In Khe Sanh, Serenity Belies a Bloody Past

Thirty-one years ago, when Khe Sanh was part of the world’s vocabulary, one of the defining moments of the Vietnam War was being played out in this mist-shrouded valley near the Laotian border.

The siege of Khe Sanh lasted 76 days, and to the men from both sides who fought here, enduring dreadful danger and deprivation, it might come as welcome news that Khe Sanh today is a largely forgotten place, blissfully peaceful, its stillness broken only by the wind that whines through the jungle-covered hills.

Visitors are few, and when someone comes--after making the two-hour drive from Dong Ha on Route 9, once called “Ambush Alley”--a caretaker appears to unlock the dreary one-room museum that Quang Tri province opened last year. There isn’t much inside except some grainy photos, a stack of discarded weapons and a visitors register.

“Sorry, guys,” an American has written. An Irishman adds: “Sleep ye brothers in arms from both sides. R.I.P.”

The American base has long since been dismantled, leaving no trace of the presence of 6,000 Marine defenders other than the outline of the abandoned airstrip. Anything of value--concrete from the bunkers, sheet metal from the beer hall, spent bullets and artillery shells--was lugged away by villagers long ago and sold or used to repair homes in the town of Khe Sanh, two miles away.

“Look. You buy? Good souvenir,” says Nguyen Van Tran, who has made his way from town in hopes of corralling a few tourists. He carries a small display case filled with U.S. dog tags, Viet Cong medals and North Vietnamese Army insignia that, his denials to the contrary, were recently forged by industrious villagers.

Khe Sanh, six miles east of Laos and 14 miles south of the former demilitarized zone, was turned into a major U.S. base in 1967 in response to the southward movement of three North Vietnamese divisions. By early 1968, the Communist forces had cut Route 9 and closed down the Khe Sanh airstrip with mortar and artillery bombardments from the surrounding hills, making it necessary for the U.S. command to resupply the 26th Marine Regiment and the South Vietnamese Rangers with parachute drops.

As casualties mounted, journalists and military tacticians increasingly drew comparisons between Khe Sanh and the Vietnamese town of Dien Bien Phu, where Communist troops in 1954 defeated the French, who, like the Americans in 1968, found themselves sealed in a besieged valley ringed by high mountains.

“I don’t want any damn Dien Bien Phu,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1967, seeking assurances from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Khe Sanh would not be overrun. They assured him the base could be defended, and the assaults by U.S. tactical aircraft and B-52 bombers on North Vietnamese positions around the base were stepped up into the new year.

Captions with the museum’s photographs and an inscription on a monument in the nearby town speak of “the people’s victory” at Khe Sanh and the American retreat.

In fact there was neither a U.S. retreat nor a victor. By the time the 1st Cavalry Division lifted the siege in April, reopening Route 9 and relieving the battered garrison, North Vietnam’s resistance had melted away. On July 5, the Marines blew up the bunkers, rolled up the temporary airstrip and closed the base.

U.S. casualties at Khe Sanh were 205 dead and 1,600 wounded. U.S. estimates of North Vietnam’s dead ranged from an official figure of 1,602 to 20,000. During the siege, which coincided in part with the Tet Offensive elsewhere in what was then South Vietnam, support for Johnson’s conduct of the war fell to 26% in a Gallup Poll.

On March 31, Johnson announced that he was suspending the bombing of North Vietnam in an attempt to get peace talks going and would not run for reelection.

Today, Route 9 is being widened and its bridges rebuilt with a World Bank loan. Khe Sanh town, emptied during the siege, has been reborn as a bustling little commercial hub with a population of about 10,000. Farmers have wandered into the old combat base and planted coffee trees.

It is a reminder that Hanoi’s interests today have far less to do with the wars of the past than they do with the economic development of the future.