Khe Sanh 1968

My step-brother served two tours in Nam as a Marine, circa '66. At one point he was involved in conducting patrols in the hills surrounding and in support of the base at Khe Sanh. He walked point on many of those patrols ultimately earning two purple hearts. He is mentioned in a book entitled, "The Hill Battles," detailing those earlier efforts to secure the area in support of the base. By '68 it became obvious that the enemy was moving troops and artillery pieces into those same hills to put pressure on the Khe Sanh base. At the time what we didn't know was it was serving as a distraction as they prepared for the coordinated Tet Offensive all over South Viet Nam. Westmorland was anxious for the show down at Khe Sanh and was bent on holding the base and inflicting heavy losses on the Communists in the conflict. He was also egged on by LBJ who was commenting that this was "no damn Dien Bien Phu!" The reality and the sad part is that those Marines lived, fought, suffered and died in that outpost which ultimately of no strategic value. As soon as the enemy disengaged and melted back beyond the hills, the U.S. evacuated and destroyed Khe Sanh. This scenario was all too common in this conflict of attrition. It was repeated at "Hamburger Hill" where countless Americans were killed and wounded to fight for and take a hill from an entrenched enemy. There too, the Communists abandoned their positions and melted into the jungle, and as at Khe Sanh, the Americans abandoned the position they had paid so dearly for. God Bless all American veterans for their selfless service to our country.
I found this puzzle extremely challenging with all the different patterns and such. Took me almost 7 1/2 hours to complete.

Thanks, I remember some of this but I was just 17 then - not paying attention to anything not on my radar.

If this info is not to your liking I shall remove it. 3-18-23

The Battle of Khe Sanh began on January 21, 1968, when forces from the People’s Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) carried out a massive artillery bombardment on the U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh, located in South Vietnam near the border with Laos. For the next 77 days, U.S. Marines and their South Vietnamese allies fought off an intense siege of the garrison, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.

Defending Khe Sanh
The U.S. military presence at Khe Sanh began in 1962, when Army Special Forces built a small camp near the village, located some 14 miles south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Vietnam and 6 miles from the Laotian border on Route 9, the principal road from South Vietnam into Laos.

U.S. Marines built a garrison adjacent to the Army camp in 1966. In the fall of 1967, the People’s Army of North Vietnam (PAVN) began to build up its strength in the region, and U.S. officials began to suspect that Khe Sanh would be the target of an attack.

Did you know? The number of Communist forces killed in the Battle of Khe Sanh would reach around 10,000, compared to fewer than 500 U.S. Marines killed in action.


General William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV), believed that Vietnamese Communist forces had targeted Khe Sanh as part of a general effort to seize South Vietnam’s northernmost regions and put themselves in a stronger position prior to any future peace negotiations.

They had done this successfully against French colonial troops at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, prior to obtaining independence at the Geneva peace conference.

As part of a program codenamed Operation Scotland, Westmoreland