On this day 43 years ago, Communist forces from North Vietnam attacked the remote USMC base of Khe Sanh. Increased fighting along the border between Vietnam and Laos had intensified in 1967, from the first day the base was operational (originally built to reduce infiltration along the Ho Chi Minh Trail). The attacks were judged to be routine operations. But over the next ten days, over 20,000 NVA troops laid siege to the base while 40,000 more attack every government installation and US military camp in South Vietnam. By February, everyone was talking about the "Tet Offensive."
At this point in the Vietnam War, the game was deadlocked. Communist leader Ho Chi Minh decided that an all-out attack against the enemy was necessary to tip the scales in his favor. For the first time, he allowed his commanding general, Vo Nguyen Giap, to unleash the full fury of his armies.
Americans, on the other hand, had been told that the enemy was weakening, and General Westmorland popularized the phrase "light at the end of the tunnel." It was expected that the fighting would be over soon.
Khe Sanh was used as a distraction, to force US planners to commit more troops into defending the base while other VC and NVA units were mobilized for the attacks on the rest of South Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson was so worried about the possibility of losing the base, that he had a detailed model constructed and used in daily briefings. It was the target of constant artillery, rocket and mortar attacks, threatening aircraft that came to deliver supplies or evacuate the wounded. Johnson authorized a massive bombing program called Operation Niagara to keep the Communists at bay. He wasn't about to let another Dien Bien Phu happen on his watch.
The battle lasted until April 1968, when the US Army 1st Air Cavalry Division managed to break the siege and relive the Marines, part of Operation Pegasus. The Tet Offensive had failed at this point, and the Communists eventually withdrew, leaving their enemies puzzled as to the true nature of their objective.
In 1972, Khe Sanh was officially deactivated and abandoned. What little of it that survived the final days of the war has been preserved as a museum.
