Fifty Years Ago Today—January 21, 1968
I jerked awake as one of the Marines in my fire team yanked at my leg and screamed, “Incoming.”
Explosions roared and the earth shook. Dust filled the air along with the scent of fright.
Outside in the black of early morning, Marines screamed, rockets and artillery rounds boomed, our ammo dump went up like ten thousand 4th of Julys.
Men sprinted hear and there.
Khe Sanh Combat Base
My head spun and a notion of what waited out in the dark infected my mind. Along with a lot of other Marines, I fell down in the bottom of the trench and buried my face in the mud.
Something hit my back and burned through my flak jacket. I yelled, “I’m hit, I’m hit.”
The Marine whose skull I split open the day before crawled over and began to laugh.
I thought, “He’s getting even.”
His hand swept across my back as he leaned next to my right ear and whispered, “Clods, Rodgers. Just clods.”
The CS gas that was stored in the exploding ammo dump began sneaking down the trench lines.
I found my gas mask, pulled it over my head and face, and crawled inside the nearest machine gun bunker. The gunner knelt behind his M-60 as we stared out at the edge of our lines. We all knew what would come, an assault led by sappers breaching our concertina wire and then hard core warriors of the NVA following through the holes blasted in our perimeter.
Everyone looked like weird beetles. It was the gas masks.
The platoon right guide sat against the north wall. A nasty gash on his right shin dripped blood. A corpsman came and patched him up after telling him, “Aw, hell, it’s nothing. You’ll get a Purple Heart.”
I don’t know how long we waited for the attack to come. But as the light of day glowed, it seemed we weren’t to be overrun.
Outside, the ammo dump continued to cook off like the worst artillery attack in the world.
Sometime later, a runner came down from the platoon command post and told me the lieutenant wanted to see me. I followed the messenger out the bunker’s back hatch and down the trench.
The lieutenant told me that the unit to our left could not be contacted and he wanted me to go down and see if I could assay the situation.
I didn’t want to go down that trench to see what was happening, but I did. I passed the men of 1st and 2nd squads then came to a bend in the trench, closer to the ammo dump, which by that time had calmed down.
I wondered if there were NVA soldiers around that crook in the trench and that’s why no one could contact the Marines who manned that area.
Debris at Khe Sanh. Photo Courtesy of David Douglas Duncan.
I crept, my M-16 ready if I needed it.
A Marine lay in the trench. He looked like he was dead. All around him spent ordnance that had come from the ammo dump littered the red mud.
I duck-walked up and leaned close. His eyes opened and he blinked. I knew this man. We had arrived at Bravo Company about the same time. I don’t remember his name.
He had a jagged hole ripped in his right trouser leg and the flesh looked like raw hamburger.
He said, “One of those 155 rounds in the dump went up and came down on my leg.” He laughed.
I said, “Need some morphine?”
He shook his head, “I’ve had plenty.”
Ken Rodger at Khe Sanh. Photo courtesy of the late Dan Horton.
The next Marine I found had been hit between the legs by Willie Peter (white phosphorus). I don’t remember the conversation between us but remember wondering if he’d lose his family jewels.
On down the trench, I found men in similar situations—wounded. And if not wounded, in a state of shock that reminded me of stories from World War I.
But they weren’t wiped out.
I reported back to the lieutenant and then marched back to my bunker.
It was day one.
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