as he left the base, brrce geiger was surprised to see the landscape around him. >> the area for a solid five miles was pretty much obliterated. there was no jenvegetation. this was heavily vegetated area before khe sahn. >> god created this beautiful spats and man had really screwed >> khe sahn remained shrouded in controversy. officially 297 troops were killed in action. most of them marines but some counts are significantly higher. the official number of nva dead is 1,600. some experts believe it was up to ten times that number. in june, just weeks after the siege was broken, the base was quietly bandoned. >> it was really to this day a hard pill to swallow. >> from the day i heard that the khe sahn combat base was abandoned, theewar was over for me. seemed like all that death and all that destruction and all that pain and all that turmoil for nothing..o cf1 o >> the troops were told to destroy the base, to leave nothing behind for the enemy. >> slowly took everything attack, everything plowed flat by the bulldozers there. >> bunkers too big to take apart were blown up. in the bunker