A Dangerous Game

This article discusses the operation of the Fire Support Coordination Center (FSCC) at Khe Sanh. The FSCC coordinated artillery fires and aerial bombardment that prevented the base from being overrun.

By Michael Archer, from his blog post dated 4 May 2025

Last year, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with retired Marine Colonel Kent O. Steen. As a captain during the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh in 1968, Kent was the assistant fire support coordination officer with the day-to-day responsibility of running the Fire Support Coordination Center (FSCC) inside the 26th Marine regimental command bunker. As a radio operator, I had the privilege of working within a few feet of him–twelve hours a night, seven nights a week. Kent was widely admired for his experience, coolness under stress, and intellect (which included, then and now, an appropriate dose of cynicism and much-needed acerbic wit).

He was one of a group of officers charged with employing artillery and air power to keep the base from being overrun by tens of thousands of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops, hundreds of whom were dug in just three hundred yards from our bunker, waiting to pounce.

This “Khe Sanh brain trust” not only required them to be skilled in their respective crafts but also creative, cooperative, and work within “rules of engagement” restrictions placed upon them by higher-ups to devise tactics that had never been tried before. The job was especially challenging because the NVA were purposefully massed close to the Khe Sanh Combat Base and its outposts, so bringing air and artillery to bear presented a great risk to U.S. and allied troops.

Early morning hours of February 5, 1968, amid a large-scale NVA attack on Marine outpost Hill 861A, two miles away. The “Khe Sanh brain trust” anxiously convenes to discuss the most effective means of artillery and air support to save those defenders. Captain Kent Steen (hand to forehead) stands behind Colonel David Lownds. Captain Mirza Munir Baig (The Gunpowder Prince) is to Lownds’s left.

Among this fraternity of professionals was Captain Mirza Munir “Harry” Baig, an enigmatic, slightly eccentric, genius and subject of my 2017 book, The Gunpowder Prince. Baig was assigned to us from the Third Marine Division (3rd Mar Div) as our Target Intelligence Officer because the TIO position was not present at the regimental level in the Marine system. The addition of Baig and his assistant brought the training and organizational heft to bridge the gap between real and likely target plots and layers of intelligence that these plots may imply.

Kent kindly critiqued The Gunpowder Prince and has provided me with some helpful, often astonishing, information, which, as a 19-year-old PFC sitting nearby, had escaped me; “above my pay grade” as the saying goes (at that time I received $198 a month, which included $65 “hazardous duty” pay.) Because Kent knew Baig as well as anyone could, both being captains and constantly collaborating, I was grateful that he agreed to join recent meetings with my producer and screenwriter in adapting that book to a feature film screenplay.

In February 1968, after the failure of the Tet Offensive, designed to generate a nationalist uprising in South Vietnam to topple the government and send we Americans packing, Communist Party leaders in Hanoi stepped up their efforts to capture the besieged Khe Sanh Combat Base, now the only option remaining to wrest a major victory from their overly ambitious failed strategy in the south.

In the U.S., from the White House down, interest in preventing the death or capture of thousands of Marines at Khe Sanh was equally vital to maintain the ongoing war effort and salvage President Lyndon Johnson’s reelection chances. Given this keen interest around the world in the outcome of the fighting at Khe Sanh, I was amazed to learn from Kent about the degree of pettiness exhibited along parts of the chain of command above us, despite the high stakes at risk.

Upon arriving in Vietnam, the 26th Marines (as well as Kent’s 1st Battalion, 13th Marines) were assigned to the operational control of the 3rd Mar Div, but remained under the administrative control of their parent unit, the Ninth Marine Amphibious Brigade (9th MAB), headquartered on Okinawa. When we needed any kind of material or maintenance support at Khe Sanh, the 3rd Mar Div headquarters, knowing they were not responsible for this, cheerfully referred us to 9th MAB, which was in no position to provide anything, especially at a distance of 1,500 miles. This little game was played throughout the entire siege.

The constant NVA artillery pounding of the base destroyed our gear at a rapid rate. In addition, small arms, crew-served weapons, howitzers, etc., required appropriate second-level and depot maintenance support. Repeated requests by those at the base for trained contact teams to come to Khe Sanh and inspect, repair, or replace these weapons were not honored.

As a result, by March, these weapons had become unsafe to use and increasingly inaccurate. We were also critically short of rifles, machine guns, and many other essentials. As a delicious irony, once safely evacuated to Dong Ha in April, the 13th Marines were cited (put on report) for the condition of their howitzers by the same people who refused support via contact teams during the siege.

Even more astounding, our regimental commander, Colonel David E. Lownds, a highly respected infantry Marine who had been wounded on both Saipan and Iwo Jima during World War II, and who seemed a lock for promotion to brigadier general, would have his career upended as a result of this “game.”

Major General Rathvon Tompkins was commanding general of the 3rd Mar Div throughout the siege. However, in March 1968, that division’s parent unit, III Corps, sent Major General Ray Davis to Khe Sanh to learn firsthand how things were operating. Davis was famous for winning the Medal of Honor at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. He would later succeed Tompkins as CG, 3rd Mar Div. ( A Deadly Dilemma | Naval History Magazine – August 2023, Volume 37, Number 4).

For several nights, General Davis sat on a stool in the corner of the FSCC room, observing, without saying a word, all the time wearing a helmet and flak jacket, wishing to remain anonymous. That stool was no more than ten feet from where I sat at my radio, and I was totally oblivious to who he was. Even Kent did not know his identity at first.

There was a lot of good-natured banter in that room during our shifts, jokes, pranks, griping, etc. Yet, he must’ve been happy with the operation because Colonel Lownds did not receive any kind of memo for corrective action after Davis departed.

However, General Davis did pick up on the fact that the 3rd Mar Div was not providing support for these units at Khe Sanh. He asked Colonel Lownds to provide a list of equipment issues, promising to keep it confidential, since Lownds would be, in effect, putting General Tompkins on report to their superiors at III Corps.

Lownds followed Davis’s directions, but confidentiality was broken when all parties, including General Tompkins, were included in a subsequent message about the request. Tompkins immediately helicoptered into Khe Sanh and chewed Lownds out, effectively ending his career. Caught between the wishes of two major generals, Lownds had done the right thing because his troops were running out of vital material. In lieu of promotion to brigadier general, Lownds would be presented the Marine Corps’ second-highest medal, the Navy Cross, by President Johnson for his exemplary leadership during the battle.

Kent suggests the real irony lies in the fact that Lownds’s level of command at Khe Sanh was unprecedented for a colonel in USMC history, given the sheer size of the force, the variety of reinforcing units, and his additional responsibility for coordinating the unparalleled array of fire support. Many U.S. Army divisions throughout the world, all commanded by a general, were not as large as the 26th Marines (Reinforced) commanded by Colonel Lownds.

A general officer would have been more appropriate to that responsibility, especially in demanding and coordinating what was needed from outside agencies, most of whom were commanded by flag officers. Considering the political consequences of losing Khe Sanh, a case could be made that higher-ups did not want a general on-site, given the probability of another Dien Bien Phu, it being easier to take the humiliation of failure with an infantry colonel in charge rather than a general.

This dark consideration, to essentially cut their losses and save embarrassment on what appeared to be a losing fight to hold the base, also played out when the FSCC devised a plan to bring USMC self-propelled 155mm, or Army 175mm self-propelled guns to Khe Sanh by air in parts and reassemble at the combat base. These weapons were necessary because the NVA artillery easily outdistanced the existing artillery at Khe Sanh Combat Base. In other words, they could hit us, but we could not hit them back unless we used bombers. The idea was refused, likely because nobody had ever done this before, but also likely because the owners did not want to risk that equipment on a lost cause.

I appreciate Kent providing me with this information, and I will include it in a second edition of The Gunpowder Prince.  As I expand my knowledge of Khe Sanh and what we were up against—not always the fault of our enemy—it reinforces my respect for those who withstood the ordeal. If nothing else, it hammers home the truly extraordinary job Colonel David Lownds and those in his command did under the most challenging circumstances, exacerbated by rapidly diminishing supplies, increasingly ineffective weapons, and some higher-ups positioning themselves for the “blame game” if Khe Sanh was overwhelmed and captured.