Hamburger Hill – Vietnam 1969 

A lone mountain rises out of the jungle near the Laotian border. Its slopes are steep, rain-soaked, and laced with bunkers, trenches, and machine guns. For 10 brutal days in May of 1969, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division clawed their way uphill again and again, only to be thrown back by North Vietnamese defenders.

 By the time they reached the summit, the soldiers had given Hill 937 a new name, Hamburger Hill. Hi, I’m Jim Bromley and this is the Roving Historian channel. In May of ’69, the Screaming Eagles entered the A Shau Valley, a remote jungle corridor along the Laotian border that served as a key route off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. North Vietnamese forces used the valley to move supplies, stage troops, and threaten Hue and other coastal cities in the I Corps Tactical Zone.

Operation Apache Snow was meant to drive them out. Instead, it produced one of the most controversial battles of the Vietnam War, a punishing fight for Ap Bia Mountain that lasted 10 days and left the men of the 101st Airborne with a name for the battle they would never forget, Hamburger Hill.

 So, stick with me till the end because in this video, we’ll look at what happened on Hill 937, why the battle became so controversial, and why Hamburger Hill still matters today. By the spring of 1969, the Vietnam War had entered a tense and uncertain phase. In the US, public patience with the war was wearing thin and the Nixon administration was starting to talk about Vietnamization, shifting more of the fighting to South Vietnamese forces.

But in the mountains of northern South Vietnam, American commanders were still trying to keep pressure on the NVA that were moving through the borderlands near Laos. One of the most important places in that effort was the A Shau Valley. Roughly 25 miles long and a mile wide, the A Shau is remote and the mountains around it are choked with jungle.

 It ran beside the Laotian border and was approximately 30 miles from the coastal city of Hue and [snorts] 35 miles south of the DMZ. The valley served as an off-ramp from the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam’s northern provinces. The NVA used the A Shau to move men, weapons, and supplies. Earlier Allied efforts like Operation Delaware in the spring of 1968, Operation Dewey Canyon in the beginning of 1969, both of those had disrupted the enemy’s supply operations, but failed to permanently remove the NVA from the valley.

In May of 1969, US and South Vietnamese forces launched Operation Apache Snow, a renewed push to block enemy escape routes, search out base areas, and destroy NVA units before they could threaten the coast. The operation was planned utilizing 10 battalions from the 101st Airborne Division Air Assault, the US 9th Marine Regiment, and the ARVN 1st Division.

 The operation began on May 10th with three battalions of the 3rd Brigade 101st Airborne lifted into the north end of the valley. They were looking to make contact with the enemy. The terrain was rugged, visibility was poor, and the movement was slow. The 3rd Battalion 187th Infantry, nicknamed the Rakkasans, were inserted near a steep, isolated mountain known on US maps as Hill 937 and locally as Dong Ap Bia.

The Americans knew there was a large unit of NVA in the valley prepared to fight, but on this first day of the battle, the expectation was to find maybe a company-sized unit guarding caches of supplies. In truth, the North Vietnamese troops of the 29th Regiment had dug in with bunkers, tunnels, firing positions, and concealed routes across the mountain’s jungle-covered slopes.

 To the soldiers approaching it, the hill looked like just another nameless objective. On the first day, Alpha and Charlie companies of the 3rd of the 187 had barely moved a few hundred meters from their landing zones before they made contact. A little further, they began finding enemy huts and bunkers along the route of advance.

 The enemy fire was heavy enough to push the lead platoons back. Lieutenant Colonel Weldon Honeycutt, the battalion commander of the Rakkasans, didn’t know exactly what he’d run into, but one thing was clear, his battalion was facing an active North Vietnamese base area and the enemy was there in real strength. Honeycutt’s Bravo Company was being held in reserve at Firebase Blaze, so he called Colonel Joseph Conmy, the 3rd Brigade commander, and [snorts] asked for permission to bring it in.

Conmy approved and Bravo was inserted east of Dong Ap Bia. The company arrived around 1600 hours and started moving toward the mountain. Near sunset, Bravo’s lead element fought a short but sharp engagement. >> [snorts] >> Honeycutt then ordered the company commanders to set up night defensive positions and continue the attack the next morning.

The next day, the Rakkasans pushed forward again. Bravo and Alpha companies moved toward the summit on separate routes, while Charlie Company shifted east toward the northern edge of the mountain. But late in the day, Bravo ran into a wall of fire. North Vietnamese troops dug into fortified bunkers on the slope opened up with machine guns and RPGs.

Cobra gunships with aerial rocket artillery were called in to help break the position. But in the confusion of the thick jungle terrain, the attacking aircraft mistook the 3rd of the 187 command post for the enemy. They opened fire on their own men, killing two Americans and wounding 35, including the battalion commander.

Lieutenant Colonel Honeycutt had a piece of shrapnel removed from his back, but he stayed with his battalion. This incident was the first of five friendly fire incidents during the battle. With the battalion CP thrown into chaos, command and control inside the 3rd of the 187 began to break down. Bravo Company could not push any farther.

 So, as night came on, men pulled back into defensive positions, still about 1,000 m from the summit. Over the next 2 days, Honeycutt still believed he was facing no more than a company of North Vietnamese troops on Hill 937. He tried to move the battalion into position for a coordinated three-company assault with each company attacking the mountain from a different direction.

But, getting there was a battle of its own. The American infantryman had to fight their way through dense jungle, up steep terrain, and with constant enemy harassment. In some places, the pressure turned into pitched firefights. Delta Company, which had been protecting the battalion command post, needed more than 5 hours just to move 500 m under heavy fire.

And because the jungle was so thick, and friendly units were so close together, artillery and mortar support had to be used carefully, and that slowed the advance even more. At this point, it was becoming clear that the Americans had badly underestimated what was waiting for them on Dong Ap Bia. This was not just a single North Vietnamese company holding the mountain.

The enemy force was larger than expected, and it was growing stronger as more troops moved in from Laos. By May 13th, Colonel Conmy realized that the 3rd of the 187 couldn’t take the hill alone. He ordered the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, the Currahees, to move north from their area of operations and attack cross-country with the goal of hitting the North Vietnamese defenders from the rear and taking pressure off the Rakkasans.

 Conmy expected the Currahees, starting about 4,000 m south of Hill 937, to be in position by the morning of May 15th, but the terrain, the jungle, and the enemy had other ideas. It would take them 5 and 1/2 days until May 19th before they reached a position where they could support the fight for the mountain. Honeycutt knew he was running out of time.

 If he waited too long, the North Vietnamese could bring in reinforcements and make the mountain even harder to crack. So, instead of waiting for the first of the 506 to fight its way into position, he decided to attack with what he had. On May 14th, he sent three companies back up Dong Ap Bia. Bravo would keep pushing up from the main ridge, Charlie would attack along a smaller finger of terrain about 150 m to the south, and Delta would drop back down into the ravine, then try to swing around and hit the mountain from the north.

As the attack began, Bravo Company almost immediately slammed into heavy fire. Automatic weapons opened up from the jungle, and Claymore mines strung in the trees tore into their advance. Charlie Company at first seemed to be making real progress towards its objective, but then the NVA hit back. In the fight that followed, Charlie was wrecked.

 The company lost its first sergeant, two of its three platoon leaders, the executive officer, two platoon sergeants, six squad leaders, and about 40 enlisted men. Meanwhile, Delta Company was having a brutal time just getting into position. The terrain was bad, the jungle was thick, and enemy machine guns and RPGs kept hammering them as they tried to move up.

 It took until late afternoon just for the troopers to get off the ridgeline where they had spent the previous night. By the end of the day, a dozen Rock Assaults were dead, and more than 80 were wounded. And once again, some of those casualties came from friendly fire. One man was killed and three others were wounded when helicopter gunships mistook them for enemy soldiers.

By now, both the battalion and the brigade commanders understood what they were really up against. The North Vietnamese were not doing what they usually did, which was fight hard, break contact, and then slip away into the jungle. This time they were staying. They were going to defend Dong Ap Bia. And for the third of the 187, the cost was already mounting.

 They’d taken heavy casualties, but gained almost nothing in return. Outnumbered and under intense pressure, Honeycutt got on the radio and pleaded with Conmy to get the first of the 506 moving, telling him in blunt battlefield language, “Get them in gear.” As darkness fell on May 14th, the surviving Rock Force sons dug in for the night.

 But when the sun went down, they saw something chilling on the slopes above them. >> [snorts] >> The enemy had lit cooking fires. One soldier counted more than a hundred of them spread across the mountainside in three uneven rows that seemed to wrap around the hill. The message was unmistakable. The North Vietnamese were still there. They weren’t hiding.

 And when the Americans came back up the mountain, they’d be waiting. The next day, Honeycutt sent the battalion back up the mountain. Alpha and Bravo companies pushed toward the summit once again, and this time they got close, within about 150 m of the top. But then disaster struck again. Another helicopter gunship mistook American troops for the enemy and launched an entire pod of rockets into Bravo company.

 The rockets slammed into the company command post, killing one American soldier and wounding the company commander. At this point, Alpha and Bravo had lost about half their strength. Exhausted, badly shaken, increasingly demoralized, the survivors pulled back down the hill, dug in for the night, and prepared to do it all over again the next day.

And now some of the men were beginning to ask the question out loud, “What is the point of all this?” Still, the battle went on. On May 16th, the plan was for the 3rd of the 187 to keep pressure on the North Vietnamese defenses by attacking up the same two ridges, but stopping short of the summit. >> [snorts] >> Meanwhile, the 1st of the 506th was supposed to come in from the west and the south, sweep across Hill 900, and then push on to Hill 937.

 But once again, the terrain and the enemy disrupted the plan. 1st of the 506th managed to capture Hill 916, but that still left them roughly 2,000 m from the summit of Dong Ap Bia. >> [snorts] >> With the Currahees stalled, Colonel Honeycutt to hold off and wait for them to get into position. Word of the brutal fight in the A Shau Valley was starting to reach the media.

The Associated Press sent reporter Jay Sharbutt to find out what was happening. He visited the 3rd of the 187 command post, talked with soldiers in the area, and then he sat down with 101st Airborne Division Commander, Major General Melvin Zais. Zais tried to explain why American troops were being thrown against Dong Ap Bia, but Sharbutt wasn’t convinced.

 In the story that followed, he brought the battle home to readers across the United States, describing the bloodshed on the mountain, and quoting one soldier who said, “That damn Blackjack,” Honeycutt’s radio call sign, “won’t stop until he kills every one of us.” His account of the meat grinder on Hamburger Hill shocked the public and helped ignite a wave of protest that reached all the way to the floor of Congress.

On May 17th, the attack was supposed to resume, but the Currahees still hadn’t made enough progress. So, the plan two battalion push up the mountain was postponed once again. >> [snorts] >> While the Rakkasans waited, uh Honeycutt had his men get ready for the next assault. They stockpiled supplies, issued new protective gas masks, and handed out concussion grenades.

Special weapons meant for clearing the dug-in North Vietnamese troops from their bunkers and trench lines. On May 18th, the plan moved forward whether the units were ready or not. The first of the 506 was still about 500 m from Hill 900 and almost twice that far from Hill 937. But Colonel Conmy did not want to delay the assault again, so he ordered a coordinated two-battalion attack.

 Third of the 187 would hit from the north while the first of the 506 pushed in from the south. Before the assault began, Conmy threw all the supporting fires he had at Dong Ap Bia. Starting at 0800, every available fighter-bomber struck the mountain followed by a full hour of artillery prep. The goal was simple: hit the enemy hard enough to let the Currahees break out, get moving toward the mountain, and finally take some of the pressure off of Honeycutt’s battered Rock Assans.

Every soldier was wearing a flak jacket and was loaded down with extra grenades and ammunition. The Rock Assans started up the mountain again, but every yard was a fight. Gunships, artillery, and mortars hammered the summit while the American infantryman clawed uphill through heavy North Vietnamese fire. Then, in the middle of all the chaos, disaster struck again.

Cobra gunships mistook a Bravo Company platoon for the enemy and opened fire, killing one American soldier and wounding four more. Honeycutt was furious. He ordered the attack helicopters out of the area immediately. Even after the friendly fire incident, the attack kept grinding forward. Delta Company came within reach of the summit, but then the fight had collapsed into brutal close-quarters combat.

 American and North Vietnamese troops were sometimes only a few meters apart. Delta, they had been shattered. Every officer in the company had been killed or wounded, and the unit had taken more than 50% casualties. Honeycutt ordered Charlie Company forward to help him, but then the mountain was hit by a sudden blinding rainstorm.

 The assault stalled, and once again, the Rock A Sans were forced to pull back down the slope. At the same time, on the south side of the ridge near Hill 900, the first of the 506 was pinned down by a large North Vietnamese force dug into bunkers. About this time, General Zayas arrived and faced a critical decision. The casualties were piling up, the press was watching, so ending the attack was on the table.

 But with support from his core commander, General Richard Stilwell, and MACV commander, General Creighton Abrams, Zayas chose to keep going. He committed three more battalions to the fight, second of the 501st, second of the 506, and the ARVN second of the third infantry. At the same time, he ordered Honeycutt’s battered third of the 187 pulled out of the fight.

 By now, the Rock A Sans had been mauled in repeated assaults up Dong Ap Bia. Alpha and Bravo companies had each lost half of their original strength. Charlie and Delta had each taken 80% losses. One of the battalion’s four line company commanders was dead, another was wounded, and eight of its 12 platoon leaders were casualties, along with numerous NCOs.

But Honeycutt wasn’t ready to leave. Even after everything his battalion had suffered, he strongly protested the order to relieve the Rock A Sans. In his view, his men had already paid too much to stop now. He argued that all he needed was a fresh company and the Rock A Sans could finish the job. Ultimately, the division commander gave in.

 The third of the 187 would stay in the battle, and Honeycutt would receive a company from the second of the 506 for the next assault. The brigade wanted to bring in two more battalions, one northeast of Dong Ap Bia, and one to the southeast of it. The idea was that the third of the 187 would keep the North Vietnamese pinned on the western side of the mountain while the first of the 506, the second of the 501st, and the second of the third ARVN hit the summit from different directions.

But Honeycutt pushed back again. He wasn’t willing to leave his battalion sitting on the side of the mountain waiting for other units to move and as he put it, “Get our asses shot off.” He said that the Rakkasans would take the mountain summit. At 1000 hours on May 20th, the final assault began. 10 artillery batteries had already fired more than 20,000 rounds into Dong Ap Bia.

 Tactical aircraft had dropped more than a million pounds of bombs along with 152,000 pounds of napalm stripping much of the mountaintop bare. Now the third of the 187 started up the slope one more time while the first of the 506 renewed its attack from the south. Then at 1145 hours, 9 days and 5 hours after Bravo Company first made contact on the mountain, the Rakkasans, reinforced by a company from the second of the 506, finally reached the summit.

>> [snorts] >> But when they got there, they found that most of the North Vietnamese had already slipped away headed for Laos. The Americans moved into the bunkers and the trench lines to clear out the defenders who remained and for a final few hours the fighting stayed intense as roughly two enemy platoons fought to hold the mountain until the end.

Finally, at 1700 hours, the hill was secure. After 10 days of fighting, Hill 937 belonged to the Americans. But almost immediately the victory took on a darker meaning. Near the western edge of the hill, an unknown American soldier cut the cardboard bottom from a C-ration box, wrote the words Hamburger Hill across it, and nailed it to a a tree trunk.

 Later another soldier came by and added the question that many of the men were already thinking, “Was it worth it?” The official body count listed 633 North Vietnamese soldiers killed on Dong Ap Bia, but even that number may not tell the whole story. As writer Samuel Zaffiri pointed out in his definitive account of the battle, there’s no way to know how many more NVA soldiers were killed or wounded and then carried back into Laos.

Others may have been buried alive inside bunkers and tunnels or left in forgotten graves along the ridges and ravines of the mountain. Historian James Willbanks also notes that a Special Forces patrol operating in Laos reported saying as many as 1,100 North Vietnamese dead and wounded being removed from the battlefield during the fighting.

But even with hundreds of North Vietnamese troops killed and large amounts of weapons and supplies captured or destroyed, the cost for the Americans was steep. 72 US soldiers were killed in action and another 372 were wounded. The ARVN battalion also paid a heavy price losing 31 soldiers killed and several hundred wounded.

For their actions during those 10 days on Dong Ap Bia, the soldiers of the 3rd Battalion 187 Infantry were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. For General Creighton Abrams, the MACV commander, Dong Ap Bia fit into a broader strategy of attrition. He kept relentless pressure on the enemy, forced the well-entrenched North Vietnamese into a major fight, and then destroy as much of their force as possible.

The point was not to hold the mountain forever. The point was to break the enemy. But that’s exactly what made the aftermath so explosive. Just days after capturing Hamburger Hill, US forces abandoned it. To many Americans watching from home, that raised one obvious question. If the hill was not worth holding, why had so many men been sent to take it? The outrage that followed helped push the United States away from high casualty offensive operations and toward a different way of fighting the war.

For many Americans, Hamburger Hill became the clearest example of what they believed was wrong with the war. The effort, the firepower, and the casualties seemed far greater than the value of the ground being fought over. To the public and many soldiers, it looked like American lives had been spent for a hill with no lasting strategic purpose.

That anger was fueled by outspoken politicians and by the way the battle was covered in the media. For example, on the floor of the Senate, Senator Edward Kennedy condemned the military strategy calling the assault on Hamburger Hill, “senseless and irresponsible.” Then Life magazine published the photographs and names of 242 Americans killed in Vietnam in a single week, including men who had died at Hamburger Hill.

 For people watching from home, the war was no longer just numbers on a casualty report. It had faces, it had names, and it had become deeply personal. The backlash from Hamburger Hill forced the military to explain in public why it was still fighting a war of attrition, measuring success by enemy casualties instead of the ground held.

 But after Hill 937, that argument became much harder to sell. The controversy [snorts] helped bring an end to large US ground assaults against heavily fortified enemy positions. Behind the scenes, President Richard Nixon told General Creighton Abrams to avoid maximum pressure battles and to do everything possible to reduce American casualties.

And the timing mattered. Hamburger Hill fed directly into the momentum behind Vietnamization, pulling US troops out and shifting more of the combat burden to South Vietnamese forces. Soon after Nixon announced the withdrawal of 25,000 American troops by July the 8th with another 25,000 set to come home by December.

So, why does Hamburger Hill still matter today? Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz argued in his book on war that success in a conflict depends on a balance between three forces, the people, the military, and the government. If those forces start to pull apart, the war itself becomes unstable.

 In the army, we used to put it more simply. You can’t win a war without the will of the people. And by 1969, that will was already dangerously weak. After the Tet Offensive the year before, polls showed that a majority of Americans disapproved of the war in Vietnam. On Dong Ap Bia, the 3rd Brigade 101st Airborne did exactly what it had been ordered to do.

They found the enemy, they fought the enemy, and [snorts] they carried out their mission with extraordinary courage and sacrifice. But at the highest levels, political and military leaders should have seen what was happening at home. They should have recognized that the public’s willingness to keep paying that high price was collapsing.

And they should have adjusted their strategy before more soldiers were sent into battles the country no longer understood or supported. And that’s why Hamburger Hill still echoes today. It stands as a warning about what happens when a battlefield victory comes at a cost the country no longer understands and no longer believes is worth paying.

 The soldiers did their job. They fought with courage, discipline, and sacrifice. But the larger question was never just whether Hill 937 could be taken. It was whether taking it served a lasting strategic purpose. For modern military planners, that lesson still matters. Every objective has to be measured not only by whether it can be captured, but what it costs, what it achieves, and whether the public will continue to support the mission once that cost becomes clear.

All photos and film clips in this video come from the National Archives or the Department of Defense, and script references are listed in the description below. One of those books I recommend is Hamburger Hill by Samuel Zaffiri. It’s a powerful narrative based on interviews with Brigadier General Honeycutt and 48 veterans of Dong Ap Bia.

 It captures both the front-line fighting and the command decisions behind the operation. You know, along with making videos, I’m also a writer, and if you’re interested in World War II history, check out my book on the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion titled The Boldest Plan Is the Best.

 You’ll find an Amazon affiliate link to Hamburger Hill in the description, along with one to my Amazon author page if you’d like to check those out. If you find this video interesting or enjoyable, please give it a like. That really does help the channel grow, and I’d be honored to hear from you in the comments, especially if you served in Operation Apache Snow.

Be sure to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss out on our other military history videos, and for your next watch, take a look at our video on the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. That link should be coming up right here over my shoulder. As always, thank you for supporting the Roving Historian channel, and I’ll see you in the next video.