LZ LOON


The History and Stories of the Marines of Charlie and Delta Companies, First Battalion Fourth Marines, Third Marine Division, Who Defeated An Assault By An NVA Battalion During Operation Scotland II, 4 Miles Southeast of Khe Sanh on June 5 and 6, 1968


Nineteen sixty-eight was a pivotal year for the war in Vietnam, and for our country as well. The Tet Offensive and the siege at Khe Sanh exemplified the continuous and heavy combat that occurred during that year. As a result, substantially more servicemen died in 1968 than in any other year of the war - 16,589 died, including 5,048 Marines. At home, Americans watched not only the war unfold on television, but also the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and the riots in our major cities, including at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the Vietnam War was one of the main protest issues.

During these critical times in 1968, the men of Charlie and Delta Companies, First Battalion Fourth Marines, Third Marine Division, participated in one battle that has remained with many of them to this day. On June 5 and 6, 1968 – on the same days that Robert Kennedy was shot and died – Charlie and Delta Companies undertook the difficult mission of securing and holding Hill 672, a large hilltop called LZ Loon, located approximately four miles southeast of Khe Sanh. This hilltop – actually two hills with a saddle connecting them – was the target of North Vietnamese heavy artillery located within an imposing rock edifice known as Co Roc in Laos, near the South Vietnamese border. The NVA used the same guns to bombard the Khe Sanh Combat Base during the 77-day siege of that base during the TET Offensive in early 1968.

Charlie and Delta Companies had to hold LZ Loon because this large hilltop was to serve as one of three artillery bases, called fire support bases (FSB), for Operation Robin. This operation was part of Scotland II, a major undertaking of the Third Marine Division led by Major General Raymond G. Davis, its newly appointed commanding general. General Davis wanted Operation Robin to be his first forceful statement to the North Vietnamese that his division would pursue the NVA, with a sizeable Marine force and for an extended time. General Davis wanted to send his Marines where the enemy was located, in this case, near the Laotian border.

Operation Robin was a major change in strategy for the Marines, and it was the Marine Corps’ first attempt at a large-scale air-mobile offensive operation – a concept developed by the Army. Prior to the arrival of General Davis, nearly all of the eleven infantry battalions and numerous support units of the Third Marine Division were stationed at designated locations, the so-called “McNamara Line”, along the Demilitarized Zone, from Cua Viet in the east to Khe Sanh in the west. For a number of months before June 1968, the First Battalion Fourth Marines was stationed at Con Thien and the nearby location called C-2. From these positions, Marines from 1/4 would conduct limited patrols and company-sized operations to engage the NVA and then return to their fixed positions.

In the past, the 3rd Mar Div would wait for the NVA to reach areas near these defensive positions. But General Davis changed this approach when intelligence reports indicated a growing number of NVA was massed near the Laotian border south of Khe Sanh. The NVA were building a road for use as a massive staging and transport thoroughfare to infiltrate the southern Quang Tri Province, particularly Hue, the former French Provincial Capitol.

The mission of Operation Robin was straightforward – the 4th Marines were to interdict and destroy the road, and any NVA in the area. To accomplish this mission, first FSB Robin was established, then a second FSB was to be established on LZ Loon, and a third, LZ Torch, was to be located on a hilltop very near the Laotian border. Part of this Operation also included establishing a foothold on LZ Loon by inserting by helicopter the Second Battalion Fourth Marines. Then, 2/4 was to move further south toward the Laotian border and this entire battalion was to be replaced by two companies from 1/4 – Charlie and Delta Companies, who would defend LZ Loon while the second FSB was built. Had Charlie and Delta Companies received their orders to hold LZ Loon a few months earlier, they would have been better staffed to carry them out. But that was not the case on June 5, 1968, due to events in the interim. First Battalion, Fourth Marines (1/4) successfully weathered the earlier Tet Offensive and maintained reasonably high staffing levels, but that changed before leaving Con Thien and proceeding west on Rte. 9 to Camp Carroll and LZ Stud (later named Vandergrift Combat base) to commence Operation Robin. Earlier, on May 22nd, the entire command of Bravo Company were killed or wounded while on a mission near Con Thien. (Years later, the father of Lt. David Westphall of Bravo Company built a large memorial to his son; it is now the DAV Vietnam Veterans Memorial located in New Mexico.)

Faced with the fact that 1/4 would not receive replacements for those lost in Bravo Company, the new Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. McLean, was forced to make do with his remaining officers and staff. He moved nearly all of the key officers from Delta Company to command Bravo Company, and directed a lieutenant who had just been promoted to XO of Charlie Company to command Delta Company. In addition, and to make matters worse, other officers left the battalion by normal rotation, or because of injuries sustained on patrols and by the continued enemy shelling of Con Thien. These changes greatly affected Charlie Company as it had just received a new CO, then lost its XO to Delta and lost platoon leaders to injuries.

On June 5, 1968, when Charlie and Delta Companies and two squads of 81 mm mortars of H&S Company moved by helicopter to LZ Loon to replace the Second Battalion,Fourth Marines (2/4), both companies had reduced manning levels, new company commanders, and numerous platoon leaders unavailable. As if these challenges were not enough at the start of Operation Robin, Charlie and Delta Companies were headed to Hill 672, knowing that the NVA were shelling LZ Loon with heavy artillery from Co Roc. However, what these companies did not know when they boarded their helicopters late in the day on June 5, 1968, was that a battalion of NVA of the 88th Regiment was located nearby, an NVA force that greatly outnumbered the Marines of Charlie and Delta Companies. But for this substitution of Marine units, 2/4, itself a battalion, would have been up against an NVA battalion. As it turned out, two Marine companies with two squads of 81 mm mortars faced that challenge.

In the ensuing battle on June 5 and 6, 1968, 150 NVA were killed and presumably a greater number were wounded. Charlie and Delta Companies successfully repelled the NVA’s repeated attempts to overrun their positions, even though the NVA penetrated the Marines’ lines from time to time. The risk of NVA penetration of the perimeter line established by Charlie and Delta Companies was great. Hill 672 was simply too large for two companies to adequately defend. To form one perimeter, the distance between each Marine foxhole was at least twice what it should have been. To reduce this risk, on the night of June 5th, Charlie Company moved its lines closer to Delta Company, but even with this adjustment, the foxholes were still too far apart.

The NVA bombarded LZ Loon first with heavy artillery from Co Roc, followed with 82 mm mortars, then probes by ground troops, and finally with an early morning all-out assault. Charlie and Delta Companies were each faced with their own challenges, and, in the end, each company had to hold their own part of Hill 672 without assistance from the other. The NVA penetrated the Delta perimeter on the western hillside, and when it appeared that either side might succeed, Delta Company ordered artillery to be “walked up” its hillside. When that failed to halt the NVA, an artillery fire was ordered to land within meters of their position. Ironically, fewer Marines were exposed to being hit by their own artillery because of the greater than normal distance between the foxholes. Additional assistance was provided by air support circling LZ Loon in the form of a highly effective propeller driven airplane. The Marines called this aircraft “Puff-the-Magic-Dragon” – a Douglas AC-47 specially equipped with 40 mm cannon Gatling guns. The artillery and air support enabled the Delta Marines to repel parts of the NVA battalion that attacked that side of Hill 672. At the other end of the hill, Charlie Company and handS faced their own obstacles, as described below.

Despite the efforts of Charlie and Delta Companies to successfully hold Hill 672, a command decision was made to leave LZ Loon due to heavy NVA artillery and to establish a new FSB that was much closer to the Laotian border, called LZ Torch. Helicopters retrieved the Marines on LZ Loon under heavy enemy fire. During the extraction, an overloaded CH-46A helicopter carrying elements of handS Company 81MM Mortars and Communications was forced down by NVA small arms fire. The helo tumbled down a ravine, and exploded into flames, claiming the lives of many Marines on board. To orient any potential survivors of the crash toward friendly lines, Charlie Company was ordered to sing the Marine Corps Hymn at the top of their lungs. While the effectiveness of their efforts is not known, the singing did instill a renewed fighting spirit in these weary Marines, and enabled them to complete their extraction from Loon with as few losses as possible. Those who witnessed the crash, however, were not aware that survivors of the downed helo managed to exit the burning craft. Severely wounded, these survivors left the area and used flare signals to hail another helo to pick them up, and take them to safety.

But, one final task remained – a volunteer force from Charlie Company returned to LZ Loon eleven days later to remove the bodies of their dead Marines and to search for those who were on the downed helicopter. A number of Charlie Company’s men killed in the early morning hours of June 6th remained on the LZ. The company could not reach them from their difficult location on the hilltop due to the overwhelming presence of the enemy entrenched in the fighting holes these Marines had occupied the day before. (Years later, in 1993, a MIA team returned to the helo crash site to retrieve the remains of the four Marines officially listed as KIA/NBR (no body recovered).

The Marines from 1/4 suffered significant losses to defend and hold LZ Loon - 42 Marines were killed and over 100 were wounded, well over half of the Marines on Hill 672. In total, counting the 150 NVA deaths, nearly 200 men were killed trying to hold or take this hilltop, with many hundreds wounded.

The Marines who survived LZ Loon without injury received orders to continue their efforts to make Operation Robin and then Operation Robin South a success, but they did so with memory of LZ Loon. For the Marines who were wounded or who served on LZ Loon, that memory has remained with many of them, even to this day. This is their story of LZ Loon.