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Only twelve enemy bodies were found on the base—one of them stark naked, snared in the perimeter wire. U.S. casualties? The first thing Schulte noticed was that "there were very few people who could walk." All twelve officers had been killed or wounded, and an enlisted man with the equivalent rank of buck sergeant had assumed command. Only at daybreak did the full extent of the massacre become clear. The official count, which seemed on the low side to some officials, was 33 dead and 76 wounded of 200 Americans. Of the 28 South Vietnamese troops in the base —which was in the process of being Vietnamized—only one was wounded. The American survivors pointed out that the South Vietnamese positions were not hit, and that the ARVN troops had made no attempt to help the embattled G.I.s. For its part, the South Vietnamese high command promptly launched a secret investigation to make sure that none of its men had betrayed the base.
In any case, Americal Division officers conceded that the base was unprepared. "Somebody out there screwed up," one U.S. sergeant concluded. "The guards were asleep and the gunners never got their guns down into final defensive positions." SP/4 Schulte found a broader moral in Mary Ann: "A lot of us spend 300 or 360 days a year in the jungle. We sleep in the rain, we eat out of cans, we stay wet ,ten or twelve days straight, until our bodies look like wrinkled prunes. The people back in the States think this war is over. It isn't."