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Written by, 1stLt. Carlton B. Crenshaw OIC, 105mm Howitzer Det, C/1/13
2 January Dear Andrea, It’s getting pretty late in the evening now. I’ve tried all day to sit down and write you a letter but one thing after another keeps popping up to tie me down. We had another red alert this evening when one of our units got hot again. I’ve been unable to get any of your mail for the past ten days because of my change of address even though both units are right here in the same place. I’m sending off a tracer for my mail and am asking someone to have it sent up here to my roost on Hill 881. I’m sure glad that I talked to you on Christmas day and know that you know when our R&R will be. I’m sure you will soon receive your R&R orders and that you have everything all worked out for our trip. It makes me feel so helpless that I can’t do more to help prepare things. This will be a pretty short letter because it is getting late and I am running out of things to say. 3 January Dear Andrea, Well this will be my last letter to you until R&R. In fact, you may not receive this one before you leave for Hawaii. It has been a long five months since I left you at the Kansas City airport. A lot has happened since then. I’ve really been busy today up here on Hill 881. It seems I have been doing a million and one things. But I am pretty happy with my new job. It makes the time pass pretty fast with my being so busy – especially with R&R coming so soon. I don’t know what I would do if I had to sit and wait until the last few days before I left for Hawaii. Being up on this mountain has its advantages. Because of the altitude we were able to pick up the bowl games on our radio – that was a great surprise. I listened to the Dallas/Green Bay Packers NFL Championship game, which sounded like the ice bowl. Unfortunately Bart Starr won the game in the last minute with a quarterback sneak. That game will probably be remembered for years. We also heard the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl an the Orange Bowl. I guess Phil is pretty happy that Oklahoma beat Tennessee in the game. I’m going to close his letter for now. 3 January Dear Mother, I’m sorry that I haven’t had much time to write you lately. I’ve been tied down pretty much with my change of jobs. I am now relearning artillery – it is a very complex, complicated occupation. Besides this, my artillery battalion is constantly messing things up for us. They will have us fire at the wrong times and won’t let us fire when it seems appropriate. I’m up most of the night firing our H and I’s (Harassment and Interdicting) and busy almost all day long with supervision duties like laying and insuring the accuracy of our guns; getting the things we need, particularly ammunition; learning the names of my people; checking on our progress on digging trenches and covering bunkers with steel plating, rocks and sand bags; overseeing the cleaning of our guns; instructing my men in the use of the M-16; being range safety officer and a million other things. My other jobs as FO and battalion fire support coordinator were harder physical jobs and had more danger because of what I was doing. But at least there were periods of relaxation. I don’t seem to get any of that here at least for now. I hope Andrea has passed on to you what has happened the past few weeks. Things have been popping. Briefly, I’m now back up at Khe Sanh and have rotated from the field and gone back to my artillery unit (by the way, my address is now “C” Battery. 1/13 again). I picked up my first lieutenant’s silver bars and was one of the first ones in my class to do so. I’m now assistant battery officer for our artillery on Hill 881 South. This is where other Marines had a couple of major battles just before I arrived in Vietnam in late May and early June. Apparently the Marines sustained over 400 casualties taking hills 881 and 861 at that time. We even have a mass NVA grave under us somewhere on this hill. There has been a lot of activity around here the past week but the NVA doesn’t want to fight too much right now. We have killed about thirty NVA over the past week and last night our infantry killed an NVA artillery forward observer and another one of their officers. My sleep has been disturbed the past week with the change of schedule and almost constant pressure from my new job. This will be great experience in handling over forty men (average age of 19). I doubt that any of my friends will be able to claim the same thing, especially when it comes down to talking to a future employer. I feel that I have gained years of experience versus what my friends will be able to achieve back in the states. There is a great sense of personal satisfaction that comes with my duties here in Vietnam. I hope that you had a good Christmas. Did Andrea come over to see you? I hope she has everything ready for our R&R. Well I had better go for now. 24 January Dear Andrea, I haven’t had much time to do anything the past four days here except
to stay alive. Being called back one day early from R&R was probably
a signal of what I was getting into. When I boarded the C-130 in
DaNang to fly back to Khe Sanh, we were informed that the combat base was
under fire and that the airfield could be accessed only temporarily.
They told us they would lower the loading ramp just after touching down
and would not fully stop for us to offload. We would have to jump
off within a minute of landing. We encountered flak, that is right
flak, as we approached Khe Sanh. The pilots had us descending at
an extreme angle as
I rushed down to our battery and found that I couldn’t get up to Hill 881 until the following morning. Being the new guy on the block, I was given the night watch duty in the Charlie Battery command bunker. At about 10:00 our battalion fire control center called and needed support for another Marine recon unit that was surrounded. We had a new computer called FADAC that was able to do many things simultaneously. It gave us four simultaneous missions to be supported by eight artillery guns from my battery. In essence they provided a box of artillery protection for our Marines. The fire mission went on for hours as the box moved to cover the movement of the Marines back to the combat base. Later that night all hell broke out. The NVA shelled Charlie Battery’s position. We took hundreds of rounds of mortars and rockets. The ammunition dump was just behind us. That went quickly. We had an incredible 5-6 hour period after that. Between the incoming rounds of artillery, rockets and mortars and the exploding 50,000 rounds of artillery ammo that went off it just about destroyed Charlie Battery. All of our communications wires were severed. I couldn’t contact any gun crew. All of our tents, bunkers, mess hall and every-thing were leveled. I was given command of the battery for a few hours in all of the confusion. I don’t know where Captain O’Connor was or any of the other artillery officers. The bunker that I was in got hit pretty hard. One round picked me up and threw me against the wall ten feet away and gave me a mild concussion. Worse yet, thousands of CS gas canisters went off and made this whole area a real mess. I had a gas mask that worked but many of the other Marines in my bunker had come there for refuge and didn’t have gas masks. Their positions were burning under the NVA onslaught and the exploding ammunition bunker. I tore up a number of towels and soaked them in water to help their breathing and to help keep the gas from their eyes, noses and mouths. We just sat there for hours while this stuff was happening. We had three wounded men in my bunker but we could not get them out because of the fire, gas and flying shrapnel. Shortly after daylight the fires and explosions calmed down. We stumbled from our bunker. There were hundreds of hot, unexploded ordinance everywhere. There was utter devastation in our position. I was absolutely amazed that we only had one artilleryman killed. He had been hit directly by an NVA rocket and could only be identified with his dog tags. We had another ten artillerymen medically evacuated. There were more serious losses with the infantry on the perimeter side of our position. As we were attempting to make a damage assessment, the NVA sent in another half dozen rockets at us. I swear I could see one heading directly for me. I had only a split second to react. I lunged to my right and hit the ground behind a few sand bags. The rocket went overhead and landed a hundred feet beyond me. Since then, the battle hasn’t let up. The NVA shelled all of our hill positions, including Hill 881 and Hill 861. The NVA launched a ground assault against 861 and overran the position. Our Marines faced with annihilation, regained control and killed every NVA who was on that hill. Hill 881 was spared a ground attack because yesterday’s assault on Hill 881 North had apparently hit the unit that was supposed to attack my hill. This place is really getting a lot of air support – for the past three days 50% of all aircraft (1,500) in and off the coast of Vietnam have been directed here. We apparently are facing General Giap, the Viet Minh (later NVA) commander who defeated the French here in Indochina at Dien Bien Phu. That battle was only fourteen years ago. He has deployed at least two divisions, the 304th and 325th, with an estimated 25,000 troops to attack us here at Khe Sanh. This is building up to be the biggest battle in the Vietnam War. General Cushman has deployed four infantry Marine battalions so far as well as a battalion of South Vietnamese Marines. This will be the first time since Iwo Jima, fought twenty two years ago, where all three battalions of the 26th Marines will have fought together. Hard luck 1/9 will soon be joining us. They have a reputation of having even more casualties than 3/26. My full artillery battalion is also coming here. The NVA have been shooting down our jets like they are going out of style. One jet has been shot down every day for the past four days – plus four helicopters and one air observer who was shot down and killed. Most of the jet pilots have been picked up but one wasn’t very lucky when his parachute failed to open The past three days have been hectic with my battery trying to rebuild our gun pits, bunkers and clear out all of the shrapnel lying around. About 6-8 times a day the NVA will hit us with mortars and rockets and we will fire back each time. I’ve been lucky a few more times. Yesterday a mortar round blew me off my feet and hurt my thigh. But I got hit with dirt rather than shrapnel. The NVA sure like my left leg. This is twice that it has been hit. Now that the battery is back in one piece down here, I’m going up to Hill 881 today. I hope that the NVA doesn’t try to take that hill! 26 January Dear Andrea, Here it is the 8th day of the battle of Khe Sanh. I’ve been up here on Hill 881 for three days now and can’t say that it has been an enjoyable three days. I got shot at down in Khe Sanh waiting to get on my chopper to take me up here and the NVA put two mortar rounds on me just as I got off the helo LZ here on 881. I have a feeling they have a personal war going against me. Because of all the rockets and mortar hits nobody gets out during the daylight. We had two Marines killed this morning carrying ammunition in a six foot deep trench. Our hill reminds me of pictures that I have seen of trenches used by French, English and German troops during World War I. Within a few days nothing will be left above the ground level. We are digging and digging and digging and building as much overhead protection as possible. Yet even with that bad things happen given the size of the arms being directed against us. As an example, the bunker next to mine took a direct hit with a 120mm mortar yesterday which went through about three feet of overhead protection and wounded two Marines in there. Our fire direction center has been destroyed with a direct hit from what we think was a 140mm rocket. My hill is being hit by approximately 100 rounds of different caliber weapons a day. Our positions would fit within a football field. Yesterday afternoon four mortars fell very close to my bunker. We’re scared to even go out a few minutes to the toilet, which is also contained within a bunker. This is turning into an enormous battle. Hundreds of rounds are going back and forth every day just on this hill alone. Luckily my three guns are still working and I have lost only six of my men (20%). Back at the main base of Khe Sanh things are pretty bad – all of our mess halls are destroyed, our hospital was completely destroyed (they are digging one in the ground which will have ten feet of overhead resting on 12 inch by 12 inch beams). Our PX and post office have been destroyed and countless huts, tents and bunkers torn up. The NVA are really taking it on the nose with our artillery and air attacks. We have had 3-4 arc lights everyday here. Those are horrifying to be near, let alone be under one. We have a long way to go since the NVA have deployed at least twenty four battalions against our six. Our sleep has been irregular and food no better. We are on 100% alert every night. I don’t know how long it will be until this letter gets to you. I feel fine but am a bit tired, bruised and jumpy. 30 January Dear Mother,
Boy was I in a state of shock the day I got back to Khe Sanh on the 19th. There was a major battle just outside my position as well as Hill 881. I lost two real friends that day. One of them, Mike Thomas, was one of my best friends and went to Oklahoma University. The next morning “C” Battery and all of Khe Sanh were shelled very, very bad and we went through quite a battle. The ammunition dump went off less than 150 yards from my position, blowing up 50,000 rounds of heavy artillery ammunition. That was just the start of our fun. Since then things have been hot and heavy and I’m in quite a battle. The NVA are throwing everything they can at us and the battle is shaping up to be much larger than my last big one at Con Thien. One night alone we killed over 500 NVA on Hill 861, an adjacent hill to mine. Their position was overrun. However, Kilo Company fought for their lives and held on. I’m having a lot of trouble keeping my guns going because we have taken a lot of direct hits and have had to make emergency repairs on everything. But the guns are still firing. Everyone’s morale is pretty high. This is the 12th day of the battle. The NVA must be taking a terrible pounding out there. We throw thousands of rounds of artillery and mortars at them every day – and thousands of bombs. We have aircraft on station all day long. Fifty percent of all fixed wing aircraft in Vietnam have been committed to this battle. One day we had over a thousand sorties flown in our support. We know that the NVA has committed at least two divisions – and potentially a third is coming in now. I feel pretty good now after getting over the aches of being thrown around in the attacks on the 20th and 24th. Somehow everyone has still got a good sense of humor despite the constant pressure of enemy artillery and imminent ground attacks. We move around at night instead of during the day because it is harder for the NVA FOs to adjust fire at night. But it isn’t hard for them to hurt someone once they hit the hilltop because there are over 400 Marines up here confined to a very small area. We’ve had a little over 100 casualties up here so far. I’ve had a lot of time the last couple of days to read between mortar and rocket attacks. I started reading the Matt Helms series – someone like James Bond. There are a few books in the series we don’t have up here. Could you possibly send them to me in paperback? They are: The Removers, The Silencers, Murderer’s Row, The Ambushers, The Shadowers, The Betrayers – they are all written by Donald Hamilton and are Fawcett Gold Medal paperback books. Say hello to everyone for me. I hope you get this letter – it is pretty hard to get mail in or off this hill because of enemy gunners. 30 January Dear Andrea, I’m sorry I haven’t written much lately. It is because mail
is next to impossible to get off of Hill 881. A helicopter has to
land to pick it up and the NVA Mortarmen try to discourage that.
Yesterday we had twelve helicopters come up here and we got mortar fire
during every landing. It is a deadly game we play. We have
four sites for bringing in choppers and can only land one per site for
a few seconds before a mortar round will land. Each of our landing
zones are zeroed in by the NVA. Mortar rounds take about thirty seconds
from pop to This battle at Khe Sanh and the surrounding hills is turning out to be one of the biggest battles fought by the United States since World War II. The NVA have sent thousands of troops, guns, rockets and mortars here to slug it out in a battle they hope to match with Dien Bien Phu. Two days they assaulted up Hill 861 and were slaughtered. We were able to fire directly on the attacking NVA. The stench is so bad on Hill 861 that the Marines had to go out and bury the dead NVA. Our greatest worry is their artillery, mortars and rockets. Each day we (all the artillery at Khe Sanh) fire over 6,000 round and our aircraft are constantly dropping bombs, napalm and rockets. The sky is also covered with flak from enemy gunners. This is really a battle. Somehow I always manage to make the really big, bloody battles. I have been told that the battalion commander of 3/26, Lt. Colonel Harry Alderman, is putting my name in for award of the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. I was pleasantly surprised about that. My beard is getting pretty long since I haven’t shaved in twelve days. We only have 6-8 ounces of water each day. I also have not had my boots or clothes off in twelve days. It is hard to keep sanitation conditions good around here because every time we do anything we are shelled. There is no food except C-rations that are parachuted to us. Could you send some goodie packages? Our air arm may not be getting a lot of water to us, but they do send our mail. Send fairly small packages. Here is a list of things that would be great to receive: three large green onions for flavoring the C-rations – wrap them up in aluminum foil; one can of ravioli; two or three cans or packages of soup to be mixed with water; a sausage and cheddar cheese to go with that. I will try to get this letter out on a medevac chopper with a wounded lieutenant tonight. 7 February Dear Andrea, The battle is still raging here every day. The NVA mortars are raising hell on my hill. Every time we stick our heads up, we receive more incoming. The NVA have just about ruined everything. Yesterday they blew up our fuel we had stored underground. My gun parapets are collapsing from direct hits from enemy guns or from the concussion of our guns firing direct fire. Trash, empty containers and empty ammo boxes litter the entire hill. We can’t clean it up because of the enemy gunners. Rats are becoming a problem. They are as big as dogs. There are hundreds of craters from the larger ordinance that has landed here. Twice we have tried to dig down in my position and had to stop because of the mass graves of NVA from the battles last year. I guess this place pretty well resembles Korea or the trenches in France in World Wart I. Everyone lives in trenches, sleeps in trenches and does everything in them. Food is getting to be a problem. I wish we had a little bread – it would make our meals go a little farther and make them more palatable. Personal sanitation is at an all-time low here. I have some men who haven’t bathed or changed clothes in two months. There is only a minimum amount of drinking water. I guess I am not far behind them since I haven’t shaved or changed in three weeks myself. As you are aware, the battles over here are raging everywhere. Nine days ago the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched attacks on virtually every major point in South Vietnam. Hue has been taken. We have heard that thousands of South Vietnamese have been executed. The First Marine Regiment is attacking Hue in an attempt to retake it. Major sections of Saigon have been overrun, even our embassy. Casualties on all sides have been horrendous. American losses have exceeded 1,000 with another 8,000 – 9,000 wounded. However, we have won every battle. Our radio station (Armed Forces Radio) has given estimates of enemy losses topping 20,000 dead and wounded figures 3-4 times as large as that. I don’t know how many South Vietnamese ARVN have been killed. Our situation here is a bit murky. Several days ago the NVA launched another ground assault on Hill 861 and overran it again. They were eventually pushed out of that position by remnants of Kilo Company. I don’t know how many Marines we lost there. We fired hundreds of rounds in direct support of them. So did Khe Sanh and even Camp Carroll with their 175mm guns. The NVA losses equaled their losses three weeks ago at the start of the battle here. Our Special Forces position at Long Vei, about four miles west of Khe Sanh, is now under attack by a very large force. I have heard that the NVA have committed several dozen tanks into the battle. It appears that we have 3,000 NVA dug into our hill. They are trying to get close to us to avoid air and artillery bombardment and to move their units closer to our position. That means we are outnumbered 10 to 1. Great! Tactically we are holding on pretty well and have not received a major ground attack yet. The enemy has massed for an attack the past three nights but our artillery has wreaked havoc with them. WE even had a gas attack three days ago. All of us have gas masks. This was a minor nuisance. But the stuff lingers everywhere. If you’d like to help the cause over here you could bake a couple batches of chocolate chip cookies and wrap each one individually in saran wrap. I could pass them out to my men – that would boost their morale some and make living a little better. Well, I will close this letter for now. I hope everything is all right at home. 7 February Dear Mother, I thought I would write a short letter to say hello. Everything is still alright; however, you have to stretch that a little. I wrote Andrea about the deplorable conditions that are developing up here on Hill 881. She’ll tell you about them. The battle is raging fast and furious here at Khe Sanh every day and every night. Hill 861 has been attacked twice and has repulsed both attacks. Long Vei is now under attack. That is our Special Forces base just west of Khe Sanh. Hill881 was involved in a major battle the first day of the battle – in this with the Marines attacking the NVA. We have heard that the North Vietnamese are digging trenches towards the main combat base at Khe Sanh. They are big enough to drive two tanks side by side. The war has stretched into Laos from where the NVA are coming. We have thousands of Laotian refugees coming to our main combat base position. The mountain people, the Montagnards, have also been uprooted and are attempting to get away from this nightmare. The food situation here is critical. The only food we have is C-rations. We have had to restrict our Marines to one meal per day to ensure we have enough food if this battle goes on for months. Each Marine gets only about eight ounces of water per day. Every one of them digs about 6-8 hours a day to further protect themselves. I hope you can help us. If there are some people who would like to help Marines under siege, it would be great. Perhaps some people at your office or at Central Methodist or Country Club Christian could send some cookies and anything else like onion salt or soup packets. Most of the men haven’t had a hot meal in six weeks. I’m afraid this battle is going to go on for another month or so. If they could send it to me, I could pass it out to our men here on Hill 881. I have had to rite this letter over the space of several hours. We have had a number of mortar and rocket attacks today. We have taken at least 100 incoming rounds – and it is only early afternoon. Say hello to Grandmother and everyone for me. 9 February Dear Andrea, The lighting is rather poor in my bunker. That will help explain my wandering off the little blue lines on my writing paper. Life on this hill is starting to develop into a monotonous schedule. Daylight hours bring mortar and rocket attacks. Night time is scary. That is when the bad guys try to find ways to penetrate our position. Needless to say, we don’t sleep at night and are constantly bounced around during the daylight. I don’t pay as much attention any more to incoming mortars while I’m in my bunker. I can be sitting on the floor eating and never miss a bite even with my bunker shaking with near misses. So far my bunker has not had a round go through the roof. Our guys did a great job of reinforcing it. The overhead must be four feet thick. We have large beams holding up the roof. We have six alternating rows of steel matting and sand bags as well as two rows of wooden ammunition boxes full of dirt. I do worry though when I am outside because mortars are always dropping out of nowhere on the hill. That seems to be about all that happens here every day. At night we are probed at various places around our position. Yesterday our Special Forces at Long Vei outpost fell under heavy attack. We don’t know whether or not there were any survivors. I believe there were about 50 Americans there along with 300 South Vietnamese. We don’t get much info up here except by Armed Forces Radio. We have also heard that a Marine company patrolling outside the wire at the main combat base was ambushed and sustained very heavy losses (70%). Apparently many of the dead were unable to be recovered. Word has come down to us all the way from the White House that we are to stay in defensive postures until the situation stabilizes. It appears that Lyndon Johnson is getting daily briefings on the progress of the war here at Khe Sanh. It also is apparent from the amount of aircraft support that we are receiving that President Johnson does not want to lose the battle here. That is comforting because we feel very exposed up here on our hill. Up here on Hill 881 our casualties are mounting. Yesterday the NVA dropped two rounds of heavy artillery in our trenches, killing two Marines and wounding seven. We had to evacuate one young Marine due to battle fatigue. He was the only survivor from his squad. One after another his buddies were either killed or wounded and when he lost the last two of his buddies he just lost it. Subsequent to India’s battle on the 19th of January, we have had fifteen Marines killed up here and over seventy five wounded at least once – over thirty for their 2nd time in three weeks. This is the 21st day of the siege of Khe Sanh. Flak and antiaircraft fire and bad weather stopped our resupply today. My battery is about out of everything and is going to have to get some resupply or we won’t be able to operate very much longer. One of the lieutenants has an electric razor. I shaved last night – that was quite a chore because I hadn’t shaved for over three weeks. I left my mustache on and will let it grow over here as a kind of hobby. I received all of the orders you sent me. Maybe I will be able to get down to disbursing once this mess is over and get things straightened out. I also filled out the paper for the loan and will have Charlie Battery forward it to SMU. However, that may take a few weeks/months. I really look forward to your letters up here. It is a big day when I can get several letters from you. In a week or so I’ll be half way through my tour here. 13 February Dear Andrea, I have a chance to write a letter. I’m in a pretty good mood
but have had intermittent moods of depression and high moods. It
is the 24th day of the siege. This is doing funny things to all
We keep shooting NVA attempting to infiltrate our positions, but they haven’t attacked in mass. The waiting is getting to us. We want them to attempt to attack. I am convinced they would lose in a big way if they threw a large force at us. This is one of the heaviest defended bastions that have ever existed in the history of the Marine Corps. Each man has several thousand rounds of small arms ammunition, one crate of grenades and at least one anti-tank weapon (to be directed at larger weapons during a battle). Besides this we have almost thirty machine guns – and our M-16s are all machine guns as well. We have hundreds of Claymore mines in front of our positions that shoot out hundreds of ball bearing sized projectiles. My artillery has over 60 beehive rounds – each round has 7,000 tiny darts that blow up just outside the barrel of the guns when we get in trouble. If a sector is overrun, we will attempt to regroup and retake the defensive line with grenades, rifles and bayonets. Our hill has natural defenses with very steep sides. The enemy also has to go through all of our rows of barbed wire and mortar and artillery barrages. Both opposing armies here are tiring. We have intercepted messages from the enemy commanders complaining to their superiors that the Marines are low on ammunition, are out of food and water, but cannot be beaten. Our bombers hammer them 24 hours a day and so does our artillery. I am proud to relay another message from one of the NVA commanders that was intercepted. He said that my guns have almost unlimited ammunition (if only he really knew) and that he can’t make my gun crews get down. Even in all of the hell that comes in here my men stand by their guns firing back – they are magnificent! We have now put all our ammunition in underground bunkers. Hopefully we can avoid a direct hit on all of that ammo. I could shoot the previous officers on this hill for not doing more to dig in. My men have had to do all of this digging under fire, bad weather, and lack of water, food and decent tools. I don’t know how many guns the enemy has but I would guess they outnumber mine on this hill by 5 to 1. The same thing goes for the rest of the Khe Sanh area. Our aircraft make up for most of that disparity. The NVA have one gun that is fast as hell and a lot bigger than mine. When we receive a round it sounds like a freight train and tears enormous holes in our position. We have herd that the NVA have large siege guns in tunnels in Co Roc Mountain, just over the Laotian border. Those things may exceed 250mm. We have four pets in my bunker – rats. It was inevitable.
There is a graveyard below my bunker and trash littered everywhere.
There are also a lot of dead NVA in our barbed wire and around our position.
We have tried to kill the rats but they are too strong and stubborn so
we just cohabitate this place. We live above the board floor – they
live below it. They even have names. I figure they will be
harmless as long as they’re well fed and don’t multiply. It isn’t
too safe for them to be up here either. The other day a mortar shell
killed seven rats. We have built a little animal boot hill for them.
15 February Dear Andrea, Here it is another day on Hill 881 and another day of combat. I picked up another medal yesterday – my 2nd Purple Heart. I didn’t really want this one – I guess I didn’t want the first one either. It wasn’t serious. A 120mm mortar hit my bunker just behind where I was sitting. It blew a hole through the entire overhead. The blast put two pieces of shrapnel in the back of my neck. The blast knocked me unconscious. I recovered after a few minutes and was more stunned than anything. That round blew up a couple of our radios and made a mess of things. After an hour or so we were functional again and I resumed my duties. The NVA snipers are getting to be a pain-in-the-ass with their constant harassment. We had a poor shooting sniper for a few weeks and viewed that as a blessing in disguise. I guess we got him. The new sniper is much better. The war has its comical aspects though – we now have a bugler and an American flag pole. Also have painted a big bulls eye on a board on either side of the hill with the words “F#&* Y%@^ YOU MISSED” – written in large Vietnamese words. It is too bad it isn’t true – we have had well over a hundred casualties on 881 so far. I have lost count of the number of days that this siege has been underway – twenty seven I think. Things are all right except for the War. I guess that sounds pretty funny. Well, I better close for now. 18 February Dear Andrea, I’m Sorry that I haven’t been a very good letter writer lately – I’ll try to do better from now on. We have had our troubles lately with just about everything. Three nights in a row we have been probed. All of a sudden mortars and machinegun fire hit our position and the NVA infantry were advancing against our position on a 300 yard front. Before they got very far we threw a lot of fire into their units and slaughtered the attackers. Then the attacks slackened off. Well this has kept us on our toes for three nights in a row. The fog is really thick here and puts us in a bad fix. First, the NVA can advance in the fog without us being able to see them. Second and worse, is the tragic situation facing our wounded Marines. One of my men is dying up here and could be saved if we could get him to a hospital. The helicopters can’t get off the ground because you can’t see twenty feet, let alone fly up to our remote position. My Marine has been semiconscious for two days now. He can’t communicate in any way because of his wounds. His jaw is torn up; he has shrapnel beside his eye plus other extensive head injuries. One of his lungs has also collapsed due to a shrapnel hole. Yet he is alive. We are feeding him dextrose intravenously to keep his strength up. We have had to give him a tracheotomy to assist his breathing. It is really cruel for a man to suffer like this. It is hard to explain to my other men why we can’t get him out. We get our instructions about what to do from our doctors at Khe Sanh. I hope we can fly him out before he dies. 20 February Dear Andrea, Everything is about the same here on Hill 881 except that I don’t
feel so hot. My man died before we could get a chopper. As
if that wasn’t enough, today was even worse. A very good friend of
mine, an enlisted FO I have been with nearly my whole tour died from a
mortar round. He was approaching my bunker and a round landed in
front of him. He lived ten minutes. We did everything we could
but there was no way to help him. The last thing he said just a second
before he died was, “I’m trying to hold on but I can’t.” I can’t
forget his face as he died. I feel pretty low now and can’t see anything
to make things better. The NVA continually churn our position and
one by one the men are wounded or killed. Things 23 February Dear Andrea, Cpl. Delbert L. Leasure
The responsibility here is weighing like a huge stone on my head and neck. I try everything I can to protect my men but they still are killed or mangled. We take every precaution I can think of and yet I have lost 40% of my command. At least I can take some comfort in the destruction we are bringing to the NVA. For every round the throw at us we throw 20 or 30 at them, counting all our air strikes. The NVA must be in pretty bad shape considering the constant hammering they receive from us. Both armies are tiring but the battle is far from over. I’m afraid the worst of the battle is yet to come. I don’t want to see any more American dead if that would be possible. But it isn’t. 26 February Dear Andrea,
The day before Khe Sanh had taken the largest shelling anyone has ever received in Vietnam – 1,370 rounds. We have heard that only five Marines were killed and another forty wounded. Yesterday we took 100 rounds and lost almost as many men as the main combat base absorbed. On Sunday (and all Sundays seem to be the same for us) we took it on the chin again. Only twelve rounds came in but we took very heavy casualties – 4 emergencies, two priorities and four routines. That is how our casualties are classified. Our dead are routine medevacs; an emergency is someone who will die if immediate evacuation and attention is not given; a priority is someone who is OK at the time, but may become an emergency in a matter of several hours. Ten men lost to twelve rounds. Enough for that. Those damn rounds just seemed to land where someone happened to be standing or sitting (and they were all in the trenches or their bunkers). Well I imagine you are getting enough of this incessant blood and guts. There doesn’t seem to be anything else going on here. As the battle progresses, our units are getting smaller and smaller. I won’t give you any statistics in case this letter gets into the wrong hands. However, India is down to the strength they had at the end of the Con Thien battles. Mike is nearly the same. We have lost most of our corpsmen. These guys are unbelievable and will do anything to help an injured Marine. NVA snipers go after them like demons. The NVA are bringing more ordinance and men into our battle. They have a lot of artillery greater than 200mm in size. Our largest guns are 8 inch guns and 175mm guns and those are twenty miles away. We have received incoming from artillery fired over ten miles away. I have shot max angle/max charge and cannot get near them I fire these rounds just to let them know that we know where they are. We make up for this deficit with air strikes. More bombs have fallen here at Khe Sanh than our 8th Air Force dropped on Berlin and Frankfort during 1944-1945. Yet the NVA keeps moving in more troops, artillery and supplies. Their approach trenches are now within a mile of the main combat base at Khe Sanh. Through these trenches they will attempt to throw assault waves of infantry and armor at our combat base. According to their attack plan Hills 881 and 861 must fall before the attack on the main combat base at Khe Sanh. This battle plan is following the exact pattern as Dien Bien Phu. The worst battles are still ahead of us. I could almost write a book about this battle and the way people live and react. I have seen people thankful for another day – I have been one of those people. It’s hard to write about much else because I haven’t received a letter
from you since the 5th of February and that letter was written just after
our R&R. I finally got the mail that was mailed to my old address
– December mail – also on the 4th. I’m looking forward to a whole
batch of mail when it finally does get here. I hope that everything
is all right financially. I don’t know how long it will take to get
to a disbursing office. It’s nearly impossible to get food up here
let alone a pay officer. I’m getting pretty tired so I will end this
letter.
28 February Dear Andrea, Things are looking a little brighter the past three days. We have been resupplied and have not taken any casualties. Our guns and jets have really been tearing the NVA up. I don’t have any idea how many NVA have died the pat few days but it has to be over 1,000. The Marines have retaken Hue after nearly a month of fighting. They killed 5,000 NVA and VC. Now that this is accomplished, the focus will be on getting a ground relief to Khe Sanh. Hue is outside Phu Bai – that is where our division headquarters is. That is where most of our supplies are located. All of the bridges have been knocked out. It is hard to get troops and supplies north from Phu Bai to Camp Evans, Dong Ha, Con Thien and of course Khe Sanh. Our airfield at Phu Bai was pinned down by enemy mortars in Hue. Now that this threat is gone our choppers are now able to go about their resupply efforts. Mail is way behind all over Vietnam because no civilian plane came into Vietnam for several weeks after the Tet Offensive started. Hopefully that log jam will now start to clear up. We are still constantly digging here and I have had trenches dug everywhere in my position so that my men will never ever have to be above ground except for a fire mission. We had another helicopter shot down here yesterday attempting to resupply us. The crew survived and thought that it was the end of the earth to be up here for a day. I have never seen four more scared people in my life. Last night the NVA attacked us again and destroyed the helicopter where it was sitting outside the wire. But they lost over thirty men in that stunt. They are scattered about the helicopter. If we continue to dig in further, this place will be nothing short of an underground city. Many Marines live eight feet underground and bide their time during incoming in the caves. I have been thinking about another R&R in May or June to possibly Sydney, Australia. There is a lot to do there and things are really cheap there. I’d like to get out of this place and go some place peaceful where there aren’t a lot of Americans or gooks and just pleasantly stay drunk and enjoy the company of an Australian family. There are 10,000 Australian families who have volunteered their homes and assistance for Americans fighting in Vietnam. It sounds cheap and I’d like to get to see some of Australia if it would be possible. I’m now half way through my tour in Vietnam. 1 March Dear Andrea, Here it is March and we’re another month closer to being back together with each other. Well winter is just about over and spring and summer will pass fast. I get depressed trying to look that far forward. I’ve gone through a lot here – maybe things will quiet down again. When I get back to the US, I’m going to have trouble finding a duty station that won’t have been deployed to Vietnam. If you haven’t heard, the rest of the 5th Marine Division at Camp Pendleton is on the way here to help us. That makes the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Marine divisions committed to Vietnam. Most of the 2nd Division is deployed on ships in the Mediterranean. The 4th Division hasn’t been activated. A lot of Marines are being sent back to Vietnam for a 2nd tour, less than six months after they returned from their first tour. Almost all of the Marines in the 5th Marine Division had just returned from here several months ago. My next assignment may be to North Carolina or the Mediterranean. I imagine I’ll be able to stay in the US though because I will have less than a year to serve my three year enlistment as a reserve Marine officer. It is now a few hours later. We have been under attack again. One thing has me very worried. For several days we have heard digging under our position. That could mean one of two things and both mean trouble. One, the NVA could be tunneling under our position and could be laying explosives to blow up our position. Second, they could be digging holes to pop out of the mountain and assault us from within our own position. This really has me worried. Well I will close this letter for now and give it to one of the casualties we sustained today to take out when he is medically evacuated. 1 March Dear Mother, I’m sorry that I haven’t written much lately. It is because I have very little available light, a lack of writing paper and not enough time. I won’t recount to you all of the things that have been going on here because Andrea has most of the information. Basically our casualties have been heavy. The losses that the NVA have been absorbing have been horrendous. We have heard that the enemy has absorbed 500 casualties a day since the battle began After forty one days that adds up to a lot of people. It’s obvious that they have received significant reinforcements because the fighting intensity is actually increasing. Our small force here on Hill 881 is pretty tired – thee is no place to go, constant incoming, attacks at night, inadequate amounts of food water and mail. We are under siege constantly and the NVA is attempting to strangle us but it isn’t working. We get supplied by parachutes and helicopters. A veteran from World War I like Dad would find our position familiar. I’m sure he faced the same problems when he was twenty years old and fighting with the 5th Marines in France. I can see Khe Sanh by field glasses and it has grown enormously. There were originally two battalions of Marines. Today there are seven Marine battalions and one South Vietnamese elite airborne group with them. From what I have heard, the entire 5th Marine Division just left Camp Pendleton to come here and help us. Maybe with all of these Marines the NVA will forget about my little position here. I’m looking forward to some goodies that you may be sending but they will be a long time in getting here because all of our airfields have been under fire and civilian transportation has been cut off for six weeks now. I’m glad to hear that you are getting out and enjoying some good social life. Please say hello to everyone for me. 4 March Dear Andrea, I will wish you a happy birthday today in hopes of this letter reaching you by the 13th. I’m sorry that I’m not there to wish you a happy birthday – I will next year.
One thing happened today that has really made us feel good. We received a nationwide newspaper article about our hill. It told how we had raised a flag on our embattled hill and that despite heavy enemy mortar fire we continue the practice of blowing a bugle and raising the flag at dawn and lowering it at dusk. The flag pole is right behind my bunker. It really makes you feel good to see that flag flying and know that you are fighting for something of real value. Our flag kept getting hit and became more and more tattered.
People in the United States who read the article have responded by sending us over a thousand flags and some bugles. Our battalion, 3/26, sent us a couple hundred flags and a copy of the newspaper article and some of the letters written to us. We received a couple letters from the old members of the same unit that raised the American flag on Mt. Surabachi, Iwo Jima during February of 1945, just before I was born. That unit was also the 26th Marine Regiment – amazing how history repeats itself. Every day we are going to fly a new flag and then send it to the family of a Marine who died fighting for this hill. We are also going to send a copy of one of the letters we received to accompany the flag and do the same for our men who survived, but who are severely maimed now. Maybe the war will mean a little more to a few people. We are going to attempt to get a church service up here somehow by radio since our chaplains can’t get here. Yesterday there was a real nice chaplain killed down at Khe Sanh, he was our battalion chaplain after Con Thien. His death has affected a lot of people. Well enough for the somber news from Hill 881. 6 March Dear Andrea,
We’ve had a couple good days lately. We haven’t taken any serious casualties but we haven’t been resupplied and things are getting pretty thin again – particularly artillery ammunition, food and water. I still haven’t received any mail from you since tour letter written on February 3rd. But I know there is a lot of mail waiting to get to us down at Khe Sanh. The days are going by pretty fast and we are working hard to get everything done.
I should have quite a bit of money piling up for me when I can get to it. I hope you are all right financially at home. At the end of March I should have $1,500 to $1,700 waiting for me. I haven’t spent a single dime since I got back from R&R on the 19th of January. I guess the weather is starting to get better at home. Spring should be starting pretty soon in Kansas City and should already have started in Dallas. That sounds great because there will only be one season left before I can rotate home in late September. 8 March Dear Andrea, Last night was a big night for all of us because we received mail for the first time in a month. I was especially lucky because I received all of those packages from you and Mother. Oh I’m glad those things arrived. For one thing, I’m tired of C-rations and can barely eat them anymore. They definitely don’t supply enough variety or taste and we are all suffering from a lack of vitamin C and iron. I’m pale and pretty thin and I guess everyone else is about the same. At this point I probably have lost fifty pounds. We are out of food now and have only my reserve food supply left. I will release that to my men tomorrow. We had a big resupply yesterday but it was all ammunition for my artillery guns and a little water. Today they had better get some food up here. It was also nice yesterday getting in a few new replacements for the men who we have lost. Better yet they have some news of the outside world. There are over 400 helicopters at Camp Evans since the army took over there. That is the Air Cavalry. The Marines have only twelve helicopters available to support all of Khe Sanh and twice the number of men that the army has at Camp Evans. I guess this kind of haves/have-nots has been the history of funding support from the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon. However, the guys with the deficit in equipment really produce. The next time I see an army officer I’m going to knock him down. Where we go on foot patrols, the army just flies above the ground until they find something, then land and fight. Now I know where all the money is going in Vietnam. I hear there is a plan to relieve the Marines at Khe Sanh. We don’t know much more about that and I couldn’t talk about it if I knew more. But it is reassuring to know someone is thinking about us. Elsewhere in Vietnam, we have dislodged just about all of the remnants of the Tet Offensive. Khe Sanh is the only major contested battle still going on. As soon as the battle is over here the Marine Corps is going to have to give 3/26 and my battery time to refit and get back up to strength. However, that will be sometime in the future. Right now we’re up to our necks in fighting with the NVA. I think we are fighting three and possibly four divisions right now. We are still receiving heavy mortar fire every day and the fight here with artillery is still raging. We provide Khe Sanh with a fifteen second advanced alert of artillery incoming, fired from positions to the west of us. That is enough for the alarm to be sounded and troops to get down. The once pretty Khe Sanh valley is now a mess – there are tens of thousands of shell and bomb craters and thousands of NVA dead lying buried or twisted in the rubble out there.
We are still digging bunkers and fortifying our position but the work goes slow. The ground is all shale and hard as a rock. We are constantly harassed by snipers and mortars and every day we seem to get more exhausted. The grind here is terrific and what makes things worse is the lack of food and water. I have lost a lot of my strength. A little fresh food would go a long way. I am constantly having morale problems and fights among the men due to the crowded conditions and pressure. Somehow I’ve kept pretty good discipline and give all the encouragement I can. But most of the time I have to chew someone out to get the point across. In a situation like this a sergeant is the most effective manager of men. I have lost my two sergeants. As a result, I have to straddle the line of being an officer/leader and an ass kicker. All of the officers here have to do the same thing. Well enough for the personal challenges that we face up here. At least the weather is turning a little sunnier and warmer. Over the past six weeks fog has dominated our hill most of the time. 11 March Dear Andrea, Well I guess I’ll sit down and write a short letter. It has been great enjoying the goodies that you have sent. I especially enjoyed the little cans of fruit juice and the cookies. I’m going to try to make these things last as long as possible. If you could send another package of juices in small cans it would be great. It is fantastic to have a can when I wake up. Everything is about the same on the hill. If it weren’t for the packages that we received, we would be starving now. The choppers have only brought up artillery ammunition for the past week – and no food. I don’t know who has messed this up but I would really like to chew on him. They expect us to keep firing and I have to keep my men working on our fortifications – but we have nothing to give our men to eat or drink. The helicopter casualties have made our pilots gun shy. They are scared to fly up here and usually turn back without dropping their supplies or they drop them from several hundred feet. That is why none of our water is making it lately. People would be shocked if they knew about our living conditions. Well enough of my complaining – if I talk about it any more I’m liable to get too heated up. We’ve been pretty lucky the past week and have not taken many casualties in spite of the usual incoming that has been pounding us for the past two months. It is probably because our fortifications are improving. I am still working frequently on my position to make it fairly invulnerable. We still have a lot to do. It is too bad that so little work was done on fortifications prior to January 19th. People never learn until it is too late – there has been a complete lack of foresight here in Vietnam. Khe Sanh and the other three hill positions were physically unprepared for a siege of any kind. I would lay the blame on a lack of supervision at the higher levels of command here in Vietnam. Well enough for that. It needed to be said. 14 March Dear Andrea,
My nerves are getting pretty thin and my sleep irregular. I have to stay up a certain amount of daylight hours to command the battery, write letters, read books and to do other things to unwind. To stay awake I have been drinking coffee and this only makes me nervous. My personal sanitation is pretty bad and is not going to get any better. I try to brush my teeth as often as possible but water is in short supply to adequately wash the tooth paste from the tooth brush. The irony is that we have crates of shaving cream, tooth paste and soap, but no water to use them. Would it be possible to send some James Bond books? I’d like to finish reading his series of books. The ones I’d like to have are: The Man With the Golden Arm; Dr. No; Casino Royale; Goldfinger; and Thunderball. I read an enormous amount of material up here to relax and keep my mind in proper perspective. It looks like I’m not going to be paid until April so I hope you are OK financially. I hope that you have been able to pay off the balance of the airplane fare to Hawaii. I should have almost $2,000 waiting for me and will send it to you when I can. I will close for now and hope to get this mail out. We have been unable to get mail out for ten days so you will probably get several letters at the same time. The pilots just aren’t landing and we haven’t had any medical evacuation requirements the past ten days. 14 March Dear Mother, I have a few spare moments so I thought I would sit down and write a letter. I imagine you are wondering about how things are up here on Hill 881. Well you can get a good description from the articles in TIME, Newsweek and Life. There have been articles about Khe Sanh in quite a few places. We haven’t seen most of these but have heard about them from replacements that have arrived recently. General Thompkins, our division commander, wrote us a letter that said the whole world was watching Hill 881 and that we are doing an admirable job. That letter made me feel good. The strain of the siege is considerable and is definitely showing its effects on me and everyone else.
I believe that President Johnson is using Khe Sanh as a rallying point for popular consent for the war. As long as we Marines can sit tight and hold off the NVA armies and have a lot of NVA killed, things will look good. When we eventually go back on the offensive here, there will be a lot of US Marine casualties. We cannot physically hold the entire Khe Sanh valley because of the nature of this terrain. I could write a book considering the tactical situation and the assumptions behind this battle. Well I guess I seem to always be near the big battles here. I feel very lucky for still being here in one piece. We are now receiving our 3rd wave of new officer replacements since I got here – very few of the older officers who came with me and after me are still with 3/26 or Charlie 1/13.
17 March Dear Andrea, Well here I sit now on the edge of my chair. We are being shelled pretty hard by large caliber artillery fire. The fire is coming from a long, long way off and we just sit tight in our bunkers. Fortunately we are in a much better position now than we were two months ago. It is still nerve racking to wonder where the rounds will land and whether they will get through our protection. This is getting a bit old and I hope it will soon end. It is funny how my moods can be changed up here. This morning I was in a very thoughtful mood and was just about to write you a long, personal letter when the NVA spoiled that mood. Well I will try to relax somehow and regain those feelings. 20 March Dear Andrea, Here it is the 20th of March and three days since I last wrote you. I’m afraid my letters can be no more frequent than this since I only have about ten envelopes left and everyone else on the hill has just about run out of theirs as well. I hope you can send a small writing pad and some air mail envelopes within the next month or my writing will come to an unpleasant halt. I just realized that tomorrow is the first day of spring – I am sure
glad that the winter is over here. It has been long and has been
a hard one both weather wise and battle wise. Oh, one other thing
I realized yesterday was that I forgot about my 23rd birthday on the 18th.
It Everything is about the same here except that it is getting pretty hot now, which makes our water scarcity a bigger problem. I go from moods of despondency to moods of great energy, from moments of feeling invincible to moments when my side and arm hurts giving me some silly premonition of another wound. I have a feeling that I will be here on the hill until June and that the battle won’t change during that time. I just wish I could get a hot shower sometime during these months and get some hot food and a beer. Khe Sanh and Hill 881 are not lucky enough to possess these items. Well I had better get off that line of thought before I get feeling sorry for myself. The helicopter resupply mission just came in and missed our position. We will have to take out a heavily armed patrol to recover the supplies, and hopefully your mail, that was dropped outside of our barbed-wire position. 24 March Dear Andrea, Here it is another Sunday. At least it has been quieter than most Sundays. Everything else is just about the same here. It has really been hot lately. I guess this place can’t make up its mind. It is always freezing or terribly hot and humid. Life has become quite a bore here with the same problems every day. At least your packages and letters have arrived and are making things a little better. I have received ten packages and letters from you and Mother. Apparently the mail sent by you between the 15th and 29th of February has been lost or something – it probably was destroyed on one of the planes that were destroyed supporting us. I hope nothing of importance was in those packages or letters. I have received the following items: 1 spaghetti dinner, 1 spaghetti mix, 1 pizza, 1ravioli, 3 cokes, cookies, crackers, 3 cans of soup, several packages of soup and miscellaneous other goodies (including about 8 small juice cans). Thank you very much. I received a cheese that was spoiled. Also, all of the apples were spoiled along with the onions. In all, about 80% of the goodies got here all right even with the long delays and the delivery via a parachute that almost missed our hilltop position. We just received some writing materials so you won’t have to send those. I received a package of goodies from a lady at my mother’s office – Miss Hustd. She sent some nice things and also sent items last Christmas. Could you tell my mother to thank her for the package? One last request. Could you send some more pre-sweetened kool aid – the water we are receiving has a terrible taste and the kool aid gets rid of the flavor. Well enough for this stuff. I mailed you my power of attorney and the other things you mailed me. I hope you will never have to use them. P.S. Save these articles I’m sending back to you. Are you saving all of the articles that are in magazines on the battle here at Khe Sanh? They will be good to look back on. 1 April Dear Andrea, Here it is the 1st of April. That makes things much brighter because I can remember pleasant Aprils at home and because I am one month closer to coming home. I feel much better now. Today is a big day for us Marines at Khe Sanh because someone is coming to help us. The 1st Marine Regiment and the 1st Air Cavalry are heading here and just shoved off today. They are supposed to drive out the NVA, who encircle our positions and open Route 9 for vehicular traffic to the main combat base. They may have a difficult time getting here. It seems that every day there is a big battle up here in the hills around the Khe Sanh Combat Base. We kill hundreds of them every day. It is hard to believe they can sustain such casualties. Almost the entire NVA army is up here within 40 miles of us and all of us Marines will probably be fighting numerically superior odds for the next three to four months. The enemy has also increased the number of artillery pieces and tanks. We could end up having battles of the magnitude of those major engagements during Word War II. I have heard a couple rumors that are flying around. One is that President Johnson is not going to run for office again. The 2nd is that there is a temporary halt in the bombing over North Vietnam. I hope they realize what they are doing. That will free the NVA to rush massive reinforcements and supplies into our area. It will be us Marines who will pay heavily for that gesture. I hope the bombing halt won’t last or I may be involved in heavy fighting the rest of my tour here. Well these are things I have no power over. It is the people at home who are going to ruin this war, not the soldiers and Marines. Well I will close for now because I am getting tired. Last night was bad because I had a couple of seriously wounded men to take care of, but at least they will live. 3 April Dear Andrea, I am enclosing a small check in this letter. As usual, my pay records are messed up and probably won’t become untangled until I get to the pay office to straighten them out. Somewhere I have over $1,000 sitting on the books. Well that will be straightened out eventually – I’ve been saying that since September. The weather is getting hotter up here and the bugs are getting as bad as the rats. We have killed over 200 rats, but they are very persistent. I poison them and use rat traps as well. Crushed glass, gunpowder and food make outstanding poison. We have been getting mail pretty regularly the past two weeks. I even got a letter sent from you on the 21st of March. Even better yet, our missing mail finally found its way up here. If it weren’t for your mail, I would probably go nuts. Sometimes we get the feeling up here that the world has forgotten us. Unfortunately many of our Marines get “Dear John” letters and that just adds to the worries they have here. I have one man who gave his loving wife a power of attorney. She ran up $5,000 in bills and ran off with another man and hasn’t written her husband in six months. My Marine may kill her and be arrested for manslaughter for doing that. He is very deliberate and won’t listen to what I tell him. He just sits, doesn’t talk to anyone, and doesn’t smile. Yet he works hard and will do anything we need to do in any kind of conditions. If he keeps this up, he will probably get himself killed. Well enough for that – I just wanted to blow off a little steam about our guys becoming shafted at a time they cannot do anything about it. Well I will close here. Thank you for the package of juices. Thank my mother for the paperback books and the kool-aid too. Also, thank your parents for their birthday card. 9 April, Dear Andrea, I’m sorry that I haven’t written the past couple of days. I’ve
really been busy the past four days. We are on the offensive now
after being told to stay inside the wire for the past three months.
I’m so worn out and frustrated that I could just sit and go numb.
The 1st Marine Regiment and the 1st Air Cavalry fought their way to Khe
Sanh. Immediately the Army was given command of the main combat base
by General Westmoreland. They literally threw the Marines out.
Their general went up to Colonel Lounds and told him that he was to move
out in 36 hours. To solve the crowding problems the Marines all went
on the offensive to drive I had made friends with an outstanding Marine jet pilot who was assigned to 3/26 to coordinate air strikes for us. He was going to leave today for R&R in Hawaii but was seriously wounded this morning. So were about 20 other Marines. The battle for Khe Sanh has been won but what becomes of us after we take all of the hills? The word we have received unofficially is that someday they are going to give us a relief and send us to Okinawa to rest and recuperate. Actually I don’t believe that anything good will happen to us. Well I’m getting pretty tired now and will close this letter for now. Thanks for all the goodies I received yesterday – books, juices and other. P.S. I received your envelopes and writing paper, but have given them to my troops since I have a lot already as a gift from the 3rd Marine Division. 11 April Dear Mother, I’m sorry I haven’t had very much time to write lately. It’s because things have been really busy. Thank you for all of things you have sent me – books, writing paper, and goodies. Also thank you for the gift bond an savings bond. Things look a lot brighter now than they have for a long time. We have won the battle for the Khe Sanh Combat Base but fighting is still going on everywhere in this area. As you probably have heard from Andrea, all of 3/26 is now up on this hill and we are again on the offensive. Our principal objective is to overrun Hill 881 North. The first phase has just jumped off and our intentions are obvious to the NVA. We dropped propaganda leaflets on the target by jet. This led to an immediate reaction in the form of a tirade from Hanoi Hanna, who told us that we would be slaughtered if we attacked that position. That radio program came on within hours of the leaflet drop – incredible! The NVA followed up their radio broadcast with a major mortar assault on our positions. This morning I awoke choking with gas. They lobbed CN gas at us (like riot gas, only worse – it attacks the eyes, face, nose or any exposed area and makes you vomit). We immediately retaliated with CS gas, a gas less toxic than CN, because we have to assault their position soon. I received Andrea’s film and have taken a few pictures between gas attacks – I cannot see very well through my gas mask. I really have a runny nose – the first since the fever I contracted back in November during the monsoons. I have received a new howitzer, new men and some new gear and everyone is feeling much better. The Army took over down at the main Khe Sanh combat base, leaving us Marines to do all of the fighting in the hills because we had no place to go. It was even the Army’s best unit that came here – the 1st Air Cavalry with all 1,200 helicopters compared to our 60 or 70. By the way, we now have three Marine choppers downed on top of our hill. You’d think with all that mobility the Army could really outflank the enemy. They haven’t. Each of those helicopters has six machine guns and one rocket launcher – an unheard of firepower for a tactical unit. So far the Army has fought beside two of our Marine battalions and they must really feel humiliated. In one battle the Marines seized their half of the objective by digging the NVA out with bayonets and grenades while the Army took twice as long to do their job. In the second instance, both units overran an NVA position but were temporarily driven back by a counterattack. The Marines held on long enough for the wounded and all pf the dead to be taken out. The Army just pulled out leaving ten dead and eight missing – they even permitted planes to napalm the hill with their men on it. We were aghast at that and could not understand at all why they did not try to recover their bodies immediately. That is the biggest morale killer in history to leave your dead and wounded behind. And this is their best unit! I think the Army had better pay a little more attention to discipline, honor and courage than to building and acquiring more helicopters, new weapons, etc. Their missing in action figures have been phenomenal the past six months – they have roughly twice as many troops as the Marine Corps in Vietnam and have had 95% of the MIAs. There is no excuse for that. We Marines humiliate the Army in the classrooms at Fort Sill, Fort Knox and Fort Benning. It is quite evident what is happening here. True, some Army officers strive for excellence but as a whole they are sloppy, lack the required discipline that the Marine Corps instills in its men and act too individualistic – resulting in catastrophic setbacks. I have heard rumors that we may be leaving the Khe Sanh area as soon as we take Hill 881 North. That sure would be good, if nothing better than just to see a new piece of terrain and a new part of the country. It would be great to be able to get a shower (my first in three months) or a change of clothes and maybe even a hot meal and a few drinks. Our Marine helicopter pilots have really taken care of us lately and brought us a coke and some ice cream yesterday. I couldn’t believe it. They also brought up a priest and a protestant chaplain. It is amazing there are only four Protestants in my whole unit of 40 men here on the hill. I was very much impressed with the Catholic priest and a bit disappointed with his Protestant counterpart. There have been three chaplains killed and one wounded at Khe Sanh during the siege. I was really hurt when I found that a real good friend of mine, a French priest, was killed in the fighting at Hue. I met him a number of times at Phu Bai when I was stationed in that area. E had lived with the Vietnamese for eighteen years since the beginning of the French-Indochina War. He sheltered some of my men when it was raining during the monsoons. I also saw him in Hue when I was coming back from R&R, the day before the battle started here. He flew into Khe Sanh with me on January 19th and attempted to help displaced Vietnamese and Laotians and returned to Hue when the fighting broke out there. He got caught in a battle in the streets of Hue and was killed by the NVA like the other residents of the city. I have heard that they are digging up thousands of bodies in mass graves just outside Hue. The priest was a quite young, athletic, and handsome man who spoke Vietnamese, English, German and French. What a terrible shame. I’m glad to hear that you are going to tour the Orient. I wish I could join you but I guess I’ll never ever really get to see it. I’m sure your boss will let you off an extra week after all you have done. I’m also glad to hear you’re picking up some hobbies like pistol shooting and dancing. There is no reason why you shouldn’t get out as much as you want and to take at least one big trip each year. 15 April Dear Andrea, Here it is the Day after Easter. You probably wouldn’t know how I spent yesterday – Easter? It was like I spent a lot of other Sundays – fighting. The new battalion commander, Lt. Colonel John Studt, called my artillery battalion commander and requested that I run the fire support for our attack on Hill 881 North. Colonel Studt and Major Caufield approached me last night and asked me to be their personal FO and to make sure that we were fully organized to conduct a night assault with advancing artillery fire. Lt. John Holderness, our current battalion fire support coordinator plotted the missions. I memorized over twenty different fire missions last night and didn’t sleep a minute. So again I am in the field with the infantry. As you probably heard on TV, we were successful. We left our hill at about 4:00AM, scaling down almost 1,500 feet to the valley below us. I commenced firing prepared missions as we advanced. That day I fired over 6,000 artillery rounds and really clobbered the NVA. That played a big role in dislodging an NVA battalion. When our infantry went into the assault up the slopes of hill after hill, they met a confused, wounded or dead enemy. We swept the NVA off a large area and totally devastated one of their battalions. I have never been so busy or tired in one day of my life. Our casualties were light with only six dead and thirty wounded but that loss upset me because one of my FOs was killed. We did have a 31st Marine wounded – me – by a piece of shrapnel. I showed Major Caufield the injury and told him that wound was my third, and a trip home. However, I negotiated a second R&R from him and asked him not to submit the wound report. The enemy results were 100 NVA dead and confirmed by body count, and several prisoners who were hauled out wounded from their bunkers. It has been estimated that our artillery also racked up another 100 kills because of the amount of blood and collapsed bunkers with bodies in them. We didn’t stay ay place very long and just burned or destroyed everything we came across. We purposely went out to destroy the enemy forces on Hill 881 North and to humiliate the enemy. We accomplished our mission. Petty soon we will be leaving Hill 881 South, my present position for good. As far as I know we are leaving the entire Khe Sanh valley within a month. We have won the battle here but apparently the Pentagon thinks this place is not strategic enough to stretch our upply lines this far out. So it looks like we will be going east to either Dong Ha or Quang Tri. I’m so tired of fighting. I wish I could do nothing but sit somewhere and vegetate for a month. I feel like I could sleep a couple of days if people would let me. 17 April Dear Andrea, Here it is another day and things have changed again. The current strategy is that we are leaving the hill today or tomorrow. What a mess trying to find all of our things in the debris up here. It would take weeks to get these things cleaned up so that we can use them. Other things have changed as well. The Marines aren’t going to leave Khe sanh after all. The 1st Marine Regiment is replacing my regiment – the 26th. Sometime soon helicopters will come up here, pick us up and take us back to Khe Sanh. From there my battery and 3/26 will be trucked to our new destination wherever that may be. Maybe I will be able to get a hot meal for the first time since the 19th of January, or even a shower, which I haven’t had since the 17th of January. 21 April Dear Andrea, After eight months in Vietnam I have been medically evacuated. Of all things it was because of a rat bite. They flew me off Hill 881 to Khe Sanh and from there to DaNang. I am going through a two week period of daily rabies vaccinations. You probably know more about these tings than I dop. They give you shots in your stomach area with a needle about an inch long. I was very much relieved after taking my first shot. The needle was shartp and my stomach burned for about ten minutes afterwards. The rat bite occurred in my bunker when I was sleeping. Somehow the rat (the size of a dog) climbed up on my rack (bed) and was pretty vicious. I awoke when he climbed on my chest. I got bit twice on the forehead and cheek just under my right eye before I could get him of me. I executed him with my 45. When the doctor at Khe Sanh saw me, he was amazed with a person really screwed up. In addition to the cuts from the rat bites there were many other problems. I’ll start from the top down. Number 1 – a massive infection on my lower lip caused by lack of sanitation the past three months. Number 2 – a piece of shrapnel (from a jet strike my last day on Hill 881) which lodged itself in the fat (Ha – I’ve probably lost twenty pounds since you last saw me) of my stomach. They cut it out yesterday. With the shots and the minor surgery my tummy is pretty sore. Number 3 – I weigh 178 pounds with boots and utilities on – my nude weight is probably around 1700 pounds. I plan on eating and drinking a lot over the next twelve days while I’m here in DaNang on “vacation.” When I came into the medical receiving station at Dong Ha (I forgot to tell you that I went from Khe Sanh to Dong Ha then to DaNang). I was overwhelmed by what I experienced. It still seems like a bad dream. One of the corpsmen had me sit down. My uniform was dirty (three months of grit), and stained with my blood and the blood of a dozen of my men during the siege. Within a few minutes several helicopters arrived with stretcher cases – Marines South Vietnamese soldiers and even NVA wounded. The receiving room was crowded with over thirty of us. Several doctors came in to determine which wounded needed immediate help and who could wait. There was blood everywhere. I was amazed at what I saw. Vietnamese, enemy or not, were helping Marines lying near them. Likewise Marines who were not incapacitated helped Vietnamese. It was incredible. It took over an hour for everyone to be treated. Before all of us were attended to a new wave of helicopters came in and filled the receiving ward. The same thing was repeated. Since I didn’t have any gushing bullet or shrapnel wounds I was last on the priority list. Eventually I got up and walked out in the nude and asked for a clean set of utilities. After asking three or four people, I got some new clothes and a new pair of jungle boots. One of the corpsmen put a tag on my shirt and put me on a helicopter to DaNang. The DaNang receiving station was very large and wasn’t overwhelmed with wound4ed. I negotiated a deal with a Navy doctor. I did not want to stay in the hospital. I agreed to come in once a day to receive my rabies shot. I secured a jeep ride to the Marine air base and requested the use of the night flyers facility as my quarters. Pilots who fly at night have a special air conditioned barracks that is quiet and dark to enable them to sleep during the day. It was perfect for my use. I went to the shower facility and was there for over an hour. I just stood under the shower and enjoyed the warm water. I had a great deal of difficulty washing my hair. It was long and dirt was at least ¼ inch deep on my scalp. I must have washed it 20 times and just couldn’t get rid of the grit. I found a Vietnamese barber. He was appalled with my scalp. He had a tool that he used to grind out the dirt. You should have seen the pile of hair and dirt from that 25 cent haircut. That was probably the hardest haircut that he had ever given. I went back into the shower facility and washed my hair another ten times at least. There was still grit in it. The Marine jet pilots have taken good care of me. I had a steak dinner last night and free drinks all night long. I have never had such a good meal in my life. They had a grill outside the Officer’s Club and cooked my steak to my own taste – medium rare, plus two baked potatoes and garlic bread. I became somewhat of a celebrity last night as word got around that I had been at Khe Sanh and on Hill 881 South since January. Most of these guys had flown missions there and were overwhelmed with the magnitude of the battles that were occurring below them. I just wish my lips would heal so it won’t hurt so much to eat. People give me the weirdest looks, especially the Vietnamese – they think I have some kind of disease. Well it seems to be curing itself pretty fast now. 1stLt. Crenshaw completed the series of rabies shots, was returned
to full duty and completed his thirteen month combat tour in Vietnam
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we
approached the airfield. I thought we had been shot down. We
landed with a thump and as the ramp was lowered the crew chief had us throw
our bags out the ramp. The flight crew rolled four or five pallets
of ammunition and supplies out of the back of the aircraft. The plane
took off immediately. I looked down the runway and could see a major
firefight underway. It looked like the NVA had directed antiaircraft
weapons against our helos parked at the end of the runway. Dozens
of automatic weapons were firing in both directions. That was just
the beginning. When I got off the runway I saw rows of wounded and
dead Marines lying on stretchers waiting medevac by helicopter. Colonel
Lounds, the CO of the 26th Marine Regiment at Khe Sanh had ordered India
Company to attack Hill 881 North after we lost a reconnaissance unit on
that hill. The battle had occurred the morning of the day that I
arrived. Captain Dabney led the attack. Just getting down the
mountain was a real task. Hill 881 North is bout 2 kilometers north
of Hill 881 South. As the company moved toward their objective, they
were fired upon by two 50 caliber machineguns on their flanks, enfilading
fire that killed a lot of people. Hill 881 North apparently had a
battalion of NVA on it. India took fire from over 500 defenders as
well. Tom Brindly was the first officer killed that day. Mike
Thomas was actually able to overrun the right flank of the NVA on the objective,
but he didn’t have enough Marines to prevent a counterattack and was also
killed falling back with at least twenty casualties (50% of his unit).
The company really got chewed up but gave the NVA a huge casualty list
as well. I was stunned to see ponchos covering both Tom and Mike.
They had been with me at Camp Evans and stayed with me in the junior officer’s
tent.
splash.
All of our pilots have been instructed about what they have to do.
We will radio them when a round is fired. It is suicide for two helicopters
to land consecutively in the same place because more rounds follow the
first. So we try to outguess the NVA and their FOs by changing landing
zones constantly. A chopper hovers over the zone for only about ten
seconds to drop a load that is slung below it before they have to leave.
When we have to evacuate wounded, the stretcher bearers sometimes get a
helicopter ride off the hill whether they want it or not. There is
no time for them to carry the wounded and dead on board and get off before
the helo has to take off. I’m sure our pilots are sweating blood
when they come up here. They can see the wreckage of two Marine helos
on the hill and have been told that they have only ten seconds to get their
job done. With the fog we have here this is a tall order. I
take my hat off to the Marine helicopter pilots and crews for doing an
incredibly risky thing to help maintain our position.
Here
I am in another quiet mood. Today has been a very tough day.
Earlier in the morning one of my three guns took a direct hit from a 152mm
artillery gun. The trail that supports the weapon when it is fired
is bent and broken, the gun sight is gone and the breach looks like it
melted. After that we came under attack again. I lost a man,
Cpl. Delbert L. Leasure, who was shot by a 50 caliber machinegun, firing
single shot fire, at about 3,000 yards. When I raced to see what
I could do, my men screamed for me to hit the deck. That gunner fired
two rounds at me – thank God for my men. The NVA then opened up with
a major barrage at both our hill and Khe Sanh. We took over a thousand 
