Battle of Dak To - Aftermath

Aftermath

By the end of November, the North Vietnamese were forced to withdraw from the area and back into their sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos. Failing to wipe out a major American unit, yet the PAVN had forced the U.S. Army to pay a high price. 376 U.S. troops had been killed or listed as missing-presumed dead and another 1,441 were wounded, in the fighting around Đắk Tô. The fighting had also taken a toll on South Vietnamese troops. 73 ARVN soldiers were killed in the fighting. U.S. munitions expenditures attested to the ferocity of the fighting: 151,000 artillery rounds, 2,096 tactical air sorties, 257 B-52 strikes, and 40 lost helicopters. The U.S. Army claimed that 1,644 PAVN troops had been killed by body count, but this figure quickly became a source of contention.

In his memoirs, General William C. Westmoreland, U.S. commander in Vietnam, mentioned 1,400 North Vietnamese casualties, while Major General William B. Rossen, the MACV deputy commander, estimated that the North Vietnamese lost between 1,000 to 1,400 men. Not all American commanders were happy with the friendly to enemy loss ratio. U.S. Marine Corps General John Chaisson questioned "Is it a victory when you lose 362 friendlies in three weeks and by your own spurious body count you only get 1,200?"

Three of the four North Vietnamese regiments that participated in the fighting had been so battered that they played no part in the next phase of their winter-spring offensive. Only the 24th PAVN Regiment took the field during the Tet Offensive of January 1968. The 173rd Airborne Brigade and two battalions of the 4th Infantry Division were in no better shape. General Westmoreland claimed that "we had soundly defeated the enemy without unduly sacrificing operations in other areas. The enemy's return was nil." But Westmoreland's claim may have missed the point. The border battles fought that fall and winter had indeed cost the North Vietnamese dearly, but they had achieved their objective. By January 1968, one-half of all U.S. maneuver battalions in South Vietnam had been drawn away from the cities and lowlands and into the border areas.

Several members of Westmoreland's staff began to see an eerie resemblance to the Viet Minh campaign of 1953, when seemingly peripheral actions had led up to the climactic Battle of Dien Bien Phu. General Giap even laid claim to such a strategy in an announcement in September, but, to the Americans, it all seemed a bit too contrived. Yet, no understandable analysis seemed to explain Hanoi's almost suicidal military actions. They could only be explained if a situation akin to Dien Bien Phu came into being. Then, almost overnight, one emerged. In the western corner of Quang Tri Province, an isolated Marine outpost at Khe Sanh came under siege by PAVN forces that would eventually number three divisions.

Three members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Maj. Charles J. Watters, Pfc. John A. Barnes III and Pfc. Carlos Lozada) all posthumously received the Medal of Honor for their actions during the battle.