Bait: The Battle of Kham Duc

Summary

An account of the battle of Kham Duc, one of the least known and most misunderstood battles in the American Phase of the Second Indochina War (1959 to 1975).

The strategic potential of the three-day attack of two NVA regiments on Kham Duc—a remote and isolated Army Special Forces camp—on the eve of the first Paris peace talks in May 1968, was so significant that former President Lyndon Johnson included it in his memoirs. This gripping, original, eyewitness narrative and thoroughly researched analysis of a widely misinterpreted battle at the height of the Vietnam War radically contradicts all the other published accounts of it. In addition to the tactical details of the combat narrative, the authors consider the grand strategies and political contexts of the US and North Vietnamese leaders.