last year, kilo company's dennis mannion returned to the hill he thought his life might end 36 years ago. >> i took the route kilo company took. i stood right in the hole of the grown that was my bunker. i cut down the bushes and planto growing in the bunker and it was really pretty incredible really to stand there and think of what had happened the years before in that place. i was the only person up there. total silence. no sound except the wind. i brought with me pieces of blessed palm from my church and i wrote the names of all the guys from kilo company who had been killed so i stood at the top by the bunker and i took out the pieces of blessed palm and i said in our father and hail mary and read the name and let them go one at time. 28 or 29 of them into the wind. i bent down. put on the pack and i look up and i see in the mist standing at the top of the hill i see about, i don't know, 15, 20 figures, spirits in flack jackets and helmets and i looked away twice and blinked and i fiddled with the pack and every time i look up thhy were still standing there. i asked them to watch

. >> dennis mannion was a forward observvr. his job was to call in artillery strikes.or a first couple of weeks he was on daily patrols off the hill. >> 15th or 16th, we received word not to go outside the wire anymore. >> what dennis, ray and the others didn't know then is a defector surrendered at the base that morning. >> taken in and debriefed and gave the whole battle plan ahe said thaa night at midnight 861 will be attackee, 881 south attacked at midnight and 5:00 in the morning the base would be attacked. >> it stunned those on khe sahn put on 100% alert and rocketed up the chain of command hours to the pentagon. >> early part of the evening of january 20th you could hear them outside the wire. pou could hear them talking. you could hear the pin of the barbed wire. it didn't stop them. ttey kept on cutting the wire and cutting the wire. an eerie feeling to know that 60 wire in the darkness were people planning to come get you. >> just after midnight, gunners unleashed a barrage of rockets, mortars and rpgs on hill 861. >> we were prepared for them and yet they w