Past articles have talked about limited war, General Westmoreland’s strategy and the intelligence leading up to the attack on the District Headquarters in Khe Sanh village and the siege of the KSCB.  In this article we will relate the events prior to the attack and the continual stress between secrecy and combat necessity.

On the morning of 20 January 1968 CPT Nhi and I with one other of my advisors SFC Henry King set off with about 50 Vietnamese soldiers on a routine reconnaissance patrol.  We were going about 8-10 KM southwest of the District headquarters to a hill top.  When we got there the goal was to set up a patrol base and then send out 4 10 man reconnaissance patrols to work in horse shoe pattern looking for signs of Viet Cong or other activity.  We had no knowledge of any activity in the area.

We had planned artillery targets along our route of march and to support the patrol base. These targets had been registered with the Operations Center at the KSCB.  The going getting to the patrol base was slow going because of all of the vines that had overgrown the selected route.  Also holes cut for Vietnamese soldiers to get through did not quite accommodate larger Americans –especially when you had a PRC 25 radio on your back with an antennae sticking up several feet.

Once we were established in the patrol base the Vietnamese had some cold food and then set out on their patrols.  The patrols had only been out for about 15 minutes when I got a call from the Special Forces at Lang Vei telling me to get out of the area.  At first I resisted.  They could not give me a reason to get out.  But after they said it enough times I got the message that there was some urgency to the request.

It took us some time to gather up all of the recon patrols and start our walk back.  We got back to the District Headquarters in midafternoon.  Not too long after we were back at the District Headquarters a B-52 strike went in very close to where we had been.  At the time I wondered what they were dropping the bombs on.  Later I learned that it was the 66^th Regiment of the 304^th Division of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

We were lucky that we didn’t run into them as our puny little force would not have stood much of a chance against such a formidable enemy. This episode highlights the tension between security and operational need.

The intelligence community has always been accused of being more interested in protecting their sources and methods (how they learned something) than the needs of the soldiers on the ground.  As we pointed out in a previous article (intelligence) the leadership at the KSCB knew that the NVA were coming and when.  They had not told the advisory team with the District Chief.  The intelligence gathered by the Advisory Team came from watching the preparations for combat at the KSCB.  Had that B-52 strike gone in with us still in the area the results could have been calamitous.  Thankfully someone finally told us to move.  But why hadn’t they told us not to go at all—knowing what the threat was?

The night of 2o January I got a good hot shower.  This was to be the last shower for months.  On the morning of 21 January the battle was joined.