sap the will of American fighting forces no longer important. The enemy had not caused the fall of the Saigon regime, nor had they ignited an uprising among the people in the South, but they had forced U. S. leaders to re-evaluate their continued commitment to the war. Tet shifted the war, for the first time, from its rural setting into South Vietnam’s supposedly impregnable urban areas and discredited the claims of near victory by U.S. leaders. Middle America soured on the war and began to question the ability of the U.S. to establish a stable government in Saigon. Worse, it created a feeling of uncertainty and defeat within the Washington power structure. By March, LBJ’s approval rating was at 24 percent reflected in his near defeat to a write-in antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 Democratic Party New Hampshire primary.

Before Tet, most military leaders had been a willing part of the effort to convince the American public and Congress that “victory was just around the corner.” Tet proved it was not and that more troops, more casualties, more expense, and more resolve were necessary to “win” the war even though few really seemed able to specifically define what “win” meant. Washington had created the shock of Tet during Westmoreland’s victory tour which created a rosy mood of public confidence and, despite a certain dose of skepticism in some quarters, left most leaders believing a major enemy offensive could not occur. In January 1968, Tet exploded on to everyone’s TV screens. On 27 February, Walter Cronkite concluded his CBS news special, “Report from Vietnam” by asserting that the war was a stalemate to be decided not by military action, but by negotiations by U.S. leaders in which they would act “not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.”³ In retrospect, this was the “turning point.” Johnson, reportedly told advisers, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Westmoreland still believed, “the enemy had delivered himself into the hands of the Allied troops.”⁴ Conversely, cartoonist Art Buchwald compared the so-called victory to “General Custer having the Sioux on the run.”⁵

By 18 March, Johnson had sunk into a state of despair. When he met privately with South Vietnam Ambassador Bui Diem, the later recalled, “I can say for sure that . . . , when I met with President Johnson, even though he did not mention anything about stopping the war, I felt in my heart that to U.S. leaders the entire course of the war had changed.”⁶

As public support for the war waned, Congressional opposition increased, even among former supporters. Advisors like Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy and, especially, the new Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford began to register doubts about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

In late-March, Westmoreland asked for 200,000 more troops to “cut the Ho Chi Minh trail, to invade enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia, and carry out an ‘Inchon-type’ landing in North Vietnam, encircling the enemy troops at the DMZ.” It was what he always wanted and, now, with the Tet “victory” he believed LBJ would accept. The President, confronted with the possibility of calling up inactive reserves in the midst of growing unrest, created a Wise Men’s Council to analyze the request. The group, which included respected former generals like Omar Bradley, rejected the proposal and recommended a cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam and the initiation of negotiations. Thus, Johnson rejected Westmoreland’s request, sending only 13,500 men to confront the continuing emergency. On 31 March, on national television, Johnson not only announced a cessation of the bombing campaign and efforts to start negotiations but, in order to concentrate on peace efforts, he would not seek the Democrats’ presidential nomination. He “had become the latest and best known casualty of the Tet Offensive.”⁷

Khe Sanh
In late December 1967, even before Tet unfolded, intelligence data convinced Gen. Westmoreland that Gen. Giap was planning a Dien Bien Phu-style attack on Khe Sanh, an isolated fire-support base near the border with Laos. With Giap’s commitment of two crack PAVN divisions of 30,000 men, Westmoreland sent 6,000 Marines to defend the outpost. Eventually, the U.S. commitment to Khe Sanh would include massive air resupply, B-52 raids which dropped thousands of tons of bombs on a five-square-mile battlefield, some within 300 yards of the U.S. perimeter, and hundreds of close air support (CAS) sorties. The battle became such an obsession for the President he had a terrain map set up in the basement of the White House. Officially the battle began on 21 January and ended on 9 April when elements of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division, fighting their way up Route 9, linked up with the defenders. Enemy casualties numbered in the untold thousands, but the siege was also costly for U. S. and allied forces and, as perhaps intended by Giap, it prevented many U. S. units from responding to the Tet assaults.⁸
Background: The Camp at Khe Sanh
The fire-base which U.S. Marines occupied, early in 1968, was located near the village of Khe Sanh which was the government seat of the Huong Hoa district. It was located on Route 9 near several Hmong and Montagnard (native peoples) settlements and coffee plantations, roughly seven miles from the Laotian frontier. This was the northernmost transverse road into South Vietnam. The roadway, which was in poor condition, ran from the coastal region, through the western highlands into Laos. The U.S. first arrived in the summer of 1962. They established a U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) base and airfield near an old French fortification. These troops watched for the infiltration by NVA forces into South Vietnam.⁹
The best description of the area was by Robert Pisor in his book The End of the Line:
From the height of Hill 881 one could see the bone-shaped scar of an Army Special Forces camp at Lang Vei, the church steeple of Khe Sanh Village, the smoky hamlets of the mountain tribes known as Bru [Hmong], the air strip and bunkers of Khe Sanh Combat Base—and even thick-walled villas of French planters where wrinkled, brown women sorted coffee beans and gracious ladies served crème de menthe on the patio.
All around lay a phantasmagorical landscape, the kind of place where trolls might live. An awesome, sheer-sided mountain of stone called Co Roc guarded the gateway to Laos, the land of mystery and green mountains that flowed gently around [Hill 881] to the South. Tiger Peak loomed large in the hazy far distance, a barrier near the boundary of North Vietnam. Down on the plateau, confusing tangles of thorn and vine and low brush gave way to incredibly dense stands of twelve-foot-high elephant grass. Plummeting mountain streams frothed white against house-sized boulders on the hillside. Across the valleys silent waterfalls flashed like sunlit diamonds in the deep, green, velvet lushness of the jungle.¹⁰
This description should also provide the reader with a glimpse into the strategic significance of the region, since, “It was Indochina’s geography that made Khe Sanh important.” Indeed, from the time of the Viet Minh’s struggle against the French (1946 to 1954), what eventually became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail was used as a supply and interaction network between Communist forces in North and South Vietnam. By 1968, the Trail had evolved into a succession of roads, trails and foot paths that originated in North Vietnam, and led into Laos through Ban Kari, Nape, Mu Gia, and Ban Raving mountain passes. From here the Trail went either into South Vietnam or Cambodia. The Trail and these passes were so important the North dedicated 200,000 troops and volunteers to keeping them open and the U.S. later sent thousands of bombing sorties against these networks during a four-year campaign named Commando Hunt I-VII. With Khe Sanh overseeing the conjunction of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Laos, and the area the primary NVA entry point into South Vietnam, U.S. leaders believed having an U.S. presence at Khe Sanh was critical.¹¹
In July 1962, as the Green Berets took up their positions near the village of Khe Sanh, an ARVN engineer unit began construction of the first airstrip at Khe Sanh. Over the next two years, U.S. Marine Corps helicopter units deployed to the area to support the Special Forces and ARVN. In addition, in April 1964, the Marines sent an intelligence unit to the area to monitor enemy radio communications. Not long after Gen. Westmoreland paid his first visit Khe Sanh.¹²
It was during this visit that Westmoreland began to believe in the “critical importance” of Khe Sanh. In his opinion,
It would serve as a patrol base for the interdiction of enemy personnel and supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from Laos into Northern South Vietnam; a base for covert operations to harass the Communists along the Trail; an airstrip for aerial reconnaissance of the Trail; the western terminus for the defensive line along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Vietnam; and a jumpoff point for invading Laos by land in order to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”¹³

As time went by, the question of whether to maintain such a detached station had to be answered. As early as the spring of 1964 Westmoreland concluded that, “abandoning the U.S. military presence at Khe Sanh would allow the PAVN the ability to carry the fight into the populated coastal regions of Northern South Vietnam.”¹⁴

The General also believed the base could be used to harass enemy units infiltrating from Laos. That November, Green Berets moved their base camp to the Xom Cham plateau and, soon after, other U.S. personnel from the super-secret MACV Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) moved their operations first into the village and then into the French fort. It was from these locations that reconnaissance teams went into Laos to gather intelligence on the NVA.¹⁵
By early 1966, Westmoreland was conceiving a plan to invade Laos itself. To this end, Khe Sanh would act as his jump off point and base of the operations. He confided to other senior officers in Vietnam that he believed Khe Sanh was a vital strategic base and that it must be held at all cost. That September, he ordered his MACV staff to begin detailed planning for an invasion. Coincidentally, in October, construction crews completed the airfield at Khe Sanh.¹⁶
As the New Year dawned, Marine Corps units began to occupy the plateau camp, establishing their headquarters immediately next to the airstrip. Westmoreland intended for this fortified camp to act as the western most tactical anchor for the five northernmost provinces of South Vietnam known as I Corps. Late the previous year, the Special Forces troops had departed from the plateau and constructed a smaller camp at Lang Vei on Route 9 half way between the Marine camp and the Laotian border. It was designed to support the Marines’ positions which stretched beneath the DMZ from the coast, along Route 9, to Khe Sanh.¹⁷


I Corps: Northern South Vietnam (Khe Sanh bottom left)
Throughout 1967, the Communists attacked U.S. and ARVN sites across the DMZ. Unlike previous hit-and-run tactics, the enemy made sustained assaults with regimental and, later, battalion-size forces that included artillery support. Much of the shelling was aimed at Con Thien and other targets in Quang Tri province. To counter these incursions, Westmoreland retaliated with naval gun fire and air strikes that lasted for seven weeks and dropped 40,000 tons of bombs on enemy positions.
The intensity and frequency of the enemy forays increased throughout October and November 1967, featuring attacks on an ARVN battalion at Song Be, a Special Forces camp near Loc Ninh in Binh Long Province, and Dak To in the central highlands province of Kontum. This latter engagement lasted 22 days and involved 1,500 NVA and major elements of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, 173rd Airborne Brigade and elite ARVN Airborne units. The fighting was costly for both sides. At the time, U.S. intelligence was puzzled by the attacks. As it turned out, Northern leaders were attempting to move allied attention away from their preparations for the Tet incursions against the major cities in South Vietnam.¹⁸
Meanwhile, after months of building up Marine forces at Khe Sanh, Westmoreland decided to reduce the number in order to face enemy threats elsewhere. The General’s concerns about a potential invasion across the DMZ and his reasoning that if the enemy attacked Khe Sanh it would probably be surrounded and have to be resupplied by air anyway motivated him to take this action. This had to concern Gen. Giap if, as he later claimed, Khe Sanh was only a diversion.¹⁹

As early as March, 1967, only one company of Marines defended the Khe Sanh base. Lacking their own aerial assets, adequate troop strength or logistical support to maneuver, they maintained a fixed position. Periodically, they conducted patrols to locate enemy infiltration routes. Once they spotted enemy forces, they called in air strikes, artillery barrages or a reconnaissanceinforce with mixed results. During the intervening weeks, the PAVN ratcheted up their offensive activity against the Marines at Khe Sanh. Soon, enemy sappers and demolition teams cut the overland supply route into the base along Route 9. In turn, an NVA regiment surrounded the base while another PAVN unit launched diversionary 1,200round rocket, artillery, and mortar barrages at Marine fire support bases and helicopter facilities in I Corps.²⁰

On 24 April 1967, a patrol from Bravo Company engaged in a fire fight with an enemy force of unknown size north of Hill 861. This action prematurely triggered an NVA attack on Khe Sanh in an effort to take over high ground before launching a main assault. The units of the 3d Marine Regiment, commanded by Colonel John P. Lanigan, quickly reinforced the Khe Sanh Command Base (KSCB). Once they had stabilized the initial area, they began the task of pushing the North Vietnamese off Hills 861, 881 North, and 881 South. The Marines suffered 155 killed and 425 wounded while the enemy suffered 940 casualties. It was at this point the Marines occupied the hills that surrounded KSCB. By June, there was a lull in NVA activity around Khe Sanh and Marine forces were drawn down, again, from two battalions to one. At the same time, Lt. Gen. Robert E. Cushman, Jr. became commander of III MAF.²¹
The Fighting Expands
No sooner had the General arrived than the Communists launched a frontal assault aimed at overrunning the KSCB and airfield. They also assaulted the nearby Special Forces camp at Lang Vei. To avert complete disaster, the Americans sent two Marine battalions to the besieged area. After nearly a week of bitter fighting, the U.S. defenders finally beat back the PAVN attack. As soon as the immediate threat abated, Westmoreland pulled the reinforcements out and restored the previous defensive status quo. As for the NVA, this stalemate left them in a difficult situation. Economic woes, the increasing devastation of American bombing of Northern urban centers, and the reduction of resupply efforts were taking a toll on their war effort. The Communist purists in Hanoi were coming to realize that a rural struggle alone was not likely to defeat the Americans. Northern leaders correctly feared that the U.S. was planning an invasion of North Vietnam. As a result, they decided a different strategy was in order. At the center of this new plan was an effort to disrupt the successful U.S. pacification program, “expand their control in the countryside, end any U.S. plans to invade the North, destroy U.S. faith in its ability to achieve a military victory, and nudge the Americans in the direction of negotiations. They sought to take the war, for the first time, to the cities of South Vietnam.” This was the beginning of the Tet Offensive.²²
In October 1967, Giap ordered men and material down the Trail. These included the 304th Division, the first large regular formation of PAVN soldiers to enter South Vietnam. The 304th had fought at Dien Bien Phu and came to Khe Sanh supported by attached artillery and antiaircraft units. The other major units were the 325C and 320th Divisions. Analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded that the Communists had enough supplies to support their main assault force of 22,000 for roughly 70 days. Giap had a supporting force of 35,000 to 40,000 in nearby Laos and the central DMZ. Concurrently, one Marine infantry battalion, reinforced with Marine and Army artillery and tanks, defended the outpost at Khe Sanh. Intelligence gathered on enemy movements in December caused Allied leadership to airlift three more Marine battalions and one ARVN Ranger battalion to Khe Sanh. To quote Peter Brush, “By the time the U.S. buildup at the Khe Sanh Combat Base and surrounding fortified hill positions was complete on January 27, allied strength numbered 6,053--a reinforced regiment.”²³
From the outset, U.S. commanders determined that keeping control of the prominent terrain features (the high ground) to the north and northwest of the combat base was essential. They deployed about half of the defenders (mostly Marines) outside the base perimeter to Hill 558, Hill 861, Hill 861 A or Alpha, Hills 881 North and South, and Hill 950--each named for its height in meters. Engineers had built the base itself on a gentle plateau with the hills affording the ability to detect NVA/NLF infiltration routes from the northwest and west. They fortified each hill with infantry, light artillery, mortars, recoilless rifles, and tracked anti-tank weapons.²⁴
Sporadic skirmishes began at 0830 on 2 January 1968, when reconnaissance personnel spotted six NVA on a slope near the bases’ outer defenses. When Marines engaged the six without response, they opened fire killing five. They were originally identified as enemy officers. News of the incident convinced Gen. Westmoreland that there must be several thousand enemy soldiers near Khe Sanh and that Gen. Giap was planning another Dien Bien Phu. He believed that after three years of chasing the enemy across South Vietnam, they were finally coming to him.
The General deployed veteran Army units north into I Corps to counter the NVA buildup. He placed troops of the 1st Cavalry Division and the 101st Airborne Division, as well as other U.S. and ARVN units, within striking distance of the base just in case they were needed. In retrospect, while controversy still swirls around Giap’s later assertion he meant to affect this buildup to draw American forces away from the populated coastal areas, this initial deployment seems to verify his claim—at least in part. During this time, MACV leadership responded to this PAVN deployment within I Corps by dispatching 50 percent of its maneuver battalions in Vietnam to the region, even though they realized they might be in danger of being unable to meet Communist threats directed at other targets in the South. They were so certain of the severity of the threat to the KSCB, they were willing to risk being without tactical reserves in other areas just to secure the base.²⁵
By December 1967, intelligence had confirmed the presence of the NVA’s 325th Division as well as two additional divisions believed to be the 324th Division which had taken up a position on the DMZ roughly 10 miles north of Khe Sanh and the 320th Division which was about the same distance to the northeast. All these units were being supplied by units sending logistics down the nearby Ho Chi Minh Trail. This only reinforced Gen. Westmoreland’s decision to send the 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment to the KSCB to reinforce the position.²⁶
In addition to troop dispositions, Giap located artillery, rocket and mortar emplacements west of Hill 881 South and north of Co Roc Ridge, across the border in Laos. From these positions, the NVA could fire independently on the base or provide support to its ground assault troops. They were assisted in their efforts by the continuing bad weather from the winter monsoon which kept most U.S. aerial reconnaissance flights grounded.²⁷
The official history of the NVA claimed that by December 1967 they had deployed the 304th, 320th, 324th, and 325th Infantry Divisions, the independent 270th infantry Regiment, the 16th, 45th, 84th, 204th, and 675th artillery regiments, the 208th, 214th, and 228th AAA regiments, four tank companies, one engineer regiment, one independent engineer battalion, one signal battalion, and a number of local militia units. The nearby NVA artillery included 152mm artillery pieces with a range of ten and one-half miles, 130mm guns, introduced later in the battle, with a range of nineteen miles. The heaviest Marine ordnance at Khe Sanh was the 155mm which had a range of only nine miles. The enemy used this discrepancy avoid counter-battery fire. The one thing they could not avert were air attacks which the Marines could call in with impunity.²⁸
The Match to Light the Fire
Clearly the 2 January incident when six NVA were spotted just outside the KSCB’s defensive wire was the spark that began the fight. Even though there are various versions of the story, what is clear is that when they failed to respond to the warning challenge, five were shot and killed while the sixth, although wounded, escaped. According to John Prados and Ray Stubbe, certainly two the most knowledgeable experts on Khe Sanh, a whole set of myths have proliferated regarding this incident. At first, it was reported the dead men were wearing Marine uniforms and they were a regimental commander and his staff on a reconnaissance. One dispatch went so far as to say they were all identified by name and rank. All this was supposed to be based on American intelligence examinations of the bodies and the documents they were carrying. None of this was actually totally verified. Even so, the incident led Gen. Cushman to reinforce David E. Lownds, overall Marine commander at Khe Sanh, with the rest of the 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines which was the first time that all three battalions of the 26th Marine Regiment had operated together in combat since the beach landings at Iwo Jima during World War II. Companies F, G, H, and I of the 2nd Battalion deployed to Hill 558 to cover a defilade near the Rao Quan River, while E company occupied Hill 861A.²⁹
On 20 January, La Thanh Tonc, a NVA lieutenant of the 14th Anti-Aircraft Company, 325th Division, defected to Marines at KSCB and subsequently provided them with detailed plans for all the upcoming NVA attacks. When Hills 881 South, 861, and the main base were assaulted simultaneously early on 21 January, the Marines were prepared. Even so, the enemy infantry penetrated the perimeter of the defenses and had to be repulsed with close-quarters combat.³⁰
This was followed by a mortar and rocket attack on the main base which destroyed most of the above ground structures. One shell hit the main ammunition dump hurling artillery and mortar rounds into the air. Most of the falling rounds exploded as they hit the ground. Later, another shell hit a cache of CS tear gas, covering the entire fire base with choking gas fumes. The smoldering fires left by the attack ignited new explosions which caused more damage. With chaos all around, the NVA did not exploit this opportunity to launch another ground attack.³¹



The NVA artillery makes a direct hit on the Ammo Dump
Instead of attacking the KSCB, the enemy launched an assault against the village of Khe Sanh. This large village was defended by 160 local troops, 15 American advisers and heavy artillery provided by the KSCB. The Communist attack consisted of a 300-man NVA battalion. The U.S. immediately sent reinforcements aboard nine UH-1 helicopters. They were overrun as was a small ground rescue force from the base camp. The survivors evacuated to the safety of the KSCB. The NVA finally captured the village on 28 January.³²
On the night of 23 January, three NVA battalions, led by seven Soviet-built tanks attacked Laotian Battalion BV-33 at Ban Houei Sane near Route 9 in Laos. The Laotians were quickly overrun with the survivors fleeing to the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei. It was the first time in the war that PAVN units had used armor in a battle. Large NVA artillery made its debut on 24 January, with a bombardment by 152mm guns on Hill 881 South, Hill 861, and then the main base. The Marines and ARVN hunkered down hoping the approaching Tet truce (scheduled from 29–31 January) would provide some respite. However, on 29 January the 3rd Marine Division headquarters notified the KSCB the truce had been canceled.³³

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