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BY JOHN PRADOS
The 1968 battle for Khe Sanh, the biggest battle of the Vietnam
War and its longest sustained siege, has been the subject
of history, story-telling, and myth-making. But for all
the books, articles, and buddies’ accounts of their
experiences, one aspect has so far been little touched.
That is the tale of the adversary, the North Vietnamese
enemy who fought in the hills and villages around the combat
base.
In our book, Valley of Decision, Khe Sanh chaplain
Ray W. Stubbe and I worked hard to present something about
the other side. We thought we had done well with the information
available at the time. But since the book was published
in 1992, much more has come out, including official histories
of the NVA—officially
know as the Vietnam People’s Army—and many of
its units, as well as collections of Vietnam Workers Party
documents, enough to make possible for the first time a more
extensive treatment of the North Vietnamese side of the battle.
What follows is a fresh look at that story.
There are many
mysteries on Hanoi’s side. The first
is what, exactly, was the People’s Army supposed to
accomplish at Khe Sanh? In America we debate whether Hanoi
intended Khe Sanh as a new Dien Bien Phu or if it was a diversion
to draw Gen. William Westmoreland’s forces away from
the main targets of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive. New
evidence sheds some light on this matter.
At the very beginning
of 1968, Hanoi confirmed its final decision for the Tet Offensive
at a party plenum. The speech given there by Central Military
Party Committee chief Le Duan, one of the main overseers
of the war in the South, made specific reference to “annihilating” significant
American troop units. So did the resolution the plenum adopted,
as well as Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap’s fall 1967 articles
aimed at NVA political officers. The most obvious place to
do that was at Khe Sanh. The People’s Army already
was gathering strength around the combat base in preparation
for a great battle.
On the other hand, Le Duan explicitly
made Saigon and other South Vietnamese cities the priority
targets for Tet. His overwhelming focus on a general uprising
also led away from the idea of a decisive battle at Khe Sanh,
where there were no large populations to mobilize. The idea
of a diversion remained implicit in these materials.
Vietnamese
official histories are more direct. That of the Tri-Thien-Hue
military region, which encompassed the provinces of Quang
Tri and Thua Thien, including both Hue and Khe Sanh, notes
that the plan set a quota for allied forces to be eliminated
but says the high command ordered the initial attacks around
Khe Sanh for a week before Tet, “earlier than in other
areas of South Vietnam in order to draw in the enemy.” It
is especially revealing that the date for “Day-N”—the
moment for the countrywide attacks of Tet—was not divulged
to the troops in the Khe Sanh sector.
The NVA 304th Division
history recounts that its mission was intended to “create
conditions that would be favorable for an uprising in Tri-Thien
and Hue,” and to “draw
out and tie down American and puppet forces, the more the
better.” The 325th Division history says much the same
and adds, with respect to attacking the “enemy defense
line on Highway 9,” that this should only be done “when
conditions permit.” A monograph by the Vietnamese Military
History Institute focusing specifically on the Khe Sanh-Route
9 campaign notes the primacy of the Saigon-Mekong objectives,
then says, “Highway 9-Khe Sanh (particularly Khe Sanh)
were the areas into which forces were to be drawn and tied
down, eliminating the American mobile units…so that
the General Offensive and Popular Uprising could take place
in the other areas.”
To accomplish its goals, the People’s
Army created a new headquarters on December 6, 1967—the
Route 9 Front. It was commanded by Brigadier Gen. Tran Quy
Hai with Brigadier Gen. Le Quang Dao as political officer.
That Tran Quy Hai had previously served as deputy chief of
the NVA General Staff, and his colleague as deputy chief
of the General Political Department, is an indication of
the extent to which Hanoi wanted to exercise an extra degree
of control over these operations. Headquarters was established
at Sat Lit Village.
A pair of delegates from Hanoi Hai’s
successor as deputy chief of staff, Brigadier Le Trong Tan,
and Col. Le Ngoc Hin, the director of operations made the
rounds in the South, including a stop at the Route 9 Front,
to bring Hanoi’s
latest directives. The command group circulated its logistics
plan on December 20 and met on the 28th to plan operations.
The Khe Sanh effort was codenamed the “B5-T8” campaign.
Meanwhile, the Tri-Thien-Hue regional party committee set
final goals on New Year’s Eve. The next day, the party
plenum in Hanoi adopted its Resolution 14, the final guidance
for Tet. The Khe Sanh front received this document on January
10.
Things then developed quickly. During the last week of
1967, the 325-C Division under Col. Chu Phuong Doi moved
to the vicinity of Ca Lu, about halfway along the mountainous
segment of Route 9 that stretched to Khe Sanh, expecting
to regroup for a period of two months. His political officer,
Nguyen Cong Trang, and his chief of staff, Mai Xuan Tan,
busied themselves with the myriad details that needed to
be covered. The division was being sent to Gen. Hai’s
sector. The 325th also received orders to detach one of its
regiments to another Tri-Thien-Hue combat zone. Col. Doi
assembled his troops and began moving out within 24 hours
of receiving his orders. On January 12, he set up a new command
post at a point close to the Laotian border. The troops were
excited.
Col. Hoang Dan’s NVA 304th Division, recently
re-equipped in North Vietnam, moved down the Ho Chi Minh
Trail to the Khe Sanh front. As its history notes, “the
entire division went into combat acting as a mobile main
force unit of the high command.” Some units carried
food for five days; some regiments for just four. Dan received
his mission at the front command post on January 14, after
which he had to hold a marathon nine-hour staff meeting to
make his arrangements because of the acceleration of the
offensive timetable. On January 19, the division received
a new political officer, Nguyen Trong Hop, who happened to
be in the area on his way to the Central Highlands.
The infantry
was augmented by additional formations, including the 45th
and 675th Artillery Regiments, the 7th Engineer Regiment,
and some local guerrillas. The present-for-duty strength
in these histories, 27,000 in January 1968, compares favorably
to 22,000 made at the time by the CIA. More than 9,500 troops
were in the front’s logistics, or “rear
services,” units. Specialists began to survey artillery
positions as early as October 1967. Some 900 tons of supplies
were allotted to the operation.
Hanoi’s data indicate
a total of just over 9,000 riflemen in all, with just over
half armed with assault rifles, but more than 3,500 having
older weapons, plus 360 soldiers armed with RPG rockets.
Crewed weapons included more than 500 light and 100 heavy
machine guns, about 40 recoilless rifles, and some 180 mortars.
Heavy
support included a total of 212 weapons, among them eight
152mm guns, sixteen 130mm guns, thirty-six 122mm guns, eight
105mm howitzers, twelve 100mm guns, 120 rocket launchers,
and assorted other pieces. South Vietnamese estimates of
the antiaircraft threat proved more accurate than American
ones because the ARVN credited the People’s Army with
heavy antiaircraft artillery and the Americans did not. The
enemy actually had forty-two 37mm AA guns and an additional
dozen of 57mm caliber, along with their 130 antiaircraft
machine guns.
This amounted to a substantial force, enough
to mount a threat, but not a Dien Bien Phu. The defensive
complex in the Khe Sanh sector, under Col. David E. Lownds
of the 26th Marines, included Marines, ARVN Rangers, and
MACSOG troops in the combat base and its hilltop satellite
positions; a combined action company in Khe Sanh Village;
a Special Forces garrison at Lang Vei Camp; and a Royal Laotian
infantry battalion at Ban Houei Sane. In all, there were
roughly 7,600 American, South Vietnamese, Montagnard, Nung,
and Laotian troops in the area, supported much more lavishly
than the French at Dien Bien Phu.
People’s Army operations
got off to a rocky start. Gen. Westmoreland had already begun
a massive aerial bombardment, Operation Niagara, that included
many B-52 Arc Light strikes and hit points important to the
NVA 325-C Division. Other regiments of the division probed
some of the high hill positions around Khe Sanh to cover
troop movements.
The American view of Khe Sanh has long been
that the siege opened with firefights between Marine patrols
and the People’s
Army north of Hill 881S, and then an extended combat action
atop 881N on January 20, when Capt. William H. Dabney led
I Company of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines on a reconnaissance
in force after the patrol actions. The troops he encountered
were 325-C men, of Ho Ngoc Trai’s 95C Regiment. Dabney
relocated to the 881S strongpoint with the enemy in pursuit.
The 6th Battalion of 95C, according to the Vietnamese, sustained
95 wounded and 15 dead.
That night the 325-C mounted a hasty
attack on nearby Hill 861 with the 4th Battalion of the 95C
Regiment. The attack never penetrated the wire and left 50
dead outside the wire by Marine count. The Vietnamese recorded
20 dead and 68 wounded. Their accounts hold that these actions,
along with other attacks at Dong Tri Mountain and against
American scout patrols, were strictly diversionary. The differences
between what Gen. Hai’s forces actually did, and the
version of NVA plans volunteered by People’s Army defector
La Thanh Tonc, strongly suggests that Tonc’s account
was disinformation given to mislead Col. Lownds and the Marines.
The
true initial assault role had been allotted to Thai Dung
Co’s 304th. With the 9th Regiment deployed to catch
any reinforcements Lownds might dispatch, Co assigned a battalion
of his 66th Regiment to capture Khe Sanh Village, while Le
Cong Phe’s 24th Regiment was ordered to overrun the
Laotians at Ban Houei Sane. The 7th Battalion of the 66th
Regiment broke camp at noon on January 20. Suddenly, just
ahead of it, the ground shook as an Arc Light strike plastered
the region, felling trees and cratering the land. The bo
dois, as the North Vietnamese called their soldiers, were
swallowed up. Some columns became lost, others merely waylaid.
The regiment leader was forced to delay the operation until
shortly before dawn, breaking with People’s Army practice
of attacking in the dead of night.
Meanwhile, NVA artillery
opened up a deadly bombardment of the Khe Sanh combat base.
Designed to cover the Khe Sanh Village attack and impede
any reinforcements, this bombardment proved unexpectedly
successful, igniting much of the combat base’s stockpile
of 1,500 tons of ammunition. One Marine company had to displace
its command post three times to escape the shower of smoldering
shells raining on its position. Vietnamese histories credit
this action to the 45th Artillery Regiment acting independently.
The bombardment marked the first NVA use of the newly deployed
long-barreled D74 model 122mm gun.
The village of Khe Sanh,
seat of Huong Hoa District, lay about three kilometers south
of the combat base. It was defended by the Marines’ Combined
Action Company Oscar and two platoons of South Vietnamese
Regional Forces Company 915—in
all about 175 troops, including 15 Americans, most from CAC
Oscar. The combined action soldiers had recently improved
their defenses, though they had not pulled in the last platoon
of the company, which was stationed in a hamlet about 200
meters from the main position. They also benefited from the
Arc Light strike that almost caught Maj. Bruce Clark’s
RF patrol, which had been warned to pull back in time.
Americans
and South Vietnamese hunkered down that night, but nothing
could prevent the attack. Nguyen Van Thieng flung his 7th
Battalion, 66th Regiment at the allied positions. First light
brought considerably increased air support for the Americans,
and Maj. Clark had radio contact with forward air controllers
calling the strikes. The Marines of CAC Oscar called for
artillery from the combat base on their radio net. Marines
could not use the Claymore mines they had placed inside their
perimeter (to avoid mistakenly killing villagers) for fear
of destroying their own wire barriers. Some RF troopers fled,
but they dropped enough grenades to break the momentum of
7th Battalion.
Air power reduced the assault to a slugging
match. Comrade Thieng fell in battle. One of his companies
lost nearly all its command group. Political officer To Cong
Kien, wounded and with a broken arm, led the assault. The
People’s
Army fought throughout the day, into the next night, and
finally completed the capture of Khe Sanh Village at 9:30
a.m. on January 22.
It had been a bloody battle. The NVA suffered
154 killed and 486 wounded. Though some of these casualties
came from units manning blocking positions, there can be
little doubt the 7th Battalion was crippled by this engagement.
Due to its losses and the dangers posed by American air power,
the People’s Army waited until after dark to take over
the village.
Col. Lownds sent out a small relief force, a
single rifle platoon, but recalled it when the men reached
a rise from where they could see bo dois deploying all around
Khe Sanh Village. From remote Quang Tri, the province senior
adviser had another RF company chopper in to help the defenders.
They ran right into an ambush prepared by the 11th Company,
9th Battalion, 9th Regiment. A Vietnamese account states
the 256th RF company was “immediately, completely wiped
out.”
Company commander Lt. Nguyen Dinh Thiep was captured,
American deputy senior province adviser LTC Joseph Seymoe
killed. The remnants of Khe Sanh Village’s defenders
escaped to the combat base. A SOG patrol that took advantage
of the NVA delay to enter the village and destroy stores
became the last allied troops to see the ville for months.
The
other prong of the 304th Division’s effort aimed
at the Laotian army camp at Ban Houei Sane. Clearing away
this position opened the Route 9 Front’s supply lines
from its rear services bases all the way to Khe Sanh. Division
commander Thai Dung Ho gave this task to Le Cong Phe of the
24th Regiment.
Phe attacked from three directions, committing
his 6th Battalion and Company 8 of his 3rd. The spearpoint
of the assault was 7th Company, which came in from the northwest
backed by eleven PT-76 tanks of the 198th Armored Battalion.
Phan Van Nai, who led this tank company, had never worked
with infantry before, and the bo dois had never operated
together with tanks. Problems were almost guaranteed. The
most that could be done ahead of time was for Nai to show
how to ride on the tanks without falling. The infantry practiced
climbing up and jumping off. That was it.
On its approach, the 7th Company was critically delayed.
The armor had to cross several underwater bridges to close
in on the Lao positions. Though Nai’s PT-76 tanks were
designed to be amphibious, the banks of the streams in this
area were so steep that only prepared approaches were suitable.
On the third bridge the lead tank, number 555, bogged down.
It was extricated with difficulty, after which 558 became
stuck. During all this, the NVA troops were discovered. Early
morning of January 24 had come before they could move up.
The
other People’s Army formations had already started
attacking Ban Houei Sane, which was organized in several
platoon- and company-sized strongpoints and defended by about
700 troops under Laotian LTC Soulang. The Laotian troops
put up a pretty good defense, despite the fact that U.S.
B-57 bombers overhead could not support them because they
were unable to find the NVA troops in the dark.
By 6:00 a.m.,
regiment commander Phe, frustrated with delays of the armor,
ordered the others to press ahead. Then the planes arrived.
But just then came the tanks with the 7th Company, surprising
the defenders, who became confused. People’s
Army engineers blew out the last obstacles and the spearhead
entered the base, attacking the remaining Laotian positions
from the interior of the camp. The Lao troops broke and fled
toward Lang Vei Special Forces Camp. Inside of two hours
it was all over. The 24th Regiment suffered losses of 29
dead and 54 wounded. It, too, pursued toward Lang Vei. When
he reached safety, Laotian Col. Soulang told the Americans
that the NVA had used tanks in the battle. They did not believe
him.
At Khe Sanh combat base, after the battle for the ville,
the Marines began a period of frantic buildup. Col. Lownds
needed to replace the ammunition and supplies destroyed in
the bombardment, and the high command sent him reinforcements.
The last battalions to arrive, the 1/9 Marines and the ARVN
37th Rangers, came at this time. Lownds added another satellite
strongpoint at Hill 861A to protect existing positions, and
he put 1/9 in the valley at a low rise known as the Rock
Quarry with its own outpost, Hill 64. Beginning on January
23, People’s Army antiaircraft fire posed a significant
threat to American aerial resupply activities. Mortars and
other bombardment weapons also struck the Khe Sanh airfield
whenever transport planes touched down on it.
The Americans
developed techniques to push supplies into the combat base
and its satellite strongpoints while avoiding excessive losses.
Meanwhile, the Americans played some cards of their own.
Most notable was an Arc Light strike against Gen. Tran Quy
Hai’s headquarters, identified by radio
intelligence.
Vietnamese sources confirm that the strike
disrupted Route 9 Front headquarters for three days, though
it did not kill any of its top commanders.
When Tet came,
nothing happened at Khe Sanh. The main fireworks came later.
Some who have written about Khe Sanh say that Gen. Vo Nguyen
Giap was at the front. This is simply not true. Vietnamese
sources record that on February 2 NVA General Staff chief
Van Tien Dung telephoned front commander Hai, demanding to
know what obstacles prevented the Route 9 troops from attacking
more forcefully to draw in the American enemies. This would
have been completely unnecessary had Giap been on the scene.
But the complaint spurred Gen. Hai to action.
Starting on
February 3, one of the wonders of American technology, electronic
sensors, were employed for the first time at Khe Sanh. They
detected large-scale movements near Hill 881S. The next night
the movement resumed, and an attack took place against Hill
861A. On both occasions American artillery and air power
struck hard against the supposed enemy movements. The Vietnamese
sources are largely silent on the attack that actually took
place against Hill 861A on February 5, passing over these
events in a phrase or two and providing no record of losses.
But
Capt. Earle Breeding’s Marines on 861A
are in no doubt that a tough fight took place that night.
Five Marines received the Navy Cross, and between 109 and
150 Vietnamese dead lay on the ground the next morning.
What
Hanoi’s histories make much of is the battle of
Lang Vei on February 6-7. Two battalions of Le Cong Phe’s
24th Regiment plus the 3/101D/325-C made the assault a full
regiment with the equivalent of a battalion of 122mm guns
firing in direct support, plus ten tanks of the 3rd and 9th
Companies, 198th Armored Battalion, and elements of the 4th
and 40th Sapper Companies. Col. Phe lacked his 6th Battalion,
which had been sent to reinforce the Tri-Thien-Hue front.
Contrary
to the reconstruction later made by the South Vietnamese
Joint General Staff (and recorded in Valley of Decision),
the NVA 66th Regiment did not participate at all. The assault
began late in the afternoon of February 6. Supporting artillery
went to second-phase fire at 11:15 p.m. The wire on the western
face of Lang Vei was breached at 11: 50 by sappers and troops
of Dinh Xuan Nguyen’s 5th Battalion, 24th Regiment.
To the northeast, Le Dac Cong’s 4th Battalion had trouble
breaking through. Col. Phe sent his deputy chief of staff
to Nguyen’s 5th Battalion command post to lead the
exploitation. PT-76 tanks provided the hard edge, and American
Green Berets and Montagnard strikers found their Light Antitank
Weapons ineffective against the armor. On the south side
of the camp, the 3rd Battalion, 101D Regiment eliminated
two companies of Montagnard strikers in their redoubts. The
Vietnamese claim they completed the conquest of Lang Vei
at 10:00 a.m. on February 7. They report 90 killed and 220
wounded in the assault.
On February 8, the People’s
Army hit again, close to the Khe Sanh combat base, against
Hill 64 that was defended by the “Walking Dead” of
the 1/9 Marines. Here, too, the Vietnamese sources are remarkably
silent, even though this fight near the Rock Quarry was essentially
the follow-up to Lang Vei. A battalion of the 101D Regiment
of Chu Phuong Doi’s 325C Division triggered some of
the most intense assault combat of the siege, in which the
NVA actually broke into the Marine positions and fought from
bunker to bunker. In the aftermath, Marines found 30 bodies
atop the strongpoint and counted 150 enemy dead overall.
The Vietnamese recorded 58 dead and 71 wounded.
Gen. Hai ordered
the 304th Division to invest Khe Sanh more closely. The 9th
Regiment began the intense entrenching that marked the high
siege phase of the Khe Sanh battle. The Hill 64 fight marked
the last major assault of the campaign. Much had changed.
Before the end of February the NVA General Staff instructed
Hai to send the 325C Division to the Central Highlands. It
left behind one regiment until mid-March to stiffen the siege
forces.
Thus the People’s Army at Khe Sanh actually
had the 304th Division, less one battalion, reinforced by
a regiment of 325C, for a total of eleven rifle battalions
through most of the siege. This is an additional indicator
that Hanoi did not intend a Dien Bien Phu at Khe Sanh. Vietnamese
sources report more than 320 dead (fatalities for one regiment
are not recorded) plus 982 wounded during this phase of operations.
Artillery
bombardment remained a constant ordeal. Some days there were
fewer shells, other times more. Marines developed a sense
of the rhythm and dashed where they needed to go in the intervals.
As the siege progressed, the Americans kept count of the
artillery shells hitting their positions. By their count
the heaviest shelling of the siege came on February 22, when
1,307 shells and rockets hit the allied positions. The average
as late as March was still 150 rounds a day.
New evidence
shows that the People’s Army prepared
carefully for its fire campaign, placing four observation
posts to spot the impact of shells on the Marines. The NVA,
like the U.S. Air Force, seems to have had a predilection
for reporting specific numbers of adversaries killed by these
remote means even though there was never any way to know
such casualty numbers. During the period until February 8,
the artillery carried out 17 bombardments coordinated with
ground operations and 29 independent ones. The high phase
of the siege, we are told, brought orders from Gen. Hai specifically
to aim at the Khe Sanh airfield. The People’s Army
also detached four of its 122mm guns to confuse the Americans
by moving around and firing from different locations. There
were 243 fire missions during the high siege.
Among the lessons
Hanoi learned was that coordination quickly became confused
when artillery fired in support of ground attacks, so that
commanders needed more precise information on the plans of
the units they supported. The Vietnamese artillery history
records expenditure of 9,423 rounds up until the allies began
their Operation Pegasus relief effort. The majority were
82mm mortar shells (4,040), followed by 122mm gun rounds
(3,781). Slightly more than 700 rockets were loosed at the
Marines.
Of course, there was a huge American effort to destroy
the NVA gun positions by counterbattery fire and air bombardment.
Hanoi’s records show that the two artillery regiments
involved suffered a total of 185 casualties, and antiaircraft
gunners an additional 88. The People’s Army countered
by dispersing its guns widely (some positions separated by
as much as 800 meters, though 100-300 was more typical),
keeping them away from the infantry being targeted by American
air, having prepared emplacements to withdraw the guns, surrounding
them with antiaircraft positions, and deploying them with
extreme secrecy in the first place.
Marines looked at the
Co Roc mountain massif, across the Laotian border and southwest
of the combat base as the NVA firebase. Capt. William H.
Dabney, who commanded the Hill 881S strongpoint, at much
higher elevation than the combat base, was convinced Co Roc
was a myth, that the more destructive fire came from west
of his strongpoint. Vietnamese sources show that two battalions
of the 675th Artillery were in fact at Co Roc, but that the
regiment’s third battalion
deployed to the west of 881S, as did the rocket units of
the NVA 45th Artillery. Dabney’s observers did well
with the rockets, usually giving the combat base ten seconds
or more warning of incoming fire. The Khe Sanh Siege finally
ended when Gen. Westmoreland began Pegasus, his corps-sized
relief expedition.
Much of the story of Hanoi’s side
of the Khe Sanh campaign modifies what we thought we knew
about the battle, though there are aspects that correspond
to previous understanding. The new evidence reinforces the
judgment that Hanoi never intended to fight a decisive battle
at Khe Sanh, unlike Gen. Westmoreland’s expectations.
The
People’s Army instructions to its commands, its
assignment to Khe Sanh of a smaller contingent than necessary
to pursue a decisive battle strategy, and its diversion to
other fronts of seven of the eighteen rifle battalions in
even that smaller force, all indicate that a repeat of Dien
Bien Phu was not the aim here. On the other hand, Hanoi’s
orders to its Route 9 Front to eliminate large American units
do show a purpose beyond merely masking the American position
at Khe Sanh.
Vietnamese accounts of the battle suggest that
it was by means of posing a significant threat that Hanoi
hoped to divert the American command, and that such destruction
of American forces as could be achieved at Khe Sanh would
contribute even more to the impact of the Tet Offensive.
The
new evidence also says something about the evolution of Hanoi’s
purpose. Some time ago in Valley of Decision, Ray Stubbe
and I argued that North Vietnam’s intentions
had changed during the course of the battle. We said that
Hanoi had sought the diversion prior to Tet, but around the
time of Lang Vei had perhaps decided to pursue a decisive
battle. The Vietnamese sources supply a crucial modifier
for that view with news of Hanoi’s intervention with
the front commander in early February, demanding why he was
not attacking more forcefully. The days of most intensity,
with the sequence of battles at Lang Vei-Hill 881S-Hill 861A-Hill
64, are now seen as Gen. Hai’s direct response to Hanoi’s
prodding. For the first time we see a coherent progression
in the People’s Army conduct of the campaign. It is
also plain that Hanoi’s demands for action sought to
foster the diversionary role of Khe Sanh within the larger
fabric of Tet
Finally, accounts like these are important because they
give form and substance to what had been a faceless enemy.
There are corrections to be made in our understanding of
the location of the enemy, what they did, and fresh information
on a plethora of aspects. There are many more details in
the new evidence, not only of the fighting but of the People’s
Army campaign and its difficulties supplying and feeding
the troops and treating the wounded. For example, of 1,436
wounded before mid-March, 484 bo dois had returned to their
units while 396 had been sent back up the Ho Chi Minh Trail
to hospitals in the North.
The author wishes to acknowledge
the continuing efforts of Ray W. Stubbe and the Khe Sanh
Veterans Association to document the history of their critical
battle, which included compiling most of the histories used
here, as well as the work of Sedgwick Tourison, Robert DeStatte,
and Merle Pribbenow, who did the English translations of
the histories and documents I used. Most of these histories
may be found at the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
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