At 2130, a battalion from the =304th NVA Division= launched the first attack against the 37th ARVN Ranger Battalion. The South Vietnamese responded with their final protective fires; 1/13 contributed thousands of conventional and special artillery rounds while strike aircraft streaked in and raked the attacking force. The enemy pulled back without even breaching the outer defenses. The first assault was followed by one at 2330 and another at 0315 (1 March); both were similarly stifled short of the wire. The North Vietnamese finally called it quits and withdrew with those bodies which they could retrieve. When the Rangers investigated the next morning, they found 78 dead NVA soldiers huddled in three successive assault trenches a few hundred meters from the perimeter. Some were in a kneeling position as if they had been killed just before going over the top. Many had been peppered by the artillery airbursts and were covered with small holes. Crude devices made from bamboo strips and laced with blocks of TNT lay beside many of the bodies. These were obviously to be used as bangalore torpedoes but the sappers never had the chance. The slaughter along the perimeter, however, was nothing compared to the losses sustained by the NVA reserves.(187) While the S-2 personnel could never ascertain the exact number of enemy killed, they felt reasonably certain that an entire NVA regiment had been virtually wiped out. The eastern approach was saturated with tons of high explosives; the road junction, the plantation, the old French Fort, and all bottlenecks along the enemy's route were heavily hit. Montagnard tribesmen, who inhabit the surrounding hills, later reported finding from 200 to 500 North Vietnamese bodies at a time stacked in rows along the trails and roads leading to the base. It was obvious that they had been caught while on the march and mangled by air raids and piston-like artillery concentrations. While many of the defenders at the KSCB never fired a shot, what was believed to be the long-awaited enemy onslaught came and passed with a whimper instead of a roar.(188) Even though the North Vietnamese continued to probe throughout March, it was obvious that they had shot their bolt on the night of 29 February/1 March. The NVA never mustered another large ground attack against the base; the battle had reached a turning point. Having had their fingers burned too often, the North Vietnamese settled into a wait-and-see strategy. They continued to pound the base with artillery but exerted no major ground effort; instead they lurked in the hills and waited for patrols which ventured too far from the perimeter.(189)