NORTH SALT LAKE—A North Salt Lake City filmmaker has received The Sergeant William Genaust Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for his documentary short “The Siege at Khe Sanh.” David C. Kniess, Jr. recently received the honor at the Annual Awards Dinner at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.

The film recounts the 1968 Vietnam War battle through the experiences of Marine Dennis Mannion.

“I’ve had a fascination with the Vietnam War since I was a kid,” said Kniess. “I was in the Navy. I joined the Navy while I was in college. My uncle served in Vietnam, he was a Marine.”

He did two tours in Vietnam in 1965 and 1968, Kniess said. “I don’t know, I've just always been drawn to it. I like history but then when I met Dennis (Mannion) in high school as a teacher that really fueled it even more.”

Dennis was the kind of teacher that all the kids loved, he said. “He would take two weeks out of the year and he would talk about his experiences in Vietnam.”

Kniess said they stayed in touch over the years. “Then I moved to Los Angeles and I pursued screenwriting. I was working as a producer during the day and at night I was writing.”

 Whenever he was in Connecticut Kniess said he would pop in and see Dennis. One time he asked Dennis if he had the opportunity would he go back. “He said, ‘I wouldn’t go back unless I could stand on Hill 861 at Khe Sanh.’”

The northern part of South Vietnam at that time was heavily occupied by the Marine Corps, said Kniess. “The Army was there too but predominantly the Army stayed in the south toward Saigon. So the Marines were up there in 1967.

There was a build up out in Khe Sanh, he said. “This is up in the mountains so it’s pretty remote. There’s an old French coffee plantation up there and the owners were still there.”

The combat base was actually built earlier, Kniess said. “I think the first people up there were a Green Beret unit. Khe Sanh is situated right along the border with Laos so it was smack in the middle of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”

So when all of these Marines showed up there and occupied this big base it was a big disruptor for the North Vietnamese, he said. “They started funneling a lot of troops in there to basically go to war, which eventually happened. There were upwards of 40,000 North Vietnamese and there were only 5,000 Marines.”

Most of the Marines were on combat days but there were two hills just north of them, said Kniess. “It was a good five mile hike if you walked from the base to the top of these hills. One was 861 where Dennis was and it’s 861 meters above sea level. The other one was a little further west and it’s called 881 south.”

In the night and into the early morning hours the NVA decided to make their attack, he said. “That’s what happened. They overran 861 where Dennis was.”

A lot of Marines died that night, Kniess said. “A lot of North Vietnamese died that night. These were things I learned before I even knew Dennis so when I met him it was really special. I was sitting in a classroom at 17 or 18 years old and I couldn’t believe I was just sitting there listening to these stories about these big battles I had read about in books.”

Kniess said so when the opportunity came and Dennis told him he was going to Vietnam he knew he had to go. “I’d always wanted to go so in the summer of 2000 we went.”

They arrived in Khe Sanh, he said. “I think we were up there for three or four days.”

With the help of former soldiers who still knew the terrain because they had marched up there in 67 and 68 Kniess and Dennis followed the trail. “There’s still unexploded ordinance everywhere,” he said. “But the mountain yards in that part of Vietnam have trails because they bring cattle up onto the mountains to graze so we just stayed on the trail.”

At a certain point, Dennis said he wanted to just see what was up ahead and around the bend and he just couldn’t stop, said Kniess. “He kept going alone and he got a good mile ahead of us and I could see him going up the ridge line to 861. When I finally reached the top I walked up to him and put out my hand and I said, ‘hey you finally made it.’ He grabbed my hand and he just looked at me and then buried his head in my chest and started crying. He just kept saying ‘I should have died here.’”

This is not Kniess’ first award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. “I won another one for a full length documentary.” 

Kniess said he just wants people to know the reason he wrote about Vietnam. “I want people who have never gone to war or didn’t know anybody that went to war to understand how that affects people.”