A Hill to Die On

Near the border between Laos and Vietnam, covered by dense jungle vegetation sat Hill 937. It was known by the people who lived there as Dong Ap Bia, which roughly translates as "the mountain of the crouching beast."

In 1969, it seemed like a very important strategic target to the US Army. Operation Apache Snow would clear the Northern Vietnamese forces from the A Shau Valley, an important supply line to the NVA (Northern Vietnamese Army).

Taking this steep hill seemed like a sure way to disrupt the NVA, and the risk/reward ratio seemed right: few soldiers would need to die with the right logistical support… or so the thinking went.

Instead of a smoothly executed mission with minimal casualties, the US soldiers were immediately faced with a formidable defense of Dong Ap Bia, with NVA soldiers already well entrenched in fortified positions. The hill was steep, and the tropical climate meant it rained a lot.

The 101st Airborne was tasked with the attack. Several times over the ten day battle, these men charged uphill. They faced heavy machine gun fire, artillery attacks, grenades, and mud. They took control of the hill, only to lose it several times. This brutal back-and-forth between the 101st Airborne and the NVA cost more than 70 US soldiers killed and 370 wounded, and more than 600 Vietnamese soldiers killed.

Finally, ten days later—May 20th, 1969—the American soldiers finally took full control of Dong Ap Bia.

Upon consideration, there were more pressing needs than to hold this particular hill, upon which so much blood was shed. It turned out that the strategic nature of Dong Ap Bia may have been overestimated.

Almost inconceivably to the soldiers who had seen some of their closest friends die, the US Army soon abandoned Hill 937. Unsurprisingly, it was reoccupied by the NVA within a month.

Soon after the heartbreakingly futile battle, the soldiers started to cynically call Hill 937 “Hamburger Hill”, since so many soldiers were turned into hamburger for no apparent reason. This attitude became widespread, and the battle became emblematic of the utter futility of the entire Vietnam War to disillusioned soldiers.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was doomed to push the same boulder up a hill every day, only to see the boulder inevitably roll back down to the bottom every time.

Those soldiers of the 101st Airborne must have felt a lot like Sisyphus, watching some of their closest friends die in a repetitive and futile ten-day battle. Hamburger Hill isn’t the only hill people think of when they say “a hill to die on”, but it’s probably the most prominent in the collective memory of Americans.

It’s noteworthy that most of the people who died on Hamburger Hill were Vietnamese soldiers in the NVA. What must the families of those 600 men killed while defending Dong Ap Bia have thought when they watched the American soldiers abandon the hill mere days later?

The Battle for Hamburger Hill was one more crack in the seams of US public support for the war in Vietnam. The dam fully broke later that year, when the biggest antiwar demonstration in US history took place in Washington, DC.

Impossible for Washington to ignore, US troops completely left Vietnam in March of 1973. Hamburger Hill is still a potent symbol of the futility of the war, and a reminder that a fight that seems all-important when you’re in the middle of it can seem shockingly trivial when you’re far away.

Do you know of any other futile battles like this one? Are there other hills that come to mind when you hear the phrase “a hill to die on”?