CHAPTER IX

Major Operations, 1968

Khe Sanh

Weeks before the Tet offensive, the eyes of the world had been focused on Khe Sanh as all signs pointed to a major enemy attack on this Marine outpost.

Located some fifteen miles south of the Demilitarized Zone and barely seven miles from the eastern frontier of Laos, the Khe Sanh base functioned primarily as a support facility for surveillance units watching the demilitarized zone and probing the outer reaches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in nearby Laos. Khe Sanh was almost completely surrounded by towering ridges and stood in the center of four valley corridors leading through the mountains to the north and northwest of the base. To the south Khe Sanh overlooked Highway Nine, the only east-west road in the northern province to join Laos and the coastal regions. The base itself was laid out on a flat laterite plateau. It was shaped somewhat like an irregular rectangle and covered an area approximately one mile long and one-half mile wide. A key feature of the base was a 3,900 foot aluminum mat runway which during favorable weather conditions could accommodate fixed-wing aircraft up to C-130 transports.

The enemy's primary objective in the Tet offensive in early 1968 was to seize power in South Vietnam and cause the defection of major element's of its armed forces. In conjunction with this, the enemy apparently expected to seize by military action large portions of the northern two provinces and to set up a 'Liberation Government.' Khe Sanh was a part of this plan and was obviously an initial objective of the North Vietnamese Army. Its seizure would have created a serious threat to our forces in the northern area and cleared the way for the enemy's advance to Quang Tri City and the heavily populated region. In addition, as General Westmoreland stated, 'There is also little doubt that the enemy hoped at Khe Sanh to obtain a climacteric victory such as he had done in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu in the expectation that this would produce a psychological shock and erode American morale.'