Siege of Khe Sanh
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Most of the Montagnards had to seek shelter on a plateau where there was no shelter.
“The amount of firepower put on that piece of real estate,” Westmoreland had boasted, “exceeded anything that has ever been seen before in history.” The general sternly preached “the sanctity and sacredness of the civilian who was on the Vietnam battlefield through no fault of his own,” but Niagara’s deluge could hardly be selective.
On one occasion, U.S. fighter bombers attacked a column of Bru civilians who were being forced by North Vietnamese soldiers to carry boxes and equipment along Route 9. The pilots regretted killing the Bru, but “the immediate situation dictated an attack to prevent the movement of supplies.”
Chaplain Stubbe estimated that 5,000 Bru were killed during the battle at Khe Sanh, but none appears on the official list of 205 dead.
Father Poncet is not there either. The young French priest with the sparkling eyes had been evacuated from the village to a place of safety: Hue. During Tet, the priest and M. Linares were walking near the Perfume River when a burst of rifle fire knocked them down. Linares had been in the car when Papa Poilane was executed on Route 9; now he rose to his hands and found himself unwounded again. Father Poncet was dead.
And the official number does not include the fifty-one Marines, forty-six Army cavalrymen, and thirty-three ARVN paratroopers who were killed during the relief mission, Operation Pegasus.
Because the bookkeeping methods for body counts were determined by the military operations in which the fatalities occurred, and because the operations at Khe Sanh changed names from Scotland to Pegasus to Scotland II to Charlie, the official count of American dead in the siege stopped on April 1—forever fixing the number at 205.
Marines who kept the combat base open when public relations required it, and Marines who shut the base down when military good sense prevailed, did not qualify for a Presidential Unit Citation and were not counted among the official dead in the Battle of Khe Sanh.
• • •
AND WHAT ABOUT the North Vietnamese?
“My staff estimated the North Vietnamese lost 10,000 to 15,000 men in their vain attempt to restage Dienbienphu,” Westmoreland wrote several months later. “[We] lost two hundred five.”
Colonel Lownds was convinced that two whole divisions of the North Vietnamese Army had been destroyed, and anyone who looked at the cratered terrain around Khe Sanh knew the enemy’s losses must have been terrible. “The most reasonable estimate,” said a U.S. Army general, was 10,000 killed or seriously wounded.
All of the numbers were estimates, and some were wild guesses; heavy clouds and dense ground fog made precise counts impossible. Seventy-eight bodies were counted after the North Vietnamese attack on February 29, for example, but the Marines believed they had “wiped out an entire regiment.”
The official body count for the Battle of Khe Sanh was 1,602 North Vietnamese dead—buy not even the Marine commanding general believed it especially when he heard that only 117 rifles and 39 crew-served weapons had been captured. Field reports with such wide disparities in bodies and weapons, General Tompkins declared, were “a bunch of poop.”
Captain Dabney put it even more harshly:
“Most body counts were pure, unadulterated bullshit. Generals manipulated a ‘good kill’ by flip-flopping numbers, and a certain dishonesty was bred. All of us knew that the staff was not coming out to count the bodies in front of our lines.”
General Tompkins thought the whole concept of measuring success in war by body counts was “ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous,” but he played the game because it was expected of him.
“They’d report something . . . anything, and I’d just shove it on,” Tompkins said. “I didn’t give a damn what they were saying [about body counts]. It was a system going on; it was required by Saigon.”
General Tompkins was not alone; six out of every ten American generals who served in the Vietnam war believed that official body counts were “often inflated.”
The exaggeration of enemy death tolls was exposed most baldly during a military briefing in the White House for President Johnson’s Wise Old Men. It was late in March, when the conservative counselors were beginning to wonder if the cost exceeded the prize in the Vietnam war. A military officer, trying to show how dramatically the war had turned around since February, reported that 45,000 enemy soldiers had been killed in the Tet Offensive—a staggering setback for any army.
United Nations Ambassador Arthur Goldberg remembered that American forces in Vietnam had experienced a ratio of seven wounded for every man killed, and he asked the officer what enemy strength had been at the beginning of the offensive. Between 160,000 and 175,000, the officer replied. Was the enemy’s wounded-to-killed ratio much different than the American ratio, Goldberg wanted to know. It ran about three and a half to one, the officer said.
But that was impossible, Goldberg exclaimed. It meant the enemy had no more effective forces left on the battlefield!
“A long and devastating silence followed.”
JUDGMENTS
By any military standards, Khe Sanh was a clear United States victory . . . a textbook example of what the military calls “occupying terrain by firepower.” Air Force enthusiasts call it history’s first victory of air power over ground forces.
—U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, MAY 6, 1968
As far as interdicting the North Vietnamese lines of communications, U.S. airpower was almost completely zero. Right to the end, they drove lighted trucks, with headlights, and the vaunted [night-flying bombers] could no more catch them than I can fly.
—GENERAL RATHVON MCC. TOMPKINS,
COMMANDING GENERAL OF THE MARINES AT KHE SANH
By pinning down and by decimating two North Vietnamese divisions, the few thousand Marines and their gallant South Vietnamese allies prevented those divisions from entering other major battles such as Hue and Quang Tri.
—PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON
One of the reasons why General Giap did not attack Khe Sanh [is] that he did not want to awaken in the American people an overriding emotion of patriotism in support of the war.
If, during a favorable break in the weather, when American air power would have been hampered, and before the Marines were well dug in (they were never so well entrenched as the French at Dienbienphu), the death and capture of more than 5,000 Marines might well have incited such a response from the United States. . . .
Besides, Khe Sanh proved to be a superb diversion for the Tet Offensive.
—SIR ROBERT THOMPSON, BRITISH MILITARY ANALYST
In Hanoi, General Giap was smugly satisfied with his handiwork. He had never had any intention of capturing Khe Sanh. His purpose there all along had been to divert U.S. attention and resources. And it had accomplished its purpose magnificently.
While the rest of the world watched the extravaganza at Khe Sanh, Vo Nguyen Giap, perhaps one of the world’s most brilliant generals, looked elsewhere.
—DAVE RICHARD PALMER, AMERICAN MILITARY ANALYST
There were two enemy divisions around Khe Sanh and part of a third waiting in the wings—15,000 to 20,000 men—facing one reinforced American regiment of about 6,000 men.
The one South Vietnamese and four American battalions [at Khe Sanh] represented only one-sixtieth of the 299 U.S. and Allied combat battalions in Vietnam.
How could anyone legitimately question who was tying down whom?
—GENERAL WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND
What Giap wants is to control the population of South Vietnam. American opinion is concentrated on Khe Sanh, while political commissars are speaking in the public squares of every small village, and even in Saigon itself.
—MAJOR JEAN POUGET, VETERAN OF DIENBIENPHU
Khe Sanh was one more American effort in a chimerical series to create a battle of Dienbienphu, one that American firepower would “win.” It bespoke a low estimate of Giap’s tactical judgment.
—ROBERT B. ASPREY, AMERICAN MILITARY HIST
ORIAN
Dienbienphu, Dienbienpu, look, it’s not always true that history repeats itself.
Khe Sanh didn’t try to be, nor could it have been, a Dienbienphu. Khe Sanh wasn’t that important to us. Or it was only to the extent that it was important to the Americans—in fact, at Khe Sanh their prestige was at stake.
Because just look at the usual paradox that you will always find with the Americans: as long as they stayed in Khe Sanh to defend their prestige, they said Khe Sanh was important; when they abandoned Khe Sanh, they said Khe Sanh had never been important.
Besides, don’t you think we won at Khe Sanh?
I say yes.
—GENERAL VO NGUYEN GIAP
Khe Sanh will stand in history, I am convinced, as a classic example of how to defeat a numerically superior besieging force by coordinated application of firepower.
Khe Sanh [was] one of the most damaging, one-sided defeats among many that the North Vietnamese incurred, and the myth of General Giap’s military genius was discredited.
—GENERAL WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND
The most important battle of the war.
—GENERAL LEWIS W. WALT, U.S MARINE CORPS
Khe Sanh was an unsound blow in the air.
—GENERAL VICTOR H. KRULAK, U.S. MARINE CORPS
Khe Sanh has won a large place in the history of the Vietnam war as an inspiring example of American and Allied valor.
One day, the victory over the siege may be judged a decisive turning point that finally convinced the enemy he could not win.
—THE WASHINGTON STAR, JUNE 9, 1968
The absurdity of Khe Sanh will rate a book by itself. Holding it, relieving it, and evacuating it were all regarded as victories.
—SIR ROBERT THOMPSON
We have curtailed the tide of Communist aggression and prevented the overrunning of the Republic of Vietnam. In over three years, the enemy has not won a single major military victory. . . . In the first six months of 1968, the Communists lost an estimated 170,000 men.
Large portions of the countryside have been secured and a major segment of the population brought under government control and protection. Many miles of roads and waterways have been opened. We have made great strides in developing self-sufficient Vietnamese armed forces.
By virtue of their understanding, discipline, combat proficiency, and humanitarian actions, our troops have earned the respect of the Vietnamese people. . . .
Although a serious Communist challenge remains, the Republic of Vietnam is growing steadily stronger. The foundations we have laid are soundly constructed and, with firm resolve, an independent and viable nation should emerge.
—GENERAL WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND,
REPORT ON THE WAR IN VIETNAM, JUNE 1968
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In addition to the authors and correspondents and military personnel whose contributions are acknowledged in the Notes, I am especially grateful for the lively interest of Carolyn Miller, an eyewitness in Khe Sanh whose love for the Bru still glows; for the steady hand of Joseph P. Davison, mapmaker, who uniquely combined the skills of a professional cartographer and an artillery officer, of Rollie Krichbaum, who read the manuscript in its penultimate draft; for the willing assistance of John T. Dyer Jr., Curator of Art at the Marine Corps Museum, and the cheerful competence of the Marine Corps Library’s professional staff, which made me welcome for weeks; for the hospitality of my aunts Doris Baster and Nada Poole, who opened their house and hearts to me during research trips to Washington, D.C.; and for the encouragement and help of my wife, Ellen, whose patience made it possible.
NOTES
Authors and book titles are given here in the clearest abbreviated form. Complete bibliographical details are cited in Sources.
1. THE CURTAIN RISES
In stiff manila folders in a back room of the U.S. Marine Corps library in the Navy Yard, in Washington, D.C., are daily, weekly, and monthly Situation Reports, copies of radio messages, intelligence summaries, cable traffic, casualty totals, and even penciled personal notes from every Marine unit that fought at Khe Sanh. These are the bones of the story of the siege, and they were first put together by Marine Captain Moyers S. Shore II, in The Battle for Khe Sanh.
Shore was under unique pressure; both the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army looked over his shoulder as he worked. His book was designed specifically to rebut criticism of the decision to stand and fight at Khe Sanh—and of the way the fight was fought.
Shore’s work is flawed by the many official approvals it had to win before publication, but the captain had worked hard to collect the memories and the views of every important player. These records include letters, notes, transcripts of interviews, observations, dissents, and even first drafts of Shore’s book annotated by officers who served at Khe Sanh. They are invaluable, but uncatalogued, and in Shore’s notes and in mine they are labeled “Comments.”
William Dabney, now a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, shared his memories and views during interviews in October and November of 1978 and January of 1980.
A final valued source for this chapter, and for all the siege, was Ray W. Stubbe’s Chaplain at Khe Sanh, Volumes I and II (a typed manuscript, 1,504 pages, dated 1971, in the Marine Corps library). Stubbe’s rambling diary is chockfull of eyewitness accounts, wild rumors, and official reports on everything from the weather, the rats, and the Bru to enemy intentions, regimental briefings, and rising casualty tolls.
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10 trout as big as salmon: Tompkins, Oral History, p. 48.
13 the Hill Fights: Shore, pp. 10–16.
13 “We’re coming after you!”: Stubbe, p. 118.
14 no . . . target . . . had been so heavily bombed: Marines in Vietnam—1967, p. 125; Shaplen, Road from War, p. 137.
14 “no NVA, no trees, no nothin’ ”: Stubbe, p. 120.
15 “We . . . came back with half [our men]”: Congressional Record—House, May 22, 1967, pp. 13381–82.
15 “well-equipped . . . well-uniformed, well-fed”: Electronic Battlefield, pp. 80–81.
18 “all the resources of the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force”: Pearson, p. 30.
22 “In other words, they bag ’em.”: Chaisson, Oral History, p. 154.
22–26 This account of the attack on 881 North comes from Shore, and Dabney, but also from the hand-written accounts of radio operators, enlisted men, and officers who nominated the dead lieutenants for medals. These eyewitness accounts are attached to the formal “Award Recommendation” forms on file with the Department of Navy. Sergeant Jessup won the Silver Star for his heroism. The Navy Cross was awarded posthumously to platoon leaders Tom Brindley and Michael Thomas.
26 a . . . tradition more sacred than life: Small Unit Actions in Vietnam—Summer, 1966, p.94.
27 The official history is Shore’s work, The Battle of Khe Sanh.
2. WESTMORELAND
The details of Westmoreland’s personal history come from his autobiography, A Soldier Reports, and from Westmoreland: The Inevitable General, by Ernest B. Furgurson. For an understanding of the art of being a general, I am grateful to Maureen Mylander’s The Generals.
I attended many of Westmoreland’s briefings in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, and twice interviewed him at length as he traveled by jet around the country. I was present at the battles of Con Thien, Loc Ninh, and Dak To, but I am also indebted to the official reports and numbers published by military sources, especially Westmoreland’s Report on the War in Vietnam.
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29 Westmoreland . . . moved . . . past West Point classmates: Furgurson, p. 290.
30 “the . . . best . . . army in the world”: Graff, p. 98.
31 a campaign for the presidency: Furgurson, p. 333.
31 “at the snap of a finger”: Furgurson, p. 214.
31 plane . . . reeked of monkey shit: Westmoreland, Soldier, p. 27.
31 the first perfect . . . “compleat general”: Mylander, p. 64.
32 Checker . . . onto the board: Westmoreland, Report, p. 160.
33 “daring amphibious hook”: Westmoreland, Soldier, p. 204.
33 “chimerical”: Westmoreland, Soldier, p. 113.
34 a jumble of generals: Westmoreland, Report, p. 83, and Kahin and Lewis, pp. 131–75.
34 Big Minh playing tennis: Westmoreland, Soldier, p. 63. Some Vietnamese complained that Westmoreland tended to have greater confidence in Vietnamese who spoke good English regardless of their military or political skills: see Tran Van Don, p. 152.
34 ARVN: Westmoreland, Soldier, p. 59–70.
35 nozzles . . . of disabling gas: Soldier, pp. 46–47.
35 “trying to push spaghetti”: Charleton, p. 135.
35 talked . . . with Sir Robert Thompson: Furgurson, p. 296, and Soldier, p. 100.
36 “The critical importance of the little plateau was immediately apparent”: Westmoreland, Soldier, p. 336.
36 “rules”: Soldier, pp. 40–48, and Furgurson, pp. 296–300.
37 “forego dissent”: Mylander, p. 211.
37 another six months: Soldier, pp. 63–65.
38 “was not . . . going to fall on my sword”: Soldier, p. 77.
39 drinking . . . coup leaders under the table: Soldier, p. 99.
40 In January 1965: This short history of the early war years is from Westmoreland’s accounts in Soldier and Report, and from the summary in Halberstam, Brightest, pp. 544–79.
41 “We must be prepared for a long war”: Soldier, p. 139.
42 “field-marshal psychosis”: Soldier, pp. 115–16. See also Halberstam, Brightest, p. 248.
42 “Full speed ahead types”: Furgurson, p. 313.
42 “The Influence of Public Opinion”: Furgurson, p. 200.
42 “a forceful player who knew what he wanted”: Halberstam, Brightest, p. 576.