K, dug in about 150 meters southwest of the original contact. Corporal Kelly, who had become the radioman for Company M, remembered that "Kilo's platoons: first, second, weapons and what was left of third were strung out in a tactical withdrawal." Major Findlay consulted with Captain Frank. According to Corporal Kelly, the Company K commander "want[ed] to go back in ... we have people in there." With heavy rain and low cloud ceiling precluding any more air support and well-entrenched enemy, Findlay decided against an immediate assault: "We're going to pull back .... Come first light we're going to get some more firepower in here and go after them."

During the night, Company L returned to A-3 while Companies K and M established a two-company defensive perimeter west of Route l near Gio Linh. The 12th Marines provided heavy supporting fires around the two exposed companies. Corporal Kelly remembered that it was a wet "miserable night . . . [and] rain swirled into the hole chilling us . . ."At the end of the long and comparatively uneventful night, the Marines prepared to renew the attack. A detachment of tanks from Gio Linh joined the two companies and the Marine artillery opened up with their preparatory fires upon the enemy entrenchments.

Under cover of the Marine artillery bombardment followed by Huey gunship strafing runs, on the morning of 8 February, the two Marine companies crossed Route l into a small woods that contained the NVA entrenchments. As Kelly observed: "It was all grunts now." The NVA suddenly began to panic and bolt. Corporal Kelly later described the Marine attack:

Now Kilo was the grim reaper, killing anything that moved as they assaulted through the North Vietnamese trenches and bunkers in a tactic so simple and direct I was amazed by its effectiveness. Their firepower was a wave of destruction surging before them, overwhelming the enemy. It was over quickly.89

Other members of the battalion remembered the events of that morning less melodramatically. Captain Otto J. Lehrack, the commanding officer of Company I, later wrote that his recollection was that Company K "did launch an assault, supported by tanks from Gio Linh, but by that time there wasn't much of an enemy force left and it was pretty much of a walk." According to Lehrack, the company sergeant of Company K, Gunnery Sergeant Jimmie C. Clark, later told him:

"What NVA was left in the holes were chained to their guns ... so they couldn't get up and run." Clark went on to state: "We went in and retrieved our own and brought our own people out. . . . We were pretty beat and torn up, but we had to do it." 90

During the two-day fight, casualties were heavy for both sides. The Marines claimed to have killed 139 of the enemy, but sustained a total of 30 Marine dead and 35 wounded. Some of the wounded were from the previous two ambushes and perilously survived the night among the North Vietnamese. One American survivor related that an English-speaking North Vietnamese soldier called out "Corpsman, I'm hit," and then shot the Navy medic when he came to assist. Another Navy corpsman, Hospital Corpsman 3d Class, Alan B. Simms, who remained unscathed, hid and tended four wounded Marines, saving their lives. At least four of the North Vietnamese soldiers blew themselves up with grenades rather than surrender. After helicopters evacuated the American wounded from an improvised landing zone, the Marine infantry loaded the American dead and North Vietnamese gear upon the tanks. According to Kelly:

It was absolutely quiet except for the groans of the loaders and the sounds made by the bodies of the dead being dragged to the tanks. They were stacked four high-one on his back, the next on his stomach-the heads and arms placed between the legs of the body underneath to lock in the stack and prevent it from toppling. . . . The tank crews watched in horror.

The tanks returned the bodies to Gio Linh and the infantry returned to A-3.91

Once more, the war along the DMZ for another brief period went into one of its customary lulls. Contrary to General Tompkins expectations that the North Vietnamese would make their major effort in the Camp Carroll/Rockpile/Ca Lu sector, the 4th Marines in Lancaster had few flareups of any significant action. The enemy made no significant attempt to cut Route 9 after the fighting for "Mike's Hill." Outside of an artillery bombardment on Camp Carroll on 2 February, and an attack on a truck convoy a week later, the Lancaster sector remained quiet during the first two weeks of February. While maintaining pressure all along the DMZ front, the NVA largely limited their Tet offensive in the north to the disruption of the Cua Viet supply line, which apparently was intertwined with the attack on Quang Tri City. As captured enemy documents later indicated, North Vietnamese commanders attributed their failure to take Quang Tri City to their inexperience with the coordination of large forces that involved two major commands: The DMZ Front and the Tri Thien Hue Front?2 This failure of coordination characterized the entire enemy Tet offensive and was especially true of the enemy attacks in the Da Nang area further south.