-
derivative filename/jpeg
-
363-06731 to 363-06739.pdf
-
Digital Object Identifier
-
363-06731 to 363-06739
-
Title
-
First article about Khe Sanh
-
Description
-
Original title: "khe sahn", Keever's title: "Khe Sanh Marines Try to Cheat Death; Some Fail", Part one of a five part series about the mood, preparedness, strategy and significance of Khe Sahn, for the Christian Science Monitor
-
AI Usage Disclosure
-
Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
-
Transcript
-
--------------------
- Page 1
--------------------
ZCZC SAG
YY LJP
KHESANH 1 (normass/deepe)
(This is the first of a series on the mood, preparedness,
strategy and significance of Khe Sanh, often termed an American
Dien Bien Phu, reminescent of the pivotal French defeat
which began 14 fourteen years ago this week on March 13)..
KHE SANH, VIETNAL, MARCH 13, Khe Sanh is sis dirty
A Communist mortar round
hands grabbing into a C-ration box.
shamn thumps into the center of the box, between the outstretched
fingers. Six Marines lay dead, like tattered ragdolls.
Khe Sanh is the Catholic chaplain who rode over hill
and dale of the combat base on his fire-engine red Honda to joke with
the living and pray with the dying. But, watching the helicopter
amnaman.inxx he was
evacuation of oritically wounded,
knifed along the spine by Communist mortar fragments, which paralyzed
him from the waist down. His sole request before being litter-borne
to the helicopters for the corpsman to retrieve the sacred
wafers used for mass,
which he carried in a cloth ammunition case
attached to his web belt.
more reuter
--------------------
- Page 2
--------------------
zozo sag
yy 1jp
khe sanh 2 (normass/deepe)
Khe Sanh is an over-weight corporal from Seattle, nicknamed
Porky, who strolls around the tattered remains of his tent cooking
donoughts and coffee for his supply unit. An Air Force C-130 rolls
overhead, like giant metallic butterflies, disorging his "bunk
its "bundles for Khe Sanh." One parachute fails to open; Porky
is soos scissored in half by the pallet of supplies.
(Pericy
"He had only 2 24 more days
("Porky was only 21," his buddy says.
left in Khe Sanh and then he was going to meet his wife in Honolulu").
Porky's buddy, nicknamed Cooky, also failed to evade the blizzard
of airborne cargo: he was critically crushed. ("We called him
Cooky, because he was a kook," his friend explained.
got out of Marines, he wanted to be a mercenary,
never get to do that now now.").
"After he
I guess he'll
more reuter
--------------------
- Page 3
--------------------
2020 sag
yy 1jp
khe sanh 3 (normass/deepe)
Khe Sanh is a Negro staff sergeant, the top Air Force
non-commissioned officer here, who swandives behind a wall of sandbags,
but his hand wrist is bloodied and broken by Communist mortar fragments.
and while
He walks fifty feet to the medical evacuation bunker,
running towards the helicopter for futh further treatment, is wounded
a second time--twice in two hours.
"Everyone has a Hollywood view of death in Khe Sanh,"
an Air Force officer says dryly. "But actually its quick and simple
here. A round comes in and eight Americans are killed or wounded."
==more reuter
--------------------
- Page 4
--------------------
zczc sag
yy 1jp
4
khe sanh (normass/deepe)
Khe Sanh is the close calls, the split second margin of error between
life and death. It's the Sergeant with pellet-like fragment holes in his brief-case
and ex his right ear-lobe standing on the helicopter pad. It is the Marine
with a four inch scar in the back
Corporal reading a sex magazine on a bunker step
of his skull. He was hospitalized thirteen days with his wound
and then returned
to Khe Sanh. It is the supply Major who receives a Communist mortar fragment the
size of a T-Bone steak on the top of his helmet. He is uninjured and laughs about it.
Almost everyone in Khe Sanh has cheats cheated death two or the
en incominb incoming rounds, seeing his
times, escaping the incojin
buddies killed by invisible Communist fiery visitors.
three
more reuter
--------------------
- Page 5
--------------------
2020 98
ᎩᎩ ljp
khe sanh 5 (normass/deepe)
Khe Sanh is lovely Playboy pinups, but here,
the zippered,
.
B. B. does not mean Brigitte Bardot--it means body bags,
plasticized shroud of the dead.
Khe Sanh does not mean either security or happiness, but
yet Charles Schulz's Snoopy has been handpainted, begoggled with
neckerchief flying,
Recoilless Rifle
on an ammunition crate,
morter fragments.
==more reuter
since riddled with
--------------------
- Page 6
--------------------
zC2c sag
vy 1jp
khe sanh 6 (normass/deepe)
Lare
And then there the love letters of The Benth. to Khe Sanh
"Bob, My Love," the staff sergeant recalled.
"Those are the letters
I'm wary of. My wife writes three pages of mush, then tells me she's
bought a new Pontiac, and then three more pages of mush to build me
back up.
I can do without letters with like that."
"Dear Dad," the Air Force officer recounted, as Communist
artillery and mortars bracketed his airstrip bunker throughout the day.
but I wrecked the Mustang. What a letter.
"I'm fine,
she's fine,
that's the main thing. What's a Mustang,
at least
But,
after all."
more reuter
--------------------
- Page 7
--------------------
zC2C sag
yy 1jp
khe sanh 7 (normass/deepe)
Khe Sanh is helmets, boots and flak jackets,
the armor of war, but as appendages to the human body.
worn not as
The Marines sleep
in their flak jackets and boots, and wear them throughout the day.
One ranking officer said he had taken his boots off for only four hours
in the past six weeks. One pfo. takes his f once a month as the
price of being constantly prepared for any event.
more reuter
--------------------
- Page 8
--------------------
SCC sag
yy 1jp
khe sanh 8 (normass/deepe)
Helmets, rifles, shotguns or pistols are close at hand
as they sleep in their damp bunkers and trenches.
Often, on their flak jackets and helmets,
the Marines
scribble or paint their inner thoughts, personalities or philosophies.
z "Linda," "Alabama No. 1; Birmingham The
"I love Mom and Dad,"
Magic City," are mixed in with choice bits of profanity.
"God is Dad Dead," one witos has penned on his
helmet, but the next has the counter:
about yours, Charlie."
"My God is Alive.
Sorry
one has
"God, send more flowers and less Marines,"
soribbled under the armhole of his jacket, a thought he said he copied
From
an advertising sign in the "land of the big FPX."
"40,000 NVA (North Vietnamese Army) can't be
wrong," another asserts.
"Khe Sanh-where the action is," reads another.
"Chicken Little was right," a 21-year-old lance corporal
has penned upon his back. ("I copied it from that fairytale about the
sky is falling;* he says).
"Life divided by time equals death,"
another
youngster has painted in black letters across the full bred breadth of
the back of his jacket. ("Actually, it should be turned about-time divid
aawod 4+ and T conied it from
--------------------
- Page 9
--------------------
zC2c sag
yy ljp
khe sanh 9 (normass/deepe)
LAST
Bach jacket also carries the individual's hame, rin
serial number and blood type.
In
Even this four-square mile combat base, currently symbolic
of a well-publicized deathtrap, has been ironically named.
English, Khe Sanh means the "The Birth-Giving Gap between Mountains."
I'm nows
(Hank: sorriest eye unable to get this to you sooner.
planning to do a total of five part series, but might
out it down to four. Next pieces will be more words and substances
and less morbidity. Regards Bev).
==end reuter
-
Date
-
1968, Mar. 13
-
Subject
-
Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Khe Sanh, 2nd Battle of, Vietnam, 1968; Siege warfare; United States. Marine Corps; Mặt trận dân tộc giải phóng miền nam Việt Nam; Vietnam (Democratic Republic). Quân đội
-
Location
-
Khe Sanh, South Vietnam
-
Coordinates
-
16.6193; 106.7323
-
Size
-
20 x 26 cm
-
Container
-
B9, F28
-
Format
-
dispatches
-
Collection Number
-
MS 363
-
Collection Title
-
Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
-
Creator
-
Keever, Beverly Deepe
-
Collector
-
Keever, Beverly Deepe
-
Copyright Information
-
These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
-
Publisher
-
Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
-
Language
-
English
