"Vietnam: the Soldier's Story" Doc. Vol. 2 - "Under Siege at Khe Sanh"

Marine base at Khe Sanh, ancient, isolated, desolate, divorced from reality. Well, it was like hell. I mean, it felt like you were so far into the bowels of the country that there was no way out. Under siege by the North Vietnamese for 77 days, bombs and rockets cascaded on the men below. They were rockets because you could hear them scream all the way in. Suddenly, there was no place to hide. No place was safe. I mean, death was measured in inches and in moments. But in the bunkers and trenches, endurance and heroism. I don't remember any grandiose thoughts. We're over here fighting for the American way of life, for apple pie and motherhood. We were fighting basically for the guy next to us. I'm Jack Smith, and these are stories of the Vietnam War told by the people who know it best, those who fought it. I was one of them. There's an ancient military axiom that you should wager battles only according to favorable geography. Both sides always want to engage the enemy on battlegrounds of their own choosing. But the siege of Quezon in early 1968 is an example of how that doesn't always come to pass. American troops found themselves pinned down in a land-locked combat base for 77 days. It's the dramatic story of a daily routine punctuated by terror and a constant fire, Uncommon courage and unspoken heroism. The Khe Sanh combat base was 14 miles below the DMZ that divides North and South Vietnam, and six miles east of the Laotian border. On top of volcanic rock covered with red dirt, the camp was near Route 9, a rutted single-lane road running east to west into Laos. The high hills and mountains ringing the base would become excellent cover for the North Vietnamese troops who came down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos into South Vietnam. In the mid-1960s, Marine advisory teams used the nearly empty base as a staging area for reconnaissance into the mountains where they saw occasional contact with the enemy. By early 1967, America's involvement in Vietnam had grown to more than 400,000 troops, fighting intensified, and young Americans were dying at the rate of more than 100 a week. Khe Sanh had been fairly quiet until April 1967. Everything changed. On the hills surrounding the base, Marines ran into a tough force of North Vietnamese troops and defeated them after 12 days of fierce fighting. The United States' losses were heavy. 160 died, 746 were wounded. Those battles convinced General William Westmoreland that thousands more North Vietnamese were infiltrating into South Vietnam from Laos. He decided to stop them in their tracks. General Westmoreland decided to make Khe Sanh the western anchor in a line extending across the northern provinces to help prevent the flow of North Vietnamese troops and supplies into South Vietnam, especially from Laos. He ordered the Marines to reinforce the isolated combat base and to shore up defenses on the surrounding hills. It is May 1967. Fresh Marines arrive every day, so that Lieutenant John Kahaney and his platoon of troops land at Quezon and see the results of the April fighting. It was a very eerie and a terrifying experience. Winding down this long dirt road towards the mountains was all of the walking wounded from the hill fights. There were probably 500 to 600 Marines standing in line, all bandaged one way or the other, covered with blood and mud. And I had to take my platoon off the airplane and march them down this long road to an assembly point. and hardly anybody was saying a word it was really really terrifying Marines on patrol in the jungle find remnants of the North Vietnamese troops beauty of the hills can't cover it was a gorgeous place I mean it was absolutely beautiful at a distance but all the hills while we go on patrol from day to day we would just continue to find more and more dead NVA bodies and of course the stench was was unkindly. As part of his duties, even Navy Chaplain Ray Stubbe learns what it is to go on patrol outside the base. Just the simple fact of going on a patrol means going up and down very steep hills, being cut by elephant grass, forming blisters that never really healed, um, broken bones, tripping over things, getting thoroughly exhausted in the humidity, and the heat in the valleys being so intense. The North Vietnamese seem to be preparing for a major battle. Though they are on the move, it is unclear exactly what they are doing. We could see them during the summertime sitting over in Laos building their fortifications, driving their trucks and whatnot, but they rarely came across the border. Marine reconnaissance patrols keep searching for the enemy. Each man carries as much as 80 pounds, including weapons, ammunition, and water. Kevin McCauley hauls more than 100 pounds on his back. Out on the bush, you were just totally exposed to the elements. We didn't carry ponchos because when the rain hit the ponchos, it made too much noise. We just laid out there. If it rained, we got wet. If it was hot, we baked. If it was cold, we sugared. In the Vietnamese highlands, there are surprises around every corner. One patrol, we were waiting for the helicopters to pick us up, and an eight-and-a-half-foot-long Bengal tiger came out in front of us, not more than five to six feet away. One of the fellows took a picture of it, and I had a rifle ready to shoot it in case it jumped at us, and it was aiming all over the sky. Patrols continue. Their foe remains elusive. Then, after the hot summer, monsoon season arrives in force. It was never colder than there was a caisson because the skin gets wrinkled and chapped, and it's like being immersed in water all the time. In November 1967, still convinced Quezon will be a major battleground, General Westmoreland shores up the base. He orders Navy seabees to rebuild the airstrips so C-130 transport planes can bring in supplies. Thousands more Marines soon arrive. Fogg finally closes the base to cargo planes. Then, at the end of 1967, supplies can no longer come in by Route 9. now washed out by the heavy rains. Worse, the base fortifications fall apart in the onslaught of bad weather. So at that time, it was a matter of collapsed bunkers, the misery of never being dry, of mail not getting in. We were very isolated. We didn't know quite what was happening. It was a time of uncertainty. It was a miserable time. The hills surrounding the base are now defended by heavily fortified marines become the first line of defense to help prevent a communist attack on caisson hill 881 south is more than six miles from caisson and at its top slightly larger than a football field there too except for sporadic contact with the enemy life is uneventful for the 400 marines of india company third battalion 26th marines armed to the teeth, ready for attack. Dabney is their commanding officer. Of the heavy stuff, we had 81-millimeter mortars, 106-millimeter anti-tank rifles, recoilless rifles, and 305-millimeter howitzers. It was relatively easy. There was virtually no any activity. And the troops called it the Jolly Green Giants golf course. It was gorgeous out there. But under the dense cover of the mountain forests, The North Vietnamese are digging in around Khe Sanh. Marine reconnaissance patrols go looking for the enemy. As Corporal Ernie Husted and his platoon discover hard evidence, the North Vietnamese are everywhere. I noticed they were moving in like they were pre-digging positions. Bunker complexes that would hold like 100 or so folks. Road systems were starting to come in. American intelligence discovers two newly infiltrated crack North Vietnamese divisions near Khe Sanh That the estimated 20,000 enemy is moving closer each day becomes apparent on January 20th to Danty's men. They get into a heavy fight with an entrenched North Vietnamese battalion in a ravine below Hill 881 South. Japanese outmanned and outgunned Marines. No choice. Fifty-some men believed we couldn't go on. You get burdened by your casualties after a while, and you have to get them out. And since the mission was to hold the hill, the southern hill, 881 South, we were withdrawn back to the hill. On Hill 881 South, Dabney's troopers are hit repeatedly by heavy North Vietnamese artillery, often fired from inside Laos, as far as six miles away. It had been a rough day. We'd lost a bunch of people. We'd lost a helicopter, low on water and all that sort of thing. But they are not completely isolated on Hill 881 South. And when they can, the men tune into the evening news on Armed Forces Radio, and what they hear is almost surreal. At the end of it, they announced some local news, the lead item of which was the cancellation of a tennis tournament in Saigon. And we looked at each other and said, you know, we're not in the same world. Nor are the men on the base itself in the same world, where the atmosphere is growing more tense. Sergeant Glenn Prentiss, a forward observer and radio operator, is aware of the new mood. We knew there was something happening. We had a lot of airstrikes and artillery strikes really close to the base. We started wearing our helmets and black jackets all the time and being on alert to maximum time available each day. Corpsman David Steinberg recalls his orders of January 20, 1968. We were told to burn all of our letters, and so we began to feel that this was going to be something serious. We went to bed, we burned our letters, and this sounded like real war might be coming. The real war finally comes to Khe Sanh. I was walking to the mess hall early in the morning of January 21st, and I noticed some streaks of white coming in. I didn't know what they were until they started impacting on the road. One hit the road, one hit the mess hall. And a series of rounds hits and destroys the ammo dump. I can remember running from the ammunition dump and being knocked down by the concussion explosions. We couldn't tell what was incoming or our own stuff blowing off. There was CF tear gas going off, large amounts of artillery shells, plastic explosive, and so we were getting hit by our own ammo cooking off and producing shrapnel, plus everything that they were firing at us. So that first morning, we were in the trenches and the ground moved. It was just unbelievable. The sky started darkening because of everything burning. Sergeant Majors wanted someone to check on the young Marine outside. After a round came in, it was fairly close. I got up, put my hand on the door to open it up, and the ammo dump went. And the explosion caused the whole door just to cave in and throw me against the wall. Though some of his men suffer wounds, the door shields Lieutenant Kahaney from serious injury. Marine Corporal Craig Lofton is in his bunker when the shells start falling. Even though we were in bunkers, the concussion traveled through your body and almost knocked the air out of you. It was that large of an explosion. Lofton, crew chief for a helicopter at Khe Sanh, has to get to his chopper and get it in the air where it can be useful. And his men move quickly during the lull in the day-long shell. The air crew assembled and had dashed completely across the combat base, which was probably three football fields wide, running from hole to hole trying to dodge the incoming. They find one helicopter already destroyed by the shelling, but they manage to get three others off the ground. The choppers fly over the equally besieged hills outside Quezon and often seize the results of the Marines' heavy counterattack. against their deadly enemy i remember seeing bodies in the wires large number of nba dead marine dead as well the the impacts from the nba artillery and rockets was so great on that one location that the top of the hill was completely obscured by dust and debris in the air traces going everywhere we circled for what seemed like an eternity to finally die down and that we went They picked up all three helicopters and went in one right after another, picked up the wounded, whatever dead they could throw on and pulled out of there. But it is only the beginning for Lofton and the helicopter squadron. They return time and again, pulling out the dead and wounded, bringing in needed supplies. We went from what we considered home, and really home is wherever you're at, to everything changing. It was shock, mild shock, and a little apprehension like, what next? In a single day, the impact of the heavy bombardment destroys most buildings and tents. Nothing above ground is safe. In the first day's shelling, 18 Marines die, 40 suffer wounds. For the Marines at Quezon, the war is suddenly different. Going on patrol, they find they are under siege, and it becomes a profound test of physical and spiritual endurance for them and their enemy. The North Vietnamese hiding in the surrounding mountains. Late January 1968, those first bombardments of Khe Sanh are furious and deadly. Shelling starts, Marines fight back. As they return fire, they don't yet know this is the beginning of a long siege and that their lives will be changed forever. Very intense, we had a lot of incoming rounds. Some days had 1,300 rounds impacting on the area a day, 1,200 rounds, 1,000 rounds hitting different areas of the bays. to survive the men are ordered to dig trenches and underground bunkers deep in the ancient red volcanic earth every marine still has a job to do teen year old tom campbell there's radio lines blown apart during the shelling red dirt everybody's face was red i don't think i had a shower or any way to wash everybody was red their clothes was red trucks were red anything you know from the dust itself was red i couldn't get my leather gloves off because of all the blisters and the blood. So you just poured water down into your gloves so you could pull them off and you put some gauze on them and you put your gloves right back on and kept digging because anything above ground was going to be bad. These bunkers become their homes. Some are no more than six feet wide and 30 feet long, barely high enough for a man to stand upright. Medic Mike Hill remembers them well. The The bunkers at Khe Sanh were filth, and we had so much rat problem that I don't care what kind of bunker you had, you had rats coming in the bunker and stuff like that. And of course you had no electricity, you know, if you were lucky you had candles put on at night time, and so, you know, it was kind of a dismal place. You'd have 18, 19, 20 guys inside that space. You'd be lying next to, on top of, underneath the guys in your platoon or in your squad or however many people you could fit in the bunker. And that's where we existed. It really wasn't a pleasant situation, but it was the only situation that we had. Only situation, yes, and filled with anxiety and fear. Getting used to the shelling, desolation and death soon become a way of life. Any place you went, your ears were just listening for that background noise, a little boop, boop, boop, and all of a sudden artillery comes screaming at you. We got so good at it, though, we could tell almost where it was going to go and go the other way. We were hit by an artillery shell, and when the explosion went off, we were yelling at each other, Are you okay? And nobody could answer because we had blood coming out of our nose, and we couldn't focus, and blood coming out of our ears, and we were shaking each other, Are you okay? But we couldn't hear. On January 24th, only a few days into the siege, yet another bunker takes a direct hit. Four men die, 18 are wounded. We ripped the bunker apart. As we got the top off, I found one guy who was just picked up by the blast, pushed up against the ceiling of the bunker, which was basically runway matting. I never saw a person bleed as much as one. He survived. He survived. But he was terribly wounded. And the four guys who were killed were horrible. The number of wounded are increasing daily in Quezon. Dave Johnson cares for them at Charlie Med, a base hospital and aid station. I performed some minor kind of surgery or something, sew them back together again, throw them on a stretcher, drag them up the ramp, throw them out in this little area we had sandbags in. It was a barren place out there that there wasn't any place to hide. It was just a sheet of metal out there. We didn't have any holes to crawl in. We were just kind of at the mercy of whatever they could. We were lucky. We got out there and got them on the chopper and got them out of there. I was lucky. I never got hit. Just staying alive becomes the only goal. Sickness and terror spread throughout the isolated base. Some think of a war they never knew. It was, in many ways, like World War I. Trenches, you know, fog, wires, same living conditions, dysentery, that kind of thing. The fog would roll in typically in the morning. It was cool. It was mysterious. It was paradoxically a sense of relief and fear at the same time. When the fog rolls in, North Vietnam's gunners have a hard time zeroing in on the base. Men know they will have some relief from the constant shelling. Though it's temporary, they try to make good use of it, repair their bunkers, and even collect their mail. But their brief respite is just that, brief. General William Westmoreland has other ideas. He strongly believes Hanoi will try to make Khe Sanh into another Dien Bien Phu, the battle in 1954 in which the North Vietnamese decisively defeated the French. At Dien Bien Phu, the Viet Minh held the high ground and closed down the airstrip. At Khe Sanh, the Marines control the surrounding hills and hold onto the airbase despite the constant shelling. Certain the Communists will strike in force, General Westmoreland sends more troops up to Khe Sanh. Soon, more than 6,000 men crowd the small base. Then, North Vietnamese artillery in Laos, six miles from the base, begins pounding Khe Sanh every day. They got artillery, rockets, mortars. When we found out, they got rockets and mortars. But we don't see nothing, and that's bad. I'd like to see something every now and then. You can hear about it all you want, but you don't really believe it until you see it. The Americans answer the North Vietnamese with their own long-range 175-millimeter cannon fired by Army artillery from the rock pile in Camp Carroll in Quang Tri Province, south of the DMZ. Bombardment has little effect because the enemy emplacements are too far away. The U.S. Air Force, the Marines flying from Da Nang, and the Navy flying off carriers in the South China Sea answer back 300 flights a day they drop bombs rockets searing napalm on the north vietnamese hiding in the mountains on the base though the only constant daily shelling this is something i mean we were we were at home we were either members of the 4-h club or we were all the boys or um we're captains of the football team and now all of a sudden we were placed into a war And I guess it was our baptism of fire, so to speak. Now, the communists will experience a baptism of fire unlike anything they ever imagined. United States Air Force unleashes its B-52 bombers on the North Vietnamese soldiers in the mountains. In a matter of days, these powerful, high-flying airplanes become America's most effective weapon against the communist force that is ringing caisson. It is the end of January 1968. Khe Sanh has been under siege now for 10 days. All across Vietnam, both sides declare a ceasefire in honor of Tet, the Lunar New Year. On January 31st, the Allies discover that Hanoi has something else in mind. North Vietnam launches a major offensive against hundreds of towns, cities, and Allied bases across the country. During the first three days of what becomes known as the Tet Offensive, not one shell falls on Khe Sanh. Obsessed with the base, President Johnson has a sand table of Khe Sanh in the White House Situation Room that he inspects daily. Despite the new North Vietnamese tactics, Westmoreland does not change his strategy for Khe Sanh. He still believes his northern garrison is the main object of Hanoi's plan. So Westmoreland orders Operation Niagara, the force codename for the heavy B-52 strikes against the North Vietnamese. From Guam, 5,500 miles away, it takes 12 hours to get to Khe Sanh. Then, using a technique known as arc light, these enormous planes, flying 30,000 feet high, drop their huge payloads with a force that rolls out like an explosive carpet. Every day, in groups of six, the B-52s drop 60,000 pounds of bombs on their enemy below. When they strike, the destruction is enormous, producing a devastating effect on the thousands of North Vietnamese troops besieging Khe Sanh. The bombs from a single formation of six planes can destroy an area half a mile wide and almost two miles long. Even men in the bunkers at Khe Sanh feel the power of the B-52s. You'd be sitting there and the whole ground would just start rumbling and rumbling and rumbling. It's really strong. And when you're underground with that effect, the whole ground is moving quite a bit. Everything falls to dusty dirt, and everything starts moving. We had this little joke about how to make caisson coffee. You sit in your bunker. We knew when the airstrikes were going to come, so you sit in your bunker, you take your coffee out, you put it next to your cup, and you put your sugar and your cream substitute next to it, and then you wait for the Air Force to show up to mix it for you. By the end of February, some 40 days into the siege, the B-52s are now bombing around the clock. The high-flying airplanes are relentless, fierce. To the shocked communists, the huge planes become a close-in weapon, sometimes bombing enemy positions within 500 yards of the base. Miles Rorlik is a C-130 pilot who has a front row seat. I heard what I thought was a railroad train going through the bunker. I looked out the door of the bunker, and it was the most devastating thing I think I've ever seen in my life. I saw what looked like trees, and dirt, and limbs, and people, and just everything flying through the air. And when the raid was over, it was very quiet. The B-52 strikes killed thousands of North Vietnamese. But Quezon continues unabated. So, keeping spirits high is a challenge for the beleaguered Marines. Most of the time, I was hopping around from bunker to bunker, trench to trench. And I did hold my church services, but they were only like three minutes long. I gave out communion. I had a one- or two-sentence sermon. At that time, I think the text was Jesus calming the waters. On the hills outside the base, the incoming is as deadly as ever, especially on 881 South. Many wounded go out on stretchers. Too many dead go out in body bags. To keep morale up, Captain Bill Dabney makes a bold decision in the midst of the constant shelling. So, daily at 8 o'clock, precisely at 8 o'clock, and they targeted us. We would raise the flag, and we had deep holes right beside the flagpole. It took about 25 seconds because we knew that the time of flight for the round was about 25 seconds. It was sort of giving a finger to the North. It was a gesture of defiance, and we really didn't have anything else to defy. Here's the American flag up there, and everyone was just elated. The sniper across the hill on 881 was not as elated and figured that this was the target. The sniper fires, water rounds start falling, the bugle call, the men quickly run for cover. So it was a very carefully timed flag-raising ceremony, they jumped the hole that the rounds hit and went on about their business. Business is the difficult job of getting through each day as best they can with limited supplies. Water is always scarce on the base, and especially out on the hills. You could go for three, four days without water a lot of times on the base. Longer on the hills, maybe seven, eight days sometimes. But people would share the last drops of water they had with each other. As it went on, we were down to a quarter of a canteen, and as it went further on, we were laying plastic out at night to catch the dew and re-lick the dew. Water was precious. Bad weather and the heavy enemy shelling are now making it difficult and dangerous to supply caisson c-130s and c-123 cargo planes often cannot land because of fog and the damaged airstrip some supplies now must come in by parachute the drop zone is outside the reinforced lines and very small bigger than 200 yards by 200 yards that meant that that area that drop zone had to be secured and that meant that it was a target and the minute you they secured it became a target so we'd make a drop and then the enemy would put in you know tons of artillery on our drop until everything quieted down then the marines were able to go in and pull the stuff out the army quartermaster corps loads the cargo planes at the danang air base more than 100 miles from caisson get the supplies safely onto the base the air force develops a tricky technique delivering them by barely landing on the strip taxiing while still moving pushing off huge pallets loaded with everything from ammunition and fuel oil to food there was always the danger of being hit by fire i guess everything you can think of was thrown at the aircraft i mean there was small arms uh there was a weapon similar to our 50 caliber that the north kent monies kept them putting on the end of the runway and would shoot the aircraft at the approach miraculously shelling destroys only one c-130 that plane burns beyond repair and then remains on the base as a reminder of constant danger the majority of the damage that was that we took was from a 51 caliber and below that was in the air the majority of the damage on the ground when we landed was taken from 133 millimeter artillery rockets mortars just about everything hit us despite the shelling and ground fire cargo planes keep dropping their supplies. Sometimes the parachutes drift too far to be retrieved. Marines are forced to destroy them and put them out of enemy hands. Ammunition and fuel are the first priority, but food, ever present sea rations, those meals in small olive drab cans in 12 varieties are always on everyone's minds. One day you'd get the meat, the next day you would get the dessert, and the third day you might get the crackers and cheese. The things that you always looked for was a can of peaches and you would just hold that aside until you could get a can of pound cake. Just little cans, looked like tuna fish cans. And the interesting thing was, if you could get that combination, it was like winning the lottery. To protect themselves from a bound attack, Marines on the perimeter throw everything they have against an enemy they know is outside the wire. To help the Marines, the Army has four gun positions along Quezon's northern perimeter. Each end, there are two tank chassis called dusters, mounted with twin 40-millimeter cannons. To keep the enemy at bay, a battery of quad-50 machine guns fire at the rate of 250 rounds per minute. Bruce Geiger is in charge of the platoon. Particularly during the evening, we'd fire interdiction fires. We would fire at suspected positions. During the daytime, if we were to spot a sniper or spot any activity, we would either call in or, at times, fire freely at those targets. Sometimes, these gunners shoot at the red glow of North Vietnamese cigarettes burning in the distance. Other times, bright flares light the black night sky. You might miss with the first round, but you really miss with the second round. They had a range of almost 4,000 meters, so it was a fairly significant weapon. weapon and walking times you knew you got the target because it just wasn't there anymore each day tactical airstrikes by marine air force and navy fighter bombers blow away enemy fortifications in the mountains continue to kill countless north vietnamese and destroy their bunkers and still doesn't stop the constant shelling and the danger of death in the trenches we heard an explosion and there was what we thought was shrapnel coming through the air and around here close enough and collapsed one of these on several Marines. And one or two died and one made it out, but he had to be medevaced out because mentally he just no longer was there. There was so much of it that went on, you could accept death, I could, more by seeing it than someone just not being there. At night and in the fog, North Vietnamese troops doggedly dig trenches and try to tunnel under the concertina wire around the base. When the weather clears and the fog lifts, spotter planes call in tactical airstrikes to try to stop the advancing communists. And literally dropped napalm on the wire. And I, from a vantage point, at least where I, my position was where it may be a hundred yards, the heat was so intense that it would literally sink your eyebrows. Stole all the air. The oxygen was completely burnt off for a hundred yards. But the heat that it gave off was incredible. It was pretty intense. Nothing, nothing would survive napalm. nor the fury of napalm, nor heavy American air attacks and artillery fire can dislodge those North Vietnamese troops from their mountain stronghold. Fifty days into the siege, 6,000 American troops remain pinned down, living in bunkers, living day to day, never knowing what to expect when the sun goes down. Continues. Each day is now like every other day for the beleaguered American troops. Fifty days become sixty days. It is nearly the end of March and no relief is in sight. The enemy is still in the mountains. The United States fighter bombers keep up a merciless attack. Long-range American artillery pounds the mountains surrounding the base. For these young Marines, the dangerous days and nights at Quezon never end. Trained to attack, they do not enjoy their role as city ducks. So you didn't know when the incoming rounds would come. to come because we didn't know if you were in danger or not. People were killed going to the head, to the outhouses. People were killed repairing sandbags. People were killed just doing day-to-day chores. We thought we were invincible. We didn't like the idea of being held on the base. We would sit there and say, all right, come on, come on at us, come at us, and we'll take as many of you with us before we go. But the North Vietnamese troops do not come. They don't mount the big ground attack that Westmoreland hopes will come. To find out what the North Vietnamese are up to, Marine reconnaissance units go on dangerous patrols outside the base for intense firefights and die. Losses are often heavy. Navy Corpsman Ralph Danillo is on patrol when the Marines come under fire. We're running up the hill and mortar rounds are going off all around us. Roger Gush yelled, Doc, the strong's hit bad. One of the lenses was popped out of his glasses. One was cracked, and I performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on him. He just lay there dead. In the jungle, helicopters are the difference between life and death. Pete Darger is pilot on a dangerous rescue mission under heavy fire on the hills near the base. 50, 100 yards away, you could see these flashing lights all in this tree line shooting at us, and lots of flashing lights. And it amazed me that anyone carrying a rifle could have just outright killed us out right killed us because we're sitting there in this glass cockpit and the crewmen are in the back with little pieces of thin aluminum between them and death and we got everyone out of there and no one was injured planes can't land helicopters more than fill the gap by bringing in needed supplies especially for the tireless medics taking care of wounded and just your hands are full of blood you just wipe them off on your pants and you know and after days of wearing the same days and weeks of wearing the same clothes you uh your pants are stiff from the blood setting down safely in a hot landing zone an lz under fire from enemy gunners becomes an art trick of precise timing co-pilot's only responsibility when you when you touch down to the ground was uh to to push the stopwatch on the uh on the panel and at 20 seconds he'd start lifting the power and we'd have to be out of there because within 30 seconds there'd be We got like 29 confirmed kills before we were able to get out, and they were rushing the chopper. So it was kind of a real rough day at the office. And I came in, and I pulled out my patrol book that was always over my pocket, and I opened it up. There was a piece of shrapnel that went all the way through to the last page. And I'm thinking, oh, gee, that was one of the scarier ones facing death. By the end of March 1968, there has been no invasion of Quezon. Westmoreland learns from his intelligence officers that enemy troops are finally retreating from the mountains, probably with good reason. The Air Force claims its B-52 strikes have killed thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers. North Vietnam is prevented from taking the combat base and making it a launching pad into the rest of South Vietnam. smelling victory westmoreland ends the siege relieves the base on a grand scale with operation pegasus named for the winged horse mythology the relief force includes the first air cavalry division its 400 helicopters the first marine regiment the 26th marine regiment and two vietnamese units 30 000 troops in all they open route 9 for the first time in almost three months On April 6th, 1968, Marines at Quezon and the 1st Air Cavalry link up outside its perimeter. Westmoreland declares the 77-day siege of Quezon is lifted. But in reality, the fighting doesn't end. Sergeant Joseph Bellardo, an Army gunner, recalls his reaction when a tank unit falls into an ambush two months later in June. And it seemed to bring us really, really down. We had seen many, many people die, and it was like the icing on the cake. It was like water. It was a great difficulty for us, a great difficulty, how mad we all became, how we wanted to go on what they called the hunt. Let's leave the base and go hunting. You knew it was a dream, a pipe dream, but it couldn't happen. On Westmoreland's orders, those who remain in the garrison tear it down, rip it apart as if nothing ever took place on the base or in their lives. In the words of one trooper, tearing up our hiding places. Everything we could destroy or bury or blow up, we were doing it. The bad part about it, we're blowing up our bunkers that we need to be in. They bury over 800 bunkers. They tear apart more than three miles of concertina wire. They lift makeshift steel matting from the airstrip, burned-out hoax of downed aircraft. Nothing is to remain except the enduring red earth. Each day, as the plows chew up that ancient land, the last Marines and Army troops find their positions almost defenseless from the sporadic, but persistent shelling. they endure. I would say the men stayed pretty much constant during the siege, through the whole siege. They were still full of energy, ran faster, drove faster. They never lost their humanity of concern for one another, joking, humor, in touch with fears, with laughs, death with life. A lot of guys dealt with things a different way, but you wanted to be part of a team. You want to be part the platoon and the only way that you could do that was being faith sent to the guy next to you and that was the most important thing the men left behind feel increasingly alone as the base empties there are those who find the shelling hard to take i think it was from the artillery barrages i wasn't used to that much incoming the cannon shells were playing havoc with me and i was starting to lose track of time and so was the rest of the people as the base closes down the remaining long timers are upset for other reasons after all over the long months of the siege they had seen almost 200 die thousands wounded i felt very very frustrated thinking that the number of people who were killed in case on there were as a result and then all of a sudden were banning it why was it so important two and a half months ago why isn't it important anymore we had suffered through this all the casualties that had mounted up 77 days plus that it was all for nothing that Totally abandoning it. I was having a hard time understanding it, and I still don't quite understand it. For these young men, it is time to move on. We wanted out of there. It was time for us to get out of that kind of condition. I remember leaving it and looking down. I flew in by air and I went out by road. When you went out, it was devastation. From the southern gates several miles down the road, there was just nothing green for the most part. We flew out in a CH-53 helicopter. We kind of corkscrewed up into the sky to avoid machine guns and any aircraft guns that still might be in the area. And the entire surrounding countryside was totally denuded. Everything was bomb-crazed. I turned and I looked at that, and I said, God, look what we've done to this area. We've taken a beautiful, beautiful area, and we've turned it into the moon. It was nothing but craters. Sergeant Joseph Bellardo leaves the base in mid-July on the last half-track out. He and his men turn for one more look at the desolate garrison. Everyone paused for a minute, and it seemed like the war had stopped. There was no sounds. There was no nothing. There was no birds flying or bugs flying. It was very quiet for that one minute. And so they left Quezon. In a moment, we will return with the legacy of Quezon. For 77 days, the Marines at Quezon sat and waited and waited some more for that decisive battle that never came. Meanwhile, the larger war all around them was taking some dramatic turns. The Tet Offensive ended, but brought with it the bloodiest year of the war, when more Americans were killed in action than at any other time. At the end of March 1968, embattled by the Tet Offensive and protests at home, President Lyndon Johnson surprises the country by announcing he will not seek re-election. I shall not see, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president. By the time Quezon is abandoned, General William Westmoreland is gone too, back to Washington to become Army Chief of Staff. The official body counted Quezon as 199 Americans killed and 830 seriously wounded. But official numbers do not tell the whole story of Quezon. United States estimates of enemy dead are 15,000, most as a result of the relentless tide of B-52 strikes on the communists. But the exact number of North Vietnamese killed will never be known because Hanoi refuses to release those figures. In the end, the United States claimed victory at Khe Sanh. 6,000 trained Americans held out for 77 days against the North Vietnamese army. But Westmoreland prevailed. His blocking strategy at Khe San prevented the massive infiltration of North Vietnamese soldiers into South Vietnam. For Captain Bill Dabney, who commanded the Marines on Hill 881 South, the siege was a testament and a tribute to the human spirit. He saw it in the dailies, a day routine of young men surviving manfully in terrible harm. the dailies was with heroes the kid who would shoulder his rifle and go out at night in front of the lines on the listening posts and sit there alert until morning the stretcher bearers and kids who would just volunteer to grab a stretcher ran out on that hot zone hope they'd make it there was nothing you could do that wasn't at the risk of life you stood up in the trench and well but you had to stand up in the trench duty the dailies in july of 1968 the base at caisson was abandoned But then, over the next four years, American forces occupied it and abandoned it again and again, as if that isolated outpost somehow possessed some mythical importance.