rip up the steel matting runway. Working parties destroyed over 800 bunkers and 3 miles of concertina wire, throwing the wire into the trenches and filling them with soil. They slit open the countless sandbags and emptied them, wrecked standing structures, and burned what remained to the ground. As a final step to discourage the North Vietnamese from attempting to dig through the ruins for useful material, the Marines sprinkled the area with CS powder, an irritant chemical agent.77*
The enemy could not, and did not, misinterpret the activity at the combat base. Communist political officers proclaimed the U.S. withdrawal from Khe Sanh as a victory for the North Vietnamese Army. Ill MAF warned units at Khe Sanh that, as the withdrawal proceeded, the enemy might conduct limited offensive operations to lend credibility to their claims.78**
The prophecy came true on l July. Three kilometers southeast of the combat base near the old French fort, the NVA began a series of light probes against Company I, 3d Battalion, 4th Marines at 0325. The probes, accompanied by mortar fire, continued for four hours. At 0725, a NVA unit of at least company-size launched a full-scale assault on the Marine perimeter to the accompaniment of mortar fire and 130mm guns. Alerted by the probes, Company I quickly blunted the enemy attack and the North Vietnamese broke contact. Later that morning, the Marines sighted the enemy unit nearby and engaged it once more, calling in helicopter gunships and attack aircraft. The fighting continued until late afternoon, with the Marines reporting over 200 dead North Vietnamese, half of them within 100 meters of Company Is lines. Two Marines died in the engagement.79
For the next several days, the enemy continued to step up the pressure. Occasional heavy incoming artillery and mortar fire fell on the hill positions, and small groups of North Vietnamese probed Marine perimeters attempting to cut through barbed wire barriers. There were no further attacks, however, on the scale of that of l July.80
At 2000 on 5 July, the Khe Sanh Combat Base, now just a smoldering scar on the land, officially closed.81 On the following day, the 1st Marines sent their remaining rolling stock to Ca Lu by convoy. As the last trucks passed over Route 9, engineers removed and recovered the tactical bridging equipment which they had installed during Operation Pegasus. Just before midnight on 6 July, Operation Charlie ended.82
The 1st Marines remained near Khe Sanh for another week, attempting to recover the remains of the Marines who died in the fighting near Hill 689. After days of seesaw battles which left 11 Marines and 89 North Vietnamese dead, the 1st Battalion finally recovered 7 bodies under cover of darkness on 11 July using small teams operating by stealth. With this accomplished, the 1st Marines boarded helicopters and flew east to Quang Tri City.83
Twenty years after the battle, when asked to name the decision of which he was the most proud, General Westmoreland replied, "The decision to hold Khe Sanh."84 It had been a controversial move in 1968, but after the commitment in men and materiel to hold it, the decision to evacuate the place was even more difficult for many to understand. In fact, there were more American casualties at Khe Sanh and its immediate vicinity after the breakout until the final evacuation of the base than during the siege.*** As a battle which
* Colonel Billy R. Duncan, the commander of the 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, wrote that at the time his unit departed Khe Sanh, "much of the steel matting was still in place. Too difficult to remove . . ." and the enemy guns were "still a daily threat." Col Billy R. Duncan, Comments on draft, dtd 15Dec94 (Vietnam Comment File). Major Gary E. Todd, the commander of Company I, 3d Battalion, 9th Marines, observed that the dismantling required "working parties to move around exposed and 'non-tactical' in what was still very much a tactical situation. The more bunkers we destroyed and trenches we filled, the less protection we had against incoming artillery, a fact not wasted on an ever-watchful enemy." Maj Gary E. Todd, Comments on draft, dtd 280ct94 (Vietnam Comment File).
** General Hoffman stated he had instituted an orderly program of withdrawing his units so as not to reveal his intentions to the North Vietnamese. He blamed Correspondent John S. Carroll from the Baltimore Sun for breaking news confidentiality and printing a story that the Marines were abandoning Khe Sanh. According to Hoffman, the North Vietnamese increased their bombardment after the publication of. the story. MACV suspended Carroll's press credentials for six months. Hoffman intvw and Comments. For the suspension of Carroll's accreditation, see also John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe, Valley of Decision, The Siege of Khe Sanh (Boston and New York: Houghton Mif-flin Company, 1991), p. 448.
***The confusion about the number of Marine casualties in the Khe Sanh battle is one aspect of the controversy over the defense of the base. According to general Marine Corps records, the Marines sustained casualties of 205 dead from November 1967 through the end of March, the period of Operation Scotland. The casualty reporting system was based on named operations rather than on actual locale. Another 92 Marines were killed in Operation Pegasus during April, and another 308 during Operation Scotland II through 30 June. Scotland II continued through the end of the year with another 72 Marines added to the KIA list. Obviously all of the operations included a broader area than the perimeter of the Khe Sanh base itself, thus compounding the difficulty in determining an exact number of casualties. To do so, the researcher must "clarify the time span and geographical area of the so-called 'Battle of Khe Sanh.'" Jack Shulimson, Sr, Vietnam Historian, Itr to Bert Mullins, dtd 2Sepl983 (Vietnam War, Khe Sanh
