Department of Defense (USMC) Photo A1901H6

A typical Bru villlage smith of Khe Sanh has simple houses built on stilts to he above the ground and with grass roofs for protection from the elements. One of the aboriginal tribes who inhabited the Vietnamese highlands and whom the French called Montagnards. The Bru had been resettled largely along Route 9 near Khe Sanh by the South Vietnamese government.

itself were ethnic Vietnamese.* A simple honest people without even a written language, the Bru cared little for the authority of the national government or for the political upheavals of the war, preferring to remain neutral, or at most, to sympathize half-heartedly with whichever side controlled their village at any particular moment. While their original territory covered most ot the district, as well as equally large areas in Laos and North Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government resettled most of the Bru of Huong Hoa District along Route 9 to prevent the enemy from recruiting among them.

In addition to the Bru and Vietnamese, a few French coffee planters and American missionaries inhabited the area in the vicinity of Khe Sanh. Some of the Bru were employed by the former and a few even received a rudimentary education from the latter.

the Early Days

The history of Marines at Khe Sanh predates their involvement in the Vietnam War by three decades. Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak, who served as the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific during the war, remembered that while stationed in China in 1937, his battalion commander. Major Howard N. Stent, visited the area to hunt tiger. Like many visitors to Khe Sanh, Major Stenr was impressed with its beauty, and returned to China with stories of the tall, green mountains, waterfalls, abundant game, and the peaceful Bru tribespeople.'

In August 1962, MACV established a Special Forces CIDG camp at an old abandoned French fort, about two kilometers east of the village of Khe Sanh and just below Route 9, for border surveillance and anti-infiltration operations.' In November 1964, the Special Forces team moved from the French fort to a light-duty airstrip, built by French forces in 1949 on the Xom Cham Placeau, above Route 9 and about two kilometers north of their former base. This new site, which eventually became the Khe Sanh base, had sev-

* *CIDG is an acronym for Civilian Irregular Defense Group. The CIDG consisted of local militia, armed, trained, advised, and, in fact, led by U.S. and South Vietnamese Special Forces personnel. Such camps were scattered throughout the country. This French fore sice was later referred to by the American forces at Khe Sanh as the 'old French Fort.'

*The Montagnard (a French word meaning 'mountaineer') tribes were nor Vietnamese by descent or culture, bur rather, an aboriginal people who inhabited the highlands. Unworldly, poor, and apolitical, the Monragnards were often viewed by the Vietnamese as a lesser people and sometimes were treated with contempt. Colonel Knight wrote char the Vietnamese name for the tribesmen was Alw which meant savage. He explained that the term Montagnard came into use 'at the insistence ot Ngo Dinh Diem who deplored the common Vietnamese usage . . . .' Knight Comments. Chaplain Stublie noted the sharp contrast between the houses in Khe Sanh Village made ot concrete and wood where the ethnic Vietnamese lived and the homes of the Bru made of bamboo with grass roofs and on stilts in the surrounding 'villes'. Stubbe Comments.