Hamberger Hill
... fire - 105s, 155s, and 8-inch - blasted the area with great accuracy. The soldiers tried up the hill again and were met with extreme resistance. There were many casualties on both sides. On May 13 after the early-morning air strikes, B and C Companies resumed their treacherous climb up the ridge toward the enemy's dug-in positions and suffered a withering attack from a nest of snipers and small arms, RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenade) and hand grenades. Again no land was gained and both sides lost men. On may 15 during the morning hours, the gun ships and ten artillery firebases repeated their almost incessant bombing of the enemy positions as they had done the previous days, reducing the mountain and ridgelines to nothing but a smoldering pile. After the relentless attack A and B Companies attacked the two fingers that they had assaulted earlier. The artillery had little effect on the NVA who again pushed back the Americans with guerrilla tactics or shoot and relocate. On May 17th the generals put the day "on hold" and had their men prepare for the assault the next day by stockpiling supplies, passing out new protective gas masks, and bringing up concussion grenades for use against the dug-in NVA in bunkers. The next day, every man in the attacking companies wore a flak jacket and most of the riflemen carried about forty rounds of M16 ammo and some as many as ten grenades. Infantrymen could bring to bear: machine guns, M-79s, light antitank weapons and 90mm recoilless rifles. In the next two day the men of A,B,C, and D company managed to take the hill. The Vietnam war was long and cost a lot of American lives this was just one of the many battles in the war. The battle lasted over 10 days and over 1000 people died on each side. But we took a major hill and they used this hill for many other missions to direct fire from artilary. Imagine sitting in a hot muggy jungle in Da-nag fresh off the helicopter that just flew over head. Clutching a M16 closely. Suddenly a mortar shell screeches over head and lands blowing fellow soldiers to pieces. Ak-47 rounds crack threw the air around like fierce thunder storm. This is how the men that took a hill in May of 1969 felt like. This great battle was finally renamed “Hamburger Hill” for the unrecognizable bodies of U.S. soldiers. In the early morning hours, on May 10 1969, eighteen hundred men from five battalions-1/506th, 2/501st, and 3/187th from the 101st Airborne Division, and 4/1 and 2/1 ARVN-were assembled there to await liftoff. They had no idea that they would be involved in a battle that would last 10 days and would cost over 1000 U.S. lives. The enemy was a hardened battle torn enemy they were the 29th NVA or North Vietnamese Army. H-Hour was 0730. In the hour before the helicopter launch, fighter-bombers had bombed the LZ’s for fifty minutes; the artillery followed with a fifteen-minute barrage. Then came aerial rocket artillery helicopters for a one-minute. By 0800, D Company, then A and C, landed on LZ 2 without opposition. Ten minutes later, the troops were moving out to there positions.1700 the companies made contact with the enemy near the bottom of the hill. This day the U.S. thought that they would make it to the top of the hill by the next day. By the next day in the fierce fighting the U.S. captured some useful documents that stated that the 29th NVA Regiment was on the mountain with strength of between twelve and eighteen hundred men, heavily reinforced with weapons. On May 12 during the day, eight air strikes pummeled the enemy positions, the last one at 1734. The strikes included high drag bombs, napalm, and five-hundred and one-thousand-pound bombs with delay fuses. As the gun ships left, artillery...