A 2/1

One of the battle-scarred USMC units in the late spring 1968 fighting at Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, was the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. A 2/1 veteran from that period is Foxtrot Company corpsman Michael Pipkin. You’ll come across Michael on various online memorial sites as he pays tribute to fallen comrades. It was Michael who reminded me of the role of Foxtrot 2/1 in one of the many overlooked battles in the post-siege months at Khe Sanh–the May 19, 1968, ambush and firefight that played out several hundred yards southwest of Khe Sanh Combat Base. The fighting raged near the scene of one of the most searing incidents of the siege, the February 25, 1968, ambush of a Bravo 1/26 patrol, which I wrote about in detail in Last Stand at Khe Sanh. A map on page 276 of Last Stand notes the contribution of the Marines of Golf 2/1 and Echo 2/3 during the May 19 engagement. But I inadvertently overlooked the central role of the men of Foxtrot 2/1 and Bravo 3rd Tanks. Foxtrot lost 18 men KIA and 36 wounded that day, Michael notes, and Bravo 3rd Tanks suffered casualties in all four tanks. Among the Foxtrot casualties were a pair of 20-year-old Marines from New Jersey: PFC Joseph Francis Burnham, KIA, and PFC Arthur Mortimer Rowe, who died of his wounds on June 1.

Foxtrot got hit again on June 6, this time along Route 9, toward Ca Lu, which would become the new base for Marines in the area after Khe Sanh Combat Base was abandoned in early July. General William Westmoreland pronounced the siege of Khe Sanh broken in April 1968, and the spotlight turned elsewhere in Vietnam. However, young Americans continued to fight and die around Khe Sanh until July.

My thanks to Michael Pipkin, and so many others, for reminding us of the sons and brothers who gave their lives at Khe Sanh after the world moved on.