Combat· Vietnam War
Khe Sanh Siege 1968
The 1968 siege of Khe Sanh was the epic defense of the isolated Marine combat base near the Laotian border, where a reinforced regiment of Marines, surrounded and cut off by road, held out against North Vietnamese divisions through weeks of bombardment and assault.
The enemy ringed the base and its outlying hills, pounding it with artillery, rockets, and mortars while massing for an attack many feared would become another Dien Bien Phu. The Marines dug in and endured, holding the perimeter and the surrounding hilltop outposts under relentless fire, sustained by an immense aerial resupply effort and supported by one of the heaviest concentrations of air power in the history of warfare, which battered the besieging forces. The expected overrunning assault never fully came, and the enemy eventually withdrew. The defense of Khe Sanh became one of the most famous and symbolically charged episodes of the entire war.
Record no. 681