Memories of Khe Sanh -Local veteran
recounts months long siege to filmmaker
The State Journal-Register
 Vietnam
veteran Tom Quigley sits down for an interview with documentary
filmmaker Ken Rodgers about Quigley’s service during the siege of
Khe Sanh. Rodgers’ film, “Bravo!,” is about the men of Bravo
Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines during the 1968 siege.
His mom wanted him safe in the air
division. Tom Quigley wanted to be an infantryman. The Springfield
native got his way.
He was 17 when he joined the Marines,
18 when he landed in Vietnam. Six months after arriving in country,
Quigley was in hell at Khe Sanh with more than 5,000 others who
survived more than two months of siege by the North Vietnamese Army.
“I remember it like it was last
night,” Quigley said Wednesday during an interview with a
documentary filmmaker from Idaho who is traveling the country
gathering recollections on the infamous battle.
Troop estimates vary, but the
Americans were outnumbered by as many as five to one. Relief troops
eventually reached the base, ending the siege. The United States
claimed to have killed as many as 15,000 enemy troops, but the
Americans abandoned Khe Sanh months later, prompting the North
Vietnamese to declare victory.
“In fact, neither side won a
resounding victory,” writes Peter Brush in an article published
three years ago for Vietnam magazine and reprinted online by
historynet.com.
1,000 shells a day
The siege began hours after Quigley and some friends made their way
through two rare cases of cold beer. Within minutes, small arms fire
had grown into artillery, mortars and rockets.
“It was like 10 Fourth of Julys
rolled into one,” Quigley told filmmaker Ken Rodgers.
The barrage was constant, as many as
1,000 shells a day. The low point came one month into the siege when
a Marine patrol that ventured outside the post was ambushed. Forty
men went out, a half-dozen returned, Quigley recalled.
Slightly more than a month later, on
March 30, 1968, the Marines tried again. By this time, the siege was
showing signs of weakness as reinforcements neared the outpost.
Bodies of Marines from the doomed patrol still lay in the bush.
“This was our time to retrieve our
fallen brothers and kick a little ass — everyone was biting at the
bit to go out and let Charlie know what the U.S. Marine Corps was
all about,” recalled Quigley, who was radio man in a lead platoon.
Reality hit when a commander told
Quigley to fix bayonets.
“I said ‘Do what?’” Quigley recalled.
“In 10 months in Vietnam, I had never been given an order like this.
My heart just sank in my throat, it really did.”
As a radioman, it was Quigley’s job
to pass the order along to another unit, so he did.
“Do what?” a radio operator on the
other end replied.
Bayonets fixed, the Marines advanced.
Once they started, there was no walking, Quigley recalled of the
journey between bomb craters and trenches where enemy soldiers were
supposed to be dead.
“Sometimes they looked like they were
dead, but you’d better make sure,” Quigley said. “A little extra pop
never hurt anybody.”
Wounded, sent home
Quigley’s radio antennae stood out, as did the lieutenant he needed
to stay with. A mortar attack ended the lieutenant’s life and
Quigley’s Vietnam tour. With shrapnel in his torso, Quigley made his
way to a bomb crater where a doctor handed him a pack of Pall Malls
while helping more seriously hurt men. And so Quigley passed out
cigarettes in the crater to those whose wounds could wait.
“I think I was 19 at the time, trying
to keep them calm,” he said.
After undergoing surgery, Quigley was
discharged in June 1969, barely more than a year after the battle.
He was 20 when he got home.
“”I had people say, ‘What the hell
did you prove?’” he recalled.
More than four decades later,
Quigley, an automotive wholesaler, says he thinks about Marines who
didn’t come back. T-Bone, Skipper and other survivors will be
friends for life, and he telephones them every year on March 30. And
today, he says, troops from Iraq and Afghanistan deserve every
homecoming celebration they get.
“We should always be behind our
troops, no matter what,” Quigley said. “They’re the new heroes.”
About the filmmaker
Kenneth Rodgers, a Khe Sanh veteran who lives in Idaho, had never
made a movie before his wife, Betty, suggested a documentary on the
siege from the perspective of men from Bravo Company of the 1st
Battalion, 26th Marines, one of the first units to venture outside
the post as the siege wound down. The filmmaking is being partially
funded with a grant from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, a
nonprofit organization that runs a Marine Corps museum in Virginia,
said Rodgers, a writer. Tom Quigley was the 13th veteran
interviewed, said Rodgers, who expects to produce a 90-minute film.
Khe Sanh, a brief history
Months in the buildup, the siege at Khe Sanh grew hot on Jan. 21,
1968, when the North Vietnamese Army began shelling the American
outpost that lay near supply lines between North and South Vietnam.
Ten days later, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched the Tet
Offensive across South Vietnam. Both the siege and the offensive
played out on front pages and television newscasts in America,
deepening opposition to a war that was already growing unpopular.
Bruce Rushton can be reached at
788-1542.
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talking to, he was from Long Island — they don’t hold anything back.
One of the first things out of his mouth was, ‘How much is it going
to cost me to get my dog tag back?’ ”