The Crouching Beast: A United States Army Lieutenant’s Account of the Battle for Hamburger Hill, May 1969

636 Pages·2013·3.61 MB·English

by  Frank Boccia

The Crouching Beast
A United States Army Lieutenant’s Account of the Battle for
Hamburger Hill, May 1969
Frank Boccia
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1308-6
© 2013 Frank Boccia. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Cover photograph: WO Searcey, Genna’s seatmate, guiding in a Ghost Rider
bringing in the first of the Alpha Company troops, at 1300 hours, April 26, 1969.
Genna was badly wounded, and Searcey killed, during the NVA attack that night
(photograph by Pat Lynch)
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Author’s Note
1. The Mountains of Viet Nam
2. Firebase Helen
3. The First Patrol
4. Mud Is the Universal Constant
5. The Poor Guys in Korea
6. The Tiger Dines
7. Black Jack
8. Firebase Barbara
9. Firebase Brick
10. Firebase Rakkasan: Abbot’s Tale
11. March Madness
12. Dickson’s Shining Moment
13. Father Haney’s Lament
14. Dennis Helms, Bravo One Six Romeo
15. The Banana Tree
16. The Rao Trang
17. Zeus Frowns
18. The Crater
19. Death Dance of the Ghost Riders
20. Welcome to the 6th NVA Regimental HQ
21. The Body Bags
22. Rescued by the Gnome
23. Black Jack’s Seminar
24. Firebase Airborne
25. Sergeant Samuel Wright RA
26. Palace Guard
27. The Broken Strap
28. The Ordeal of Bravo Four Six
29. The Clearing
30. The Book of Myles Westman
31. Feeling Our Way
32. Sanguis Agni
33. Logan’s Run
34. The Bamboo Corridor
35. Charlie’s Ridge
36. Fratricide
37. The Number Seventeen
38. The Stain
39. The Storm
40. The Naked Beast
Epilogue
Glossary
List of Names and Terms
Acknowledgments
The list of people who have helped with this manuscript is long. The most
obvious ones are those who have taken the time to provide accounts of their
actions and perceptions during the six months covered in the book: My
brother officers Jerry Wolosenko and Charles Denholm; Joel Trautman and
Dan Bresnahan, who not only gave testimony to what occurred with Alpha
Company but was invaluable in helping me with the discrepancies and
omissions of the after-action report. Gerald “Bob” Harkins, now president
of the Hamburger Hill chapter of the Rakkasans, and Mike Smith have been
extremely helpful and supporting. Luther “Lee” Sanders, then CO of Delta,
and of course, General Honeycutt, who has made me aware of many events
that took place out of my ken during the battle.
I am grateful to Tom Lough, then CO of the 326th Engineers, and several of
the pilots of the Ghost Rider squadron who inserted us into Hill 1485, for
their insights and information: Chris Genna, Gene Franck, Luis Molinar,
Pat Lynch; all these people helped enormously.
And, of course, the men of First Platoon, who have provided both
inspiration and information throughout the years. I am grateful to them all,
but I must single out Dennis and Beverley Helms, and John and Linda
Snyder, for their unrelenting and steadfast support, encouragement and care
over the decades. They are four special people.
Preface
The battle of Dong Ap took place over 11 days, from the 10th to the 20th of May
1969. From a military historian’s perspective, compared to the great battles of
the American Civil War and the two world wars, the battle was modest in its
scope. Initially, it involved five infantry battalions totaling over 2,000 men, as
well as airmen, support artillery, engineers and medical corps personnel from
other commands. Fewer than 100 Americans died, among some 500 or so
casualties; a minuscule number, compared to the Somme, when 20,000 British
soldiers died in less than half an hour, or Cold Harbor, or Saipan.
And yet it caused a firestorm of criticism, and earned its sobriquet Hamburger
Hill. For those of us who were there, the number of casualties was irrelevant.
What mattered was that they were ours, Rakkasans primarily. What mattered to
me was that so many of them were mine; men of First Platoon, Bravo Company,
3rd of the 187th. They and many others left their blood on the mountain called
by the locals Dong Ap Bia—the Mountain of the Crouching Beast.
Casualties were staggering. Alpha Company, the lightest hit of the four
companies of the battalion, took over 30 percent casualties; Bravo, just over 50
percent. Charlie lost 60 percent, after replacements—their original roster
suffered over 75 percent—and Delta a mind-numbing 75 percent including
replacements. When the battalion CP dead and wounded were added, the total
represented 60 percent of the entire unit. This is stunning. The two wars in which
unit casualties had been the highest, the American Civil War and the First World
War, had rarely seen units suffer as much as 50 percent dead and wounded. At
the battle of the Somme, which by all accounts represents the nadir in military
tactics and is the bloodiest, most sickening example of carnage and destruction
the modern world has ever seen on a battlefield, a unit that took 50 percent
casualties was classified as destroyed. Such a unit would normally be disbanded.
Three of the four company commanders were wounded, two seriously. Of the 14
original platoon leaders, only four made it through the battle, and two of them
were lightly wounded; three of the five replacement platoon leaders were also
wounded or killed. Three of the four FOs—forward observers—went down; the
battalion CO, Lt Col Honeycutt, was wounded twice. NCOs, senior and junior,
were also disproportionate casualties: Bravo Company alone lost a first sergeant,
were also disproportionate casualties: Bravo Company alone lost a first sergeant,
two platoon sergeants and nine squad leaders.
The enemy suffered even greater loss. Some 600 dead were buried on the hill
itself, in mass graves bulldozed into the flanks of the mountain, but the
testimony of the Montagnard tribe that formed the support battalion for the NVA
29th Regiment, who took the brunt of the action, indicates that more than 1,000
died and hundreds more were wounded.
The politicians, predictably, were not long in making their opinions known. Ted
Kennedy, then still a new and junior senator, denounced the action on the floor;
scathing editorials were written, in which the stupidity of the generals was
excoriated, particularly so when it was announced, a few weeks later, that we
were abandoning the hill we had purchased so dearly.
But no war in our history has been as badly reported and as thoroughly
misunderstood as the war in Viet Nam, and this is but an example of that. The
fact is that we never set out to capture Hill 937; it wasn’t even mentioned in our
briefings before the operation. Contrary to published reports, it does not
dominate the A Shau valley; there are too many intervening ridges and hills, and
the valley floor can’t be seen from its summit. Even on the second day, the 11th,
when I was told to move my platoon up the southwestern flank of the hill, it was
with the purpose of establishing a battalion CP on top. We had no interest in the
hill as a topographical feature, and the only other thing we heard initially was a
vague and unsubstantiated reference to a possible NVA supply complex there.
No, we didn’t care about the hill. We were there to seek out, find, engage and
kill the enemy—the North Vietnamese Army. We didn’t expect them to hold and
fight; they seldom did, in the face of as many troops as we had. And when they
did hold, and not disappear over the Laotian border, only two kilometers distant,
we moved in on them and mauled them until they broke.
There was a reason they held their ground. Dong Ap Bia was one of the most
heavily fortified hills in all of Viet Nam. It was a perfect defensive position; the
ridges leading to its summit were long, narrow and steep-sided, making
maneuvering impossible. Laos, as mentioned, was only a couple of kilometers
distant, and across its borders were replacements, resupply, medical facilities
and a safe avenue of retreat. Other supply areas were within a few kilometers,
and so were other regiments, poised to strike our firebases and flanks—as they
did on Firebase Airborne, the evening of the 12th.
did on Firebase Airborne, the evening of the 12th.
The ridge Bravo Company followed, the central of the three western approaches
to the hilltop, led eventually to a small clearing; it was a true razorback ridge, no
more than a meter or so wide as it approached the crest, and the flanks were not
only deep and steep, but choked with dense triple-canopy vegetation. Movement
along those ridge flanks was impossible. So in order to reach the top, we had to
go through the clearing, about 20 meters wide and perhaps 30 deep, dominated
by two small knolls at its eastern end, and by the mountain summit and other,
higher ridges on either side.
It was full of bunkers, spider holes and automatic weapons positions, and
guarded by claymores, shape charges, trip wired grenades and direct RPG fire. I
have never seen or heard or read of a more perfect—and deadly—defensive
position.
So a good part of this book deals with what we went through to breach that
clearing, over the 11 days in May. But I begin it much earlier than that, months
before May; in mid–December, and it starts not in the A Shau but on a firebase
many kilometers to the east called Helen, high on a ridge overlooking the
imperial capital of Hue and, not coincidentally, a sprawling base camp called
Evans, the home of the Third Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.
It is not that anything of historical significance took place during those
intervening months; there were no major battles, and for my platoon, at any rate,
no meaningful contact until late April, on Dong Ngai. And when I do begin to
recount the battle, my perspective is, by necessity, narrowly focused. The story
as I wrote it is not a history, although I emphasize that it is accurate; I have had
access to, along with my memory (excellent in my youth), my diary, kept on
almost a daily basis; my notebook used while in the field; my letters home; after-
action reports; oral and written accounts from other participants, and the research
of others who wrote about the battle. But in the main, what I write about is what
I saw and experienced directly.
It is not a history, but a drama; real, about real events and real people, but a
drama. Its protagonists are for the most part the men of First Platoon; I write
about them because I know of no other group of men whose story deserves to be
told more than theirs. I try to present them as they are; neither cartoon heroes nor
unthinking automatons, but human beings of almost incredible resource,
resiliency and resolve. They are your neighbors and employees, sons and
husbands, students and teachers. And they did extraordinary things. What they