World: HOW THE BATTLE FOR KHE SANH WAS WON

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That same day the monsoon began to lift from Khe Sanh, and the better weather brought the fighter-bombers to join with the B-52s in earth-jarring raids. The heavy U.S. bombing only heightened the desire of the remaining North Vietnamese troops to get out. The testimony of captured NVA regulars indicates that the bombing so disrupted the Communist supply lines that Giap's men were nearly starving.

The prisoners said that they had been subsisting for weeks on less than half a pound of rice a day; for the last three days before their capture, they had had no food whatsoever. Relieved to be free of the threat of instant death, the prisoners told of one regiment that had lost 75% of its 2,000 men to U.S. bombs and artillery.

The evidence on the battlefield was even more persuasive testimony of the extent of the U.S. victory. The North Vietnamese are normally an extremely frugal foe that never leaves even a rifle bullet behind. In their haste to get away from Khe Sanh, they left piles of valuable matériel. In only a cursory search of the area, U.S. troopers counted 182 rockets and mortars, 260,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition, 13,000 rounds of larger-caliber ammunition and 8,700 hand grenades and mines. Several hundred North Vietnamese even left behind their AK-47 rifles, violating the most basic principle of war—that an infantryman never loses his weapon even in retreat. The idea that the North Vietnamese pulled out as a voluntary gesture of de-escalation is thus contradicted by all the facts. The biggest fact is that at Khe Sanh they were badly whipped by U.S. airpower.

*Among them: Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who, in a letter to the Washington Post on March 22, asked for a pullout: "Khe Sanh has lost whatever military significance it may have had. It is highly vulnerable. Airpower will not save it. Let us not sacrifice our brave men to the folly of generals and the obstinacy of Presidents."