1 of 12: #TDIDH - May 10, 1969
19-year-old Sergeant James Spears: “Have you ever been inside a hamburger machine? We just got cut to pieces by extremely accurate machine-gun fire.”
[images enhanced by @Erikhistorian]
2/12: Military planners referred to the 3,000 foot tall highland as "Hill 937." North Vietnamese Army (NVA) fighters called it "The Mountain of the Crouching Beast." Members of the
@101stAASLTDIV
knew it as a version of hell on earth. We would come to know it as Hamburger Hill.
3 of 12: Over the coming 10 days, this hill would serve as a metaphor for war itself.
We're going deep into this story in the coming days.
4 of 12: The thickly forested rock sits about 60 miles south of Khe Sanh, about a mile from the Laos border, in the A Shua Valley.
Hill 937 overlooked a supply route for North Vietnamese troops along the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
5 of 12: The valley had long been a staging area for NVA units preparing to attack the coastal provinces. The @TheRakkasans were to clear the region of Vietnamese fighters. This meant taking Hill 937.
6 of 12: 52 years ago today, four battalions of 101st Airborne Paratroopers began a pitched battle against the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment.
[while the 29th was among the most experienced North Vietnamese units, this was a reconstituted force post-Tet with many "green" troops]
7 of 12: For the next 10 days, the Rakkasans sent assault after assault after assault up the hill. Each time the men faced an experienced North Vietnamese regiment, entrenched defenses, steep slopes, and treacherous weather.
8 of 12: The North Vietnamese fighters repulsed the American paratroopers over and over again.
9 of 12: Hamburger Hill would become one of the most controversial moments of a controversial war.
10 of 12: It served as the scene of some of the toughest fighting members of this Corps witnessed in Vietnam. The paratroopers of the 101st acquitted themselves with honor and valor in horrific conditions.
11 of 12: Hamburger Hill would serve as the source of many myths in the decades after that battle. One of them has been debunked by Dr. Erik Villard (pictured) and others.
END: Specifically, MAC-V did NOT abandon the hill after the battle. American forces built a road to the top and put tanks on it. Here is photo of one those tanks in July 1969, given to Dr. Villard by a Hamburger Hill veterans
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