The Siege of Khe Sanh

January 21, 1968

Khe Sanh Combat Base, South Vietnam

The rattling roar jolted me from restless dreams before dawn. I bolted upright, heart pounding as the bunker shuddered around me. Not again... Grabbing my helmet, I scrambled outside, boots sinking into the red mud. The January chill bit through my fatigues as air raid sirens wailed. I stared into the gloom where our northern perimeter should be visible. Instead, a pillar of black smoke choked the pallid sky.

We were under attack.

Chaos erupted as soldiers spilled from barracks, rushing to defensive positions along the barbed wire barricades. This Marine outpost sat isolated near the DMZ border with North Vietnam, and we braced for assaults. But the past two weeks saw raids grow bolder, probing closer each time. Command grew edgy as Chinese New Year approached, fretting this attack might finally unleash the real storm.

I sprinted to my lookout post, rifle clutched tight to my chest. The eighteen-year-old farm boy who arrived here last month hardened by necessity into a vigilant sentry. I knew the coming days would test me. As I scanned for signs of movement in the vegetation, the earth shuddered again from mortar impacts inside camp boundaries. I steeled myself against reacting to the sounds of men screaming...

For seventy-seven days and nights, nearly 3,000 Marines endured savage bombardment from over 20,000 North Vietnamese Army regulars entrenched in these rocky Central Highlands. A supposedly impregnable fortress, Khe Sanh base found itself surrounded and besieged for endless weeks, battered by artillery barrages approaching 500 rounds per day. We endured near-constant shelling both day and night that jarred our beings right down to the very bones. The Viet Cong commanders planned to replicate their victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, defeating the French garrison after a 57-day siege. This time their sights locked onto us entrapped Americans.

As the battle intensified daily, our once bustling little runway now lay shattered by mortars. No reinforcements or vital supplies could reach us. Resupply could only parachute in via risky high-altitude C-130 cargo planes braving anti-aircraft fire to keep us clinging to survival. Some days the aerial drops proved our sole sustenance. Thinking back now I don't recognize the gaunt, haunted soldier I became - hungry, exhausted, struggling not to crack while living each moment under bombardment. My youthful innocence burned away quickly in that cauldron, aged exponentially by trauma.

Our enemies pressed ever tighter, probing assault after assault seeking breakthrough. Human wave attacks stormed our perimeter relentlessly as we repelled each push with blistering machine gun fire and dense shelling into the surrounding hillsides. Bloody piles of corpses mounted, choking the wire yet they still advanced undaunted through their own curtain fire, hell-bent on overrunning our redoubts. Hand to hand battles erupted on the bulwarks as we shot, stabbed and clubbed the frenzied hordes.

At night ghostly battalions maneuvered outside the wire. Eerie bugle calls and whistles signaled unseen orders. Attempts to rest fitfully anticipating the next attack guaranteed little sleep before chaos erupted again at dawn. Constant uncertainty and adrenaline worn our collective psyches raw through the weeks. Nerves stayed frayed never knowing when death might whistle in from the next mortar burst.

By late February 1968, after unrelenting peak siege intensity, the Communists switched abruptly from frontal assaults to isolating Khe Sanh completely. They severed the single road access and continually harassed our perimeter, though no longer attempting massed storming. Clearly their determination persisted in blockading and bleeding us into defeat through attrition and demoralization. Hunger and exhaustion took steady toll as our division clung desperately to rocky redoubts, simply trying to hold out one more day. Even the most grizzled NCOs and lieutenants whispered doubts of ever escaping this trap alive...

Yet by some miracle, a combination of factors intersected to ultimately thwart the enemy's grand ambition reenacting Dien Bien Phu's victory. Clever tactics concealing our true dire predicament from media and public opinion helped prevent total loss of morale back home. The besieging forces, so close to overrunning the camp after committing fully to the prolonged siege also suffered mightily. When the promised knockout blow never materialized, their own supply lines and troop commitment ran critically low. And the staunch Marines at Khe Sanh endured through it all somehow, defying the odds and enemy's obstinate determination.

So as the weather warmed that spring, light pierced gloom when Communist forces finally abandoned their entrenched positions and melted back into Laos. That hellish rain of mortar and rocket fire at last lifted from Khe Sanh as supply planes began landing regularly again. Morale soared as we Left our fetid trenches and dusty bunkers, gradually turning towards home. The long nightmare struggle had hardened me into a man prematurely aged perhaps, yet now steeled for whatever lay ahead too. We held the line intact through all they threw our direction those 77 endless days. And though that legendary base was later dismantled and abandoned for good, the Marines who served at Khe Sanh would never fully abandon each other. Our shared unbreakable bond of sacrifice and enduranceprints deep as trauma bonded us beyond words. Always faithful unto death we defend to the last echoing bugle call...