Return to Khe Sanh

The place is serene now. It's a coffee plantation, as it has been since French colonial times.

The punishing 77-day Siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968 – along with the countrywide Tet Offensive – had helped turn America against the war and bring about Lyndon Johnson's decision not to seek reelection.

Thirty years later, the runway has fallen into disrepair – a gash of red clay lined with tufts of elephant grass, stretching across the high open plateau toward hazy mountains and the nearer hills where Koontz and Esslinger fought, where Richard died, and Zack and Shelton and many others.

Scraps of sandbags and rusty barbed wire lie about, but there's little sign of the bunkers where men once crouched under fearsome artillery barrages. In the afternoon stillness, it's hard to imagine the explosions, the screams, the chatter of automatic weapons.

Rob heads down the runway.

Robert Sutter walks the runway at Khe Sanh. (By Frank Johnston – The Washington Post)

[Later] Gen. Mundy and his son, Maj. Sam Mundy, walked me out to the area where Richard's company was positioned. This is as close as I will get to where Richard was killed.

"This would have been where Mike 3/26 was," Mundy says. They're on a trail beside a ragged tree line half a mile from the airstrip.

Rob gazes around the area where his brother's unit was encamped at the time of his death – the summer before the great siege, a summer so quiet that Mike Company was still living above ground in tents.

Mundy tells Rob about John Manzi, a Mike Company lieutenant who used to get big food parcels from home and host an Officers' Mess Night. "His dad owned an Italian restaurant in New York, so we'd come walking out here to [company commander] Andy DeBona's tent for a spaghetti dinner."

"Manzi," Rob says quietly – drawing on his years of research into Richard's life – "got killed September 7, 1967."

The general and his son strike off in a different direction, and Rob continues walking slowly down the trail with another man, Col. Horace "Pony" Baker.

"How are you doing?" Pony asks.

"Okay," Rob replies.

Birds are chirping in the trees by the trail.

"I have something I'd like to give you," Pony says. One of the locals who'd come out when the Marines arrived was selling war mementos – old medals, dog tags. Pony, 62, who'd been a casualty notification officer after returning to the States from combat in Vietnam, had bought a faded Purple Heart.

"There's no one I'd rather give this to than you."

Col. Horace "Pony" Baker (ret.), of Sheffield, Ala., right, comforts Robert Sutter after a walk on the Khe Sanh plateau where the 3/26 base camp was located. (By Frank Johnston – The Post)

Taking the medal, Rob breaks down – sobbing openly, unreservedly.

He falls into Pony's arms. They hug.

Johnston – who'd taken the picture of Rob's brother in Peace Church three decades earlier – has his camera up and clicking, capturing the moment. He's crying so hard he can scarcely see through the viewfinder.

"Thank you for coming out here with me," Rob says.

"My pleasure," Pony says. He's smiling.

Later in the day, as the sun began to set, our group held a memorial service for all who served and died at Khe Sanh. Gen. Mundy spoke.

"This is hallowed ground," the general says, his voice clear and gentle. "Brave men fought here, and fought for each other here."

Behind him, a wreath – symbolizing that "we were here. There were friends here whom we love very much. Love is not a term that Marines use very often. Doesn't sound too manly. But you can't be a Marine and not be in love with the other people who are around you."

Rob and Pony listen, arm-in-arm.

The general speaks of Richard, "Rob Sutter's brother – a Marine who served beside us here on this very spot, who died near this very spot.

"I don't know whether he died a hero or not. I don't know whether many of us die heroes. But he was a hero if for no other reason than simply that he was here, and simply because he came when his country asked him."

Mundy brings Rob forward as Koontz steps up smartly, bearing two Purple Hearts Richard earned for his wounds – the last one mortal.

The general presents them to Rob "with gratitude."

Friends gather for a memorial service at Khe Sanh, 31 years after Richard Sutter's death. (By Frank Johnston – The Post)

"On behalf of my family," Rob says simply, "and all the Marines who died here, and all the Marines who lived here ... I appreciate it.

"I'm proud to be a Marine."

To have Richard honored by the former commandant [at] the Khe Sanh Combat Base where he fought and where he died, brought me indescribable satisfaction.

For 30 years I have lived with a great deal of anger and guilt. ... In a number of Richard's letters home, he asked me to write to him. I think I wrote him only twice. [I] had little, if any, idea of what Richard was going through, or how much danger he faced each day.

I let him down.

[Now] I can, for the first time ... forgive myself. [As] I lay in my bed this evening, I could feel the anger actually draining from my body, as though a plug had been pulled from my heels. I felt the weight of a long-carried guilt lifted.

I feel at peace.

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