20,000 Driving On Base

Hope to Relieve Besieged Marines

April 4, 1968

By Edwin Q. White

SAIGON (AP) - U.S. and South Vietnamese troops have reached within three miles of Khe Sanh in a push to shatter the enemy siege of the fortress and open an overland supply route to the 6,000 surrounded U.S. Marines, military spokesmen said Thursday.

So far the Allied column has run into only one significant contact since jumping off Monday from Ca Lu, an outpost base 12 miles east of Khe Sanh, the spokesmen said.

MAJOR BRUSH

The first major brush of the operation was reported on Wednesday when units of the helicopter-borne U.S. First Airmobile Cavalry Division spotted a North Vietnamese unit estimated at 200 men two miles from Khe Sanh. U.S. helicopter gunships took the North Vietnamese under fire and killed 20 of them, the U.S. Command reported.

The command said less than 160 rounds of enemy artillery and mortar hit the Khe Sanh area Wednesday.

Cavalry Links Up
With Khe Sanh

April 8, 1968

By Thomas Cheatham

SAIGON (UPI) - Troops of the U.S. First Cavalry Division, sounding "charge" on a captured North Vietnamese bugle, walked the last two miles into Khe Sanh fortress Sunday and joined Marine defenders who had weathered the heaviest siege of the war.

"Hey, we're here!" Pfc. Juan Ferdondi of Bay Amon, Puerto Rico, shouted to Lance Cpl. James Hellebuick of Mount Clements, Mich., as the two men clasped hands over the Khe Sanh barbed wire.

"We're really glad to see you guys," Hellebuick replied for his 6,000 Marine buddies. Lt. Joe Abodeely, 24, of Tucson, Ariz., reached through the wire, grabbed Hellebuick's hand and said: "We're glad to be here."

Abodeely blew a triumphant blast on the tarnished bugle he had found in a pile of abandoned North Vietnamese weapons along Highway 9 as the air cavalrymen walked up the twisting narrow road and ended operation for Khe Sanh that began last Monday.

Although the linkup was the main objective of Pegasus, more fighting in the hills around Khe Sanh was reported between sweeping allied forces and diehard North Vietnamese dug into the high ground.

UPI correspondent Perry Young, reporting late Sunday night from Khe Sanh, said troops of the 26th U.S. Marines and the 37th South Vietnamese ranger battalion had found about 100 North Vietnamese bodies killed by allied air and artillery south and east of Khe Sanh.

Young said 160 more North Vietnamese were killed during the 24-hour period ending at 6 p.m. Sunday as allied troops swept through the elephant grass and shell-scarred tea plantations surrounding Khe Sanh. In one fight, a Marine reconnaissance battalion battled a force of 100 to 200 Communists, and reported killing 68 without losing a man.

B52 Stratofortresses struck two targets in the Khe Sanh area late Saturday and Sunday, blasting troop concentrations, bunkers and storage areas four and six miles southwest of the fortress.

Other B52 flights struck just southeast of Khe Sanh in eight saturation missions against the A Shau Valley infiltration funnel from Laos into South Vietnam's northern provinces.

Smaller planes hitting North Vietnam itself Saturday with 113 missions bombed targets in the area of Vinh on the coast 140 miles north of the demilitarized zone. This was the second successive day that the U.S. command reported no strikes north of the 19th parallel. The Pentagon last Tuesday named the 20th parallel as the limit line for the new curtailed bombing policy.

Headquarters said most of the raids Saturday concentrated near the Mu Gia Pass where the Ho Chi Minh Trail enters Laos and near Dong Hoi-a staging area for troops and supplies headed south.

The U.S. Command said American air cavalrymen came under North Vietnamese mortar fire before dawn Tuesday 12 miles northwest of Hue. Air strikes silenced the mortars. At first light of day, the cavalrymen swept the area and found 12 enemy bodies. There were no American casualties.