The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh

Khe Sanh is a familiar name to veterans, historians, and the American public. Best known for the epic siege endured by the 26th Marine Regiment for the first three months of 1968, almost a year earlier it was also the site for what one Marine commander described as "the bloodiest fighting of the war." Collectively these battles are called the Hill Fights. Together they are the First Battle of Khe Sanh.

Believing that the Vietnam War would be won or lost in the densely populated lowlands, U.S. Marine commanders of III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF) had largely ignored the remote, mountainous, western borderlands in their area of operations. General Westmoreland and the MACV brass believed otherwise and ordered the Marines to occupy the remote combat base and search out and destroy enemy forces in the area. What resulted was a meatgrinder as III MAF first sent one infantry company and then another, followed by one battalion and then another. Ultimately, the Hill Fights lasted three months before the enemy melted away, back across the border into Laos. The fierce combat of the First Battle of Khe Sanh should have served as a warning of what was to come if and when the NVA chose to stand and fight again.

Through the recollections of dozens of battle participants and hundreds of contemporary documents, author Murphy has written a vivid, exciting, and highly readable account of the brutal, no-holds-barred fighting that raged around the Khe Sanh combat base in the spring of 1967.