Hill 875, November 1967, Dak To, Vietnam

By the fall of 1967, the U.S. strategy of gradually escalating the war in Vietnam had so far failed to convince the North Vietnamese to stop trying to overthrow the government of South Vietnam, and now instead of 125,000 troops on the ground, there were almost half a million. Combat casualties had risen from 636 killed at the end of 1965 to 16,000 by the fall of 1967, when American casualties were running at a rate of 100, 200, and sometimes more per week. The American public began to wonder whether the sacrifice was worth the effort, whether the possible goal of keeping South Vietnam free from communism was worth all this blood and treasure. As a result, public opinion polls in the United States showed for the first time, by a margin of 46 percent to 44 percent, that more Americans thought the U.S. had made a mistake sending troops to fight in South Vietnam. More than 50,000 people marched on the Pentagon in October after 125,000 marched in April in New York Central Park, all calling for an end to the fighting. Let no one claim there is a consensus for this war.

Millions of patriotic Americans repudiate this war and refuse to take moral responsibility for it. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese came up with another plan to fight the Americans in the Central Highlands. To cut down on its massive casualties from overwhelming American firepower, the North Vietnamese decided to try to get so close to attacking American units that the U.S. could not call in air and artillery. To test this new strategy, the North Vietnamese chose the hills around the small town of Dak To in the Central Highlands. To counter the North Vietnamese, the U.S. sent in the 4th Infantry and the 173rd Airborne. The brigade established a firebase at Dak To, at the camp, and we began our usual pattern of putting companies out, trying to locate the enemy. 26-year-old Captain Ken Smith from Des Moines, Iowa, had been in Vietnam for eight months. Assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, he served as an Operations Officer in the brigade’s command center. We were doing search and destroy. That was our mission. You go out, you find the enemy, find out where he is, and then you attack him wherever he is.

And two or three days later, you leave the hill and go after the next place where he is. In the first weeks of November, troops from the 4th Infantry and 173rd Airborne engaged in a series of firefights for control of the hills around Dak To. As the fighting intensified, U.S. patrols found evidence of a major enemy stronghold on a hill called 875, 875 for its height in meters. Orders went out to the brigade’s 2nd Battalion to take the hill. November 19th, 1967, 9:43 a.m.

The company had gone partway up the hill. There were a couple shots, and then the crescendo built, and we began to receive reports through the battalion: heavy fire, heavy casualties. 21-year-old Specialist 4th Class August Kirino from Brooklyn, New York, was one of those attacking the hill that morning. The fighting just continued back and forth. We really couldn’t move up that much. Kirino, who had been in Vietnam for 10 months, was in Charlie Company, one of the three companies of 2nd Battalion that were attacking the North Vietnamese. Most of the time, you couldn’t even see them because the foliage was so thick, but the bullets, you could hear them whizzing by you, cutting leaves, and the leaves just falling on top of you. Someone next to you maybe would get wounded.

19-year-old Specialist 4 John Stier from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was in Alpha Company, which was bringing up the rear of the attack. Stier, after eight months in Vietnam, had been in his share of firefights. We started taking fire. They were in spider traps, holes in the ground with camouflage covers. They were in bunkers. It was somewhere in the trees. At first, my company wasn’t being hit too bad. We kept pushing on up, and then Alpha Company was ordered to go back down the hill to cut a landing zone to start getting some of our wounded out.

While Stier and Alpha Company went down the hill, the battalion kept fighting. It was pretty, what they call hand-to-hand, pretty close to each other, so you can smell the gunpowder, you can see the smoke created by the shooting, you can hear the crack of the AK-47 instead of the distinctive sound, so it was intense and loud and scary. We’re not going back down. No, we’re not.

All of a sudden, we heard a lot of shooting, a lot of explosions coming from the bottom up. The North Vietnamese had laid a trap. They tried to slice the column in two, separate Alpha Company from the two attacking companies, at the same time closing in and hugging the company so that our air and artillery were not effective, and they began to put pressure on the battalion from all four sides. We made a tight little perimeter, and we basically fought off the North Vietnamese who were attacking us from the bottom of the hill. We couldn’t go forward because they were entrenched at the top of the hill. We weren’t sure how many were behind us, and we were trapped.

At the same time, at the bottom of the hill, Alpha Company was in danger of being overrun. We got a report there was another large element of North Vietnamese coming up from behind us. Four of us had volunteered to go out and set up an ambush to slow down the enemy so our company had time to pull back into the battalion perimeter where we had previously dug positions. And so Carlos, Wasilewski, and myself set up the machine gun. They started shooting at us before we were shooting at them. They were exposed, some of them running straight at us in camouflage with burlap wrapped around their weapons. Carlos stood up and started firing from the hip, and I covered him as best I could. I kept laying down fire. I got behind the log. Carlos came around the front of my field of fire and ran behind me, and I was hollering at Carlos to get down, and I was cussing him, and I grabbed him, and I hollered, “I’m hit.”

Well, when I was hit, I was shot twice in the back, through the left shoulder and my neck, and I grabbed Carlos, and unbeknown to me, apparently the same burst, Carlos’s head was about half blown off. Eventually, Stier crawled back to the remnants of Alpha Company, which by this time had formed up into a defensive perimeter with what was left of the 2nd Battalion. I ended up in the command post with about 80 wounded. We were out of morphine. We were out of plasma. Eventually, we were out of water.

Lack of medicine was only one of the problems confronting the battalion. We didn’t have any food. Whatever water we had was what was in one canteen there on our web gear, and most of that had been drunk already. Our ammunition was low. Reports piling up in the brigade’s Operations Center pointed to a growing disaster. We began to get reports of ammunition needed, of heavy casualties. There was a lot of confusion. All we knew was that they needed help. We alerted the other battalions, went through the drill of finding out who could disengage and prepare to go out and support 2nd Battalion. We knew it would be a day before they could get there.

November 19th. As night fell on Hill 875, Specialist 4th Class Stier, Kirino, and 80 wounded comrades waited for help in what was left of their perimeter command post. With them was battalion chaplain Charles Watters, who continued picking up the wounded, dragging them back to the command post, where he gave them first aid. Father Watters was busy trying to put bandages on, trying to give water, trying to get plasma into someone when we had it, morphine. He was praying for them, giving them their last rites as they were dying. They’d lost a lot of blood, and I was laying there amongst all the other wounded [Music], being mortared by the North Vietnamese, and it was how to stay alive for the time that you were there. And, of course, then foxhole religion takes hold at that time, and you just hope that you’re not one of the casualties, that you’re not going to be hurt, you’re not going to be killed.

At the brigade Operations Center several miles away, there were almost non-stop calls for help. We were at the same time trying to pull in airstrikes from everywhere that we could. We were going to Air Force. We were going to the Navy, trying to get carrier flights in to help us out. Finally, air units began responding. By mistake, parachute flares were dropped on top of the command post, and they lit up the whole area and all the wounded. So now the wounded were being shot at random by the North Vietnamese outside the perimeter that could see the wounded. I pulled a half a poncho over my face to hide the shine of my face. As soon as I figured out what was going on, that was the last thing I remember for a while [Music].

That’s because, by mistake, a U.S. plane dropped a 500-pound bomb on Stier and the other men. All I saw was black smoke, like a big flash. It’s like when you strike a match. It’s just a big fire, and that was it. The reports that we got back at brigade were, “We’ve been wiped out.” All Kirino remembered in the immediate aftermath of the bomb was the smells, the smell of burnt flesh coupled with the smell of gunpowder and the chemicals, I guess, that were in the bomb, the heat, people who were still severely wounded and hadn’t died yet, moaning, crying out for help. It was something like out of a horror movie. Words come very difficult to describe the actual scene. It’s just something that no one should ever witness.

The bomb essentially killed 30 or 40 people and wounded scores more. We had no officers to lead us. Most of the sergeants had been killed, but everyone worked together, stayed together somehow. Specialist Kirino managed to survive the bomb attack without a scratch. Stier, however, wasn’t as fortunate.

When I woke up, blood was gushing out of my mouth, my nose, my ears. My right arm was gone. I heard guys crying out. I heard ringing mostly, but I heard guys screaming for help. I hollered for help. I hollered, cussing for somebody to get a couple tourniquets on me. I passed out, and miraculously, somehow, I woke up, and when I woke, my bleeding had stopped. I thanked God I was alive. I knew I was going to live then. I knew in my guts I was going to live.

I pulled myself a long ways over bodies, through bodies, through parts of bodies until I got away from the area a little bit, and I pulled two dead guys over the top of me because I figured the North Vietnamese had taken over part of the perimeter, because I was hearing guys scream and holler, and they were talking about North Vietnamese soldiers standing over the top of them. So I pulled two dead guys over top of me, and I drank one of their canteens, and I laid there for, I don’t know. I read one place two days and nights, another place I read three days. I don’t know. In the after-action report, I don’t know.

As dawn broke on the second day, the Operations Center prepared another attack on Hill 875. We spent half a day preparing the battlefield, and we tried to move a battalion forward, and it did not go. I mean, we just could not. The enemy was entrenched. They were in bunkers, and every time we tried to move forward, we were driven back.

For Stier, Kirino, and the other survivors of the mistaken bombing run, it meant enduring a second day and a second night on the hill. I know I’d wake up and I’d pass out, and I’d see the sun come up and go down. I kept hearing the screaming. I kept hearing my friends dying, and I couldn’t help them. They were all crying. They were screaming out. They wanted water. They wanted food. They wanted their mother, brother, you know. They were hurting. I didn’t know what to do. I was anxious. I was afraid.

Kirino crawled out of the perimeter looking for something to ease their pain. He found a jug of water near some dead North Vietnamese. I got the water, and I went back to the center where all the wounded were still, and I poured the water.

We basically stayed in that tight perimeter for the day, just waited anxiously for our buddies to come and relieve us. It wasn’t until the next day, however, U.S. troops were able to move back onto the hill. On the third day, the 4th Battalion moved up the hill, moved through. They brought in supplies that were needed. They brought in water. They brought in medics, and we were able to really stabilize the perimeter.

Specialist Kirino was one of the first to be rescued. It’s New Year’s, you know. Everyone and everything is happy until, you know, just for that moment. Now you felt proud. You felt more confident.

Then they found Specialist Stier. They found me, and the first thing they said was, “Don’t worry about your arm. They’ll put it back on.” They wrapped me up in a poncho because I was pretty ripped up all over, and they just kind of held me together with a plastic poncho, and they threw me up on a helicopter. But what I don’t like to think about and what I don’t like to dwell on is laying there helpless while the guys were crying for help and I couldn’t help them, because we were brothers. You know, we talked to each other with four-letter words, and we would fistfight at the drop of a hat. But when one of the brothers was shot or hurt, we took care of him. We took care of him. We loved each other unto the death, and that’s something I’ve never experienced since Vietnam, probably never will.

For his heroism in battle, Stier received the Silver Star. Kirino, who received the Bronze Star for his meritorious service, stayed at the perimeter the rest of the day, helped evacuate the wounded and identify the dead. I’ve seen people hurt. I’ve seen people dead before that from bullet wounds, but never seen that carnage.

It wasn’t until the 5th day of the battle that units of the 173rd Airborne were finally able to capture Hill 875. They actually moved rather rapidly and in a couple hours got to the top of the hill, just swept over the hill, found bodies, a few bodies, found some equipment, but the enemy overnight had evaporated, pulled back, and evacuated the hill.

In five days of fighting for Hill 875, 121 Americans had been killed, 264 wounded, and another 15 were listed as missing in action. Dak To is a bloody example of how this war of attrition works. There were heavy American casualties as well as heavy North Vietnamese casualties. There’s a sense afterwards somehow that the strategy is working and it will continue, and they really don’t seem to learn the right lessons from Dak To, that attrition is a two-edged sword, and it’s going to wear us down as well as it wears them down.