I was the radio man for a reinforced rifle squad, which in those times consisted of about 20 Marines — 12 riflemen, a machine gun team, a corpsman (or medic), an artillery forward observer, his radioman and a patrol leader. The patrol was to last several days, and we would be resupplied with rations by helicopter.

Starting from our company’s position on the Khe Sanh perimeter, we climbed down to the Quang Tri River. After fording the fast-moving, chest-high water, we built fires, dried our clothing and were on our way. Several large tiger tracks dotted the wet sand at the river’s edge.

The terrain was extremely difficult, and we were lost more often than not. Since we’d been in these hills for months, the situation was in fact the normal course of events. What was not normal occurred during the last days of King Kong.

I was breaking brush for the patrol. Machete in hand, I led the way up a jungled hillside from the gorge bottom below. We were looking for someplace, any place, where we could make radio contact and could be resupplied. Suddenly, at the top of the hill, I broke into a large, hilltop open space that had been a position used by South Vietnamese Army units. It was well above a portion of Route 9, at a sharp bend in the Quang Tri River. Below, we could see several old colonial buildings, a bridge and the surrounding forest. Thankful for our good fortune, the Marines of King Kong set up defensive positions at the opening’s edges, made radio contact and arranged for resupply and possible extraction.

Just then, someone noticed a large number of uniformed men below, bursting from what seemed to be everywhere, moving swiftly, headed east and away from us on Route 9. We thought they were North Vietnamese, and there were lots of them. Marine UH-1 helicopters arrived, dropped some rations and flew down to check the troops below. They confirmed our suspicions. King Kong had come across a small part of the huge enemy buildup that would explode into the bloody “hill fights” of 1967, which in turn culminated in the siege of Khe Sanh that fall.

We were in a tight spot. If the North Vietnamese decided to assault our position, the approaches they would probably take would be beyond the reach of our supporting artillery.

However, the reach of the artillery could bracket the North Vietnamese as they moved away, and the forward observer got right to work calling in 105-milimeter artillery fire from Khe Sanh. Several dozen 105 rounds crashed into the areas where the rapidly disappearing North Vietnamese had been.