The Withdrawal from Khe Sanh

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General Abrams ordered the base closing to be kept secret for as long as possible. When it was finally made public, only a minimum amount of detail and explanation were provided. The decision was met with incredulity and bewilderment when the news reached the United States. National Security Adviser Walt W. Rostow noted, I believe we have a serious problem–perhaps of substance, certainly of public relations. Rostow pointed out that intelligence estimates on the enemy order of battle still placed about 40,000 NVA troops in the DMZ area. If it was good to pin down two divisions with 6,000 men, then why not now? he asked. The Pentagon acknowledged the base closing announcement caused a difficult public relations task.

The U.S. command in Saigon claimed the base closing was a result of a changed military situation around Khe Sanh. When the situation changes, you ought to change your tactics, explained an unnamed general on the Saigon command staff. The Marine presence at Khe Sanh had been established to inhibit infiltration. Explaining the logic of the decision, the unnamed general said that the construction of additional infiltration routes by the NVA into South Vietnam meant Khe Sanh had become less valuable as a means to check this infiltration. Khe Sanh had long served as a logistical center for the supply of the nearby hill positions. Now the general claimed that it did not make sense to maintain even a reduced garrison to defend Khe Sanh in order to use it as a supply base for servicing troops who would be conducting mobile operations in the area. Khe Sanh was in the way; it was tying us down, the general explained.

Displaying a flawed grasp of geography that paralleled his convoluted logic, the general claimed the supply function of Khe Sanh could be taken over by other installations in the area, such as Camp Stud. This base, unlike Khe Sanh, is beyond the 17-mile range of the enemy’s artillery in the demilitarized zone at the border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, said the nameless general. In reality, Stud was situated farther north than Khe Sanh, which puts it closer to the DMZ and not farther away. In any event, it was NVA artillery in South Vietnam and Laos that fired on the Marines at Khe Sanh, and not artillery from the DMZ.

An American colonel claimed he did not think we ever really planned to have a base there in the first place. According to this view, the Marines came into the small Special Forces camp at Khe Sanh. When the NVA surrounded Khe Sanh, all of a sudden we had five to six thousand men there. Responding to the question as to whether it was proper to defend the base at the height of the fighting there in February and March, the colonel rolled out the kill-ratio argument, saying: We killed many, many more of their troops than we lost ourselves. The colonel claimed, We showed them that if we wanted to hold Khe Sanh we could do it.

Although the vulnerability of Khe Sanh to enemy artillery was a reason given by the military for abandoning it, one high Army official stated it was unlikely that seven other bases within the range of enemy artillery in the DMZ would be abandoned. Khe Sanh was always different, he said. In reality, the major difference between Khe Sanh and other bases near the DMZ was simply that Khe Sanh was the only major American base to be abandoned.

The actual process of abandoning the Marine base was complicated and dangerous. Nine allied infantry battalions were operating in the vicinity of Khe Sanh when the decision to close was made. Those units had to be deployed elsewhere without advertising the move to the North Vietnamese. Allied forces would be extremely vulnerable to enemy attack while the base was being dismantled.

The U.S. command wanted to leave a completely clean piece of real estate at Khe Sanh. Ruined aircraft were cut up and hauled away so they could not be used for propaganda purposes by the Communists. Nothing would be left to indicate that the Americans had been forced to withdraw. Eight hundred bunkers, miles of barbed wire, and acres of metal runway materials were buried, destroyed, or physically removed.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War

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