Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 344 - The Battle of Hamburger Hill

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Support the show on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/c/lionsledbydonkeys Check out our Merch! https://llbdmerch.com/ Francis joins Joe to talk about one of the most memorable battles of the Vietnam War, which was completely and utterly pointless. Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20190515114632/https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/images/1683/168300010494.pdf https://www.history.com/news/hamburger-hill-controversy Frank Boccia. The Crouching Beast: A United States Army Lieutenant's Account of the Battle for Hamburger Hill Robert L. Durham. 101st Airborne fight for Hamburger Hill. Military Heritage. Vol. 21, No. 4

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and the link will also Ed by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Francis. We're standing in front of the draft board in the US circa the 1960s. Neither of us want to be in the army, especially not during the Vietnam War. We tried everything to get out of it, but yet here we are. Francis comes to me with a brilliant plan. We will simply pretend that we're crazy. First, we smoke an absolutely god-awful amount of meth. Then, as our teeth begin to melt, he tells me that we have to start shitting our pants.

To prepare, we go to our local Taco Bell and just load up before absolutely unloading on ourselves. Now ripped to the gills on meth and covered in her own shit, the draft board inspects us. Slowly, they begin to laugh and plop a stamp down on top of our paperwork. One of the officers says our plans would have worked if a man named Ted Nugent didn't already do this exact thing and were promptly sent to boot camp. Oh, he did go to boot camp?

I thought he got out of it. He got out of it. This is the original story that he told publicly was that he shit and pissed all over himself for days before he went to the draft board in order to get like a mental health deferment. He has since attempted to backpedal that because, you know, he's turned into a hyper right wing pro-military conservative. Mm-hmm. Despite the fact his paperwork shows that he was disqualified for a physical or mental disability. Which, you know, probably if he's shitting himself.

And I do have to point out here, in case people are maybe a new listener to the show, I have nothing against people dodging the draft. Absolutely. That's the only cool thing Ted Nugent ever did. But I do have a problem with someone dodging the draft, making jokes about it, and then down the road turning into an absolute psychotic warhawk. That's where you become a dickhead to me. Donald Trump skipping the draft is like one of the few things that like, all right, I I can get behind him on that and like everybody loves to warhawk him about that about like oh Fucking draft dodger like yeah, man, Vietnam fucking sucked. I wouldn't want to go there either I would dodge that draft too if I could I think we would have done better if we just tried to kiss in front of the

The draft board or something probably would have been easier than doing meth and shitting ourselves I mean true we could just crawl into one another's mouths. That was this qualifying back the draft board or something. Probably would have been easier than doing meth and shitting ourselves. I mean, true, we could just crawl into one another's mouths. That was disqualifying back then. Just turn off the lights and play a nice rousing game of who's inside me. Excuse me, sergeants, I would love to go to Vietnam, but my back walls have been effectively blown out,

and I think that makes me a 4F. You see, I'm just far too gay for this war, sir. I can't possibly. Now, Francis, we're both American, so I have to ask you a question. OK. You like a good burger, right? I love a burger.

What's your favorite kind of burger? Hmm. That's a hard question, because there's just so many ways to make burgers. But you know, I'm a classic. You know, burger patty, bun, you can add a little bit to the meat, a little Worcester, little garlic powder, little onion powder, you know, spice it up, maybe do a little cheese inside of there, inside of the burger itself, you know.

There's a lot of different ways that you can do burgers. So you know, favorite burger, my favorite burger is just burger, I think. Yeah, I am probably the guy that everybody hates, right? Like those giant over the top sloppy ass burgers that like each restaurant tries to outdo the other with more dumb shit on top of it. I order them every time. Did you ever see the Cumburger? The one that's got the cheese inside the bun.

So when you cut into it, like it just like, it's like, it's coming all over you. It was like from a fucking Tik TOK video or something, right? That was before Tik TOK. Cumburger was a pre-tok cum burger was was uh Predates tik-tok as far as i remember i can say with full confidence i've never eaten a cum burger Uh which is that was something i'm missing out see we've established that we love burgers isn't that fun because we're talking about the battle of hamburger hill yeah I watched that movie yeah yeah the movie came out weirdly close to what it actually happened like homie like I think ten years or so yeah this is back when you know you made when you made war movies about the war like one of my favorite war movies is style like 17 which is

made like maybe eight nine years after the end of World War two hmm well I'm not gonna say that they didn't make movies after our war. They just made really shitty movies after our war that nobody wanted to see. They're so bad. The only good way. I mean, it's not a movie. It's generation kill. Right. That was like, you know, that was taking place when I was still in school, but that's by far the best quote unquote global war on terror. Yes.

Of media that's ever been made other than my book, whoigans of Kandahar which you could buy anywhere you read books any war that tried to you know I feel like there's a lot more heroic shit happening like nothing heroic happened like how are you gonna get an hour 45 minutes about twisting my ankle while going down to subway you know like I don't I think that's why I like Generation Kill so much, is like, the fighting is very, a very, very small sliver of it. Yeah. It's mostly just a bunch of people being intensely bored

and ripped to the gills on caffeine and coming up with new and inventive ways of how to jerk off in a boxhole, which is why it's so realistic. Not a lot of bayonet charges happen in that motherfucker. I want to see the World War II, like, Christopher Nolan, you know, whatever, Dunkirk, but like at least 20 minutes of it is jerking off in the porta potty. Make it real.

If someone eventually options the hooligans of Kandahar for a film, that is most of it. That and diarrhea, copious amounts of diarrhea. A lot of shitting. A lot of shitting. I had Disson sherry multiple times. Yeah, you go in there and you do the poop Jerk, yeah You got to get it all out clear every pipe now the reason why?

This battle got named hamburger hill is because it became so horrifically brutal that it ground soldiers down to hamburger meat And that we'll talk more about how this name came to be and it's not Probably what you think of how it came up that way and to understand why a bunch of people ended up dying Pointlessly over a hill marked on American maps with only the number 937 we have to understand well we have to understand a lot about Vietnam's entire history But we have to speed that up a bit because this is not a series. Adam- I was going to say, I feel like why Americans had to die needlessly on a numbered hill in the middle of Vietnam. You can ask that question about any hill inside of Vietnam between 1965 and 1974. That is also true. You have to understand a little bit about Vietnam's history about being

colonized more specifically in the context of this episode, the Aisha Valley. The valley is one of many nerve centers for North Vietnamese military efforts into South Vietnam, and probably one of the most important in the late 1960s phase of the war. The valley is near the Laotian border, and we already did a whole episode about that and why that would become important. It's less than a miles away from the north south of DMZ and is an absolute fucking nightmare to attack. The bottom of the valley is carpeted with tall grass, that kind that is known as elephant grass,

like as tall as a man, or perhaps as tall as an elephant. Maybe it's a short elephant, I don't know. I've never been to Vietnam. I don't know if they got tiny elephants over there. Maybe they're small. And it's flanked on either side by forest covered mountains and ridges. It was said by the Vietnamese, if you know the valley, it's your best friend.

And you know, the way to add that is, and if you don't, you are fucked. I mean, look, any battle up a hill is going to suck. Like no matter what, if you as ObiWan once said I have the high ground and you know he considered himself winning because up a hill sucks like anybody shooting down where the valley sucks I can attest to that you're a big target especially for everybody who's not in the valley and up on top of a mountain peak yeah you come up with a glorious revolutionary battle plan of hey look at those dickheads walking through the valley.

We should shoot at them. Fuck it. Fuck those guys. We should kill those guys. So it should come as no surprise the North used this valley as a staging and deployment point during the Tet Offensive. It snuffed out all the times the US tried to build a base there and constant American offensives into the valley really amounted to nothing. Because Northern troops... Okay, so for the context of this episode, I'm using the term NVA or the North Vietnamese Army, also the People's Army of Vietnam, sometimes depending on who is saying it. There's also Viet Cong, NVA, all these other things.

I'm just going to describe them all as NVA. And that's because this is mostly the effort of regular troops from North Vietnam. Unlike the popular misconception of the Vietnam War of the Americans fighting a bunch of slipper slash sandal wearing dudes in the jungle, that just wasn't true. The North Vietnamese military was quite modern, very well equipped and well trained by both China and the Soviet Union. These were as regular as an American conscript was. Yeah. The whole pajama flip-flop dudes with AK-47s.

They also had tanks. They had lots of tanks. They had aircraft. They had artillery support. They had everything. They knew how to call in an airstrike. You know, it's something, something that you and I never had to deal with. Cause nobody was ever in an airstrike, you know. Yes. It's something that you and I never had to deal with because nobody was ever calling an airstrike in against us. No, no. Except our own people, you know, but that's... Hold that thought, Francis.

Oh, I remember that part of the movie. Don't worry. The Northern troops in general, they didn't sit their heels down and fight toe-to-toe general, they didn't sit their heels down and fight toe to toe against the Americans in a so-called set piece battle, and that is what the Americans were desperately looking for. Previous to this, when American troops mounted offensives into the Asia, the Northern troops would engage them, bloody them a bit, and then fuck off. Because, wouldn't you know it, they didn't want to sit around and fight because it's not what their battle plan was. They knew Americans would come in and they would eventually leave. So losing a bunch of soldiers over a meaningless patch of dirt meant nothing.

Yeah. The Americans would leave and you could just move back in. We tend to do that with our overseas. Except we still haven't left Germany though. I think the Germans are still waiting for us to... It's because the Germans deserve it You can't leave the Germans unattended. We can't you can't even 80 years later, man You gotta know gotta put something on them Each operation was largely a failure in that the United States want to engage a large body of NVA soldiers in open battle

Who of course didn't want to do that because why would they? However each time they did find evidence that the valley was home to a massive base and network system for the NVA troops in the south. American General Creighton Abrams decided on a, let's say a common military strategy that one of us may have heard of and have been involved in and that is you know one more operation might fix this. Bro, bro. We're rounded a corner homie. General, general, bro listen to me once more up that hill I guarantee it. You know the other 12 times you know the Luigi Cadorna school of thought

the other 11 didn't work the 12th must be different see the thing this all just comes back to corpse Infrastructure, you know you put enough bodies on the mountaintop And then everybody else can hide behind the bodies as they go up I hear me out here Francis you stuff enough dead bodies into a valley it fills the valley up no more valley Yeah, no more valley just full of dead soldiers Yeah, it's full of 18 year olds from Pennsylvania who are just chalked to the gills with heroin. Yeah. That's how you know you're having fun.

Look, we didn't have good drugs in our war either. I know that you got to hold a hash at one point, but I'll be, yeah. Yeah. We were in a country full of heroin and I never saw any heroin, but I mean, I was also a huge nerd, so I'm sure nobody. There was a lot of opium. I saw that the, uh, the Afghan police were smoking the hell out of it. Yeah. Those dudes never shared.

No, they were never sober and I don't blame them. Yeah. It was never like, oh, hey, let's bond with the soldiers by banging some opium into our veins. No, it's just we're going to do opium and lose this war real quick and we want you guys to come along for the ride. I don't know what the point of any of it was, but you know, I was 20 years old. Ah, that's the fun part. Nothing. To defend my former Afghan peers over there, you know what makes incredibly long, boring, pointless foot patrols more interesting? Big rip to the gills on Ope. Being high as fuck and being like, at how beautiful go buy better beautiful these mountains

I don't know. I don't know how heroin works Maybe I don't know if it's a look how beautiful the mountains are or it's a thing. It just makes you sleepy. Yeah Which I you know me as somebody who's already lazy. That's why I've never really liked Downers too much. This is just some I'm already I'm already sleepy man I don't need to do opium to be sleepy and then then in a war zone, like that's why we drank. I never got ahold of weed while I was over there, unfortunately, but we all have regrets from war, Joe. Mine was not doing enough drugs.

None of my regrets are hash based mostly, I feel comfortable saying. I did drink some local hooch in Afghanistan that could have powered some of the, some of the tank engines, but other than that. Oh yeah, that shit could have peeled paint off the walls now all of this led to operation apache snow in may of 1969 apache snow was a huge undertaking because abrams believed that the previous operations failed simply because they were too small to find and pin down the nva elements that might be in the a

shop they just didn't want it enough man you just we need we need more soldiers who really want it to find and pin down the NVA elements that might be in the A-Shot. They just didn't want it enough, man. We need more soldiers who really want it, who really want to die on this hill and have maybe the third or fourth best Vietnam movie made after them. Yeah, the Vietnam-era US military is famous for people really believing in the war. Yeah, I loved it. That's why they're all there. They all went willingly to go over, because they heard there's some great heroin over there.

Yeah. Hey, they had to bring it back to really jumpstart Midwest culture of doing a fuck load of heroin, you know? Yeah, if only they had known like, look, man, just don't go to Vietnam. Give it another 10 years. Eventually the Sacklers will exist and you don't have to do track lines, but just give you pills, man. I know lines but just give you pills man. I know they just had to wait.

Yeah fools bring back as much copper as you can from Vietnam. Now you're speaking my language baby. So this time around he was going to fix that by using 2,000 soldiers and a combination of the 101st Airborne Division and the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam or ARVN, their third regiment which we have established sounds like a really shitty knockoff of Alvin and the chipmunks Arvin and Sarah Arvin and the ferrets as I think what Nate and I called it it sounds like an anime character of some kind yeah yeah but

what that does nothing but post L's yeah cuz it is our that anime character has since moved to LA to start the most racist quarter store known to man and still proudly fly the South Vietnamese flag outside. Abrams thought the key part of this plan was surprise and obviously you can't really surprise anyone with thousands of dudes landing via helicopter. But what you can do is try to get the other guy from guessing where exactly they would be landing. And the plan was pretty simple. Each unit of the US and the Arvin military had a set area to patrol through and see if anything was going to happen.

Their plan boiled down to the tried and true of all counterinsurgency operations. Walk around for a little while and see if you get shot at. I'm glad the tactics haven't changed, You know, like even during the crusades, it was walk around and tell somebody shoots an arrow at you, you know, yeah, yeah, famously at this always works. I mean somebody will eventually shoot at you. Yes, if you're big enough asshole, someone will eventually shoot at you.

Yeah, if a unit got shot at a lot, they would decide if like this was the major engagement they were looking for, and if it was, they would be reinforced, hopefully bringing the NVA into the fabled sought after large scale battle. That was it. That was it. That was the entire operational plan. Walk around, wait until you get shot at.

But wait until you get shot at by a large enough element, right? Yeah, but how could you tell like if you're like a fucking conscript or whatever and you know a buck sergeant who back then Of course very little professional education for for those guys It's like are we getting shot at a little bit or a lot right now? I don't know. I just know who's getting shot at and I don't like it What is the the smart books that we used to have to carry in basic training? You got to flip around. It's like how many bullets have been shot at us?

How many is it a tank round? Is it a fully automatic? And then now do I get to call somebody in? I'm sure that they had some sort of means tested firefight. Right. I don't know. They only killed Steve, so I think we're good.

Yeah, we brought 150 guys and fifty guys here and only And only a hundred and forty eight are still walking So, you know, we need at least five more people to die before we get before we get our the Apache's come We're actual Apache's involved in Apache snow at least no. No, they weren't around yet Cobras just kind of like, you know a baby Apache I suppose Call it a Cobra. I don't think G.I. Joe existed then either. So Cobra wasn't the bad guys yet. You know, I listened to your episode about good operations names and, you know,

once again, Apache snow sounds cool as hell. Yeah, they just don't make them like they used to. If I'm going to die senselessly in a valley in Vietnam, it better be for a cool sounding name. Yeah, it's like a helicopter doing a boatload of cocaine. Now you just get like Operation Liberty Eagle and dumb shit like that. I mean we're losing the operations regardless We might as well have a sick name. The second Apache snow was the CIA doing Aerial reconnaissance inside of South America. Yeah. Yeah, we need more cocaine. So this is Apache snow All right. There we go

I really hope someone makes fan art of an Apache doing a boatload of cocaine Like and when I say this was the the entire plan. I mean it they had no idea of details on the enemy size Location if they were even there as one officer puts it quote quote, they had no idea. They were just like us going in raw, which in retrospect must have met something different back then than it does today. Yeah. You know that we're going in raw and having a gay time meant a lot of different things 50 to 60 years ago. None of them good in Vietnam. Tell you that. No, I definitely don't want to go raw into anywhere. There's nothing raw or gay that was fun in Vietnam

And I don't know maybe unless you're doing a whole lot of heroin. Maybe it was wrong gay, but that sounds pretty wrong So using artillery from a nearby firebase Abrams had 30 total spots bombed to hell in a clearing operation And this was commonplace for the time, blowing trees and debris and all that, whatever the hell else might be in the way, into the distance with artillery and airstrikes making landing zones for helicopters. And despite blowing up 30 different spots, he planned on only using 5 of them for the actual landings, as well as constantly rotating which ones he used. That is the only element of surprise here.

Which again is ruined by the big fucking helicopter coming down at landing. But it's kind of a surprise. Yeah I mean look I imagine these guys I don't know how much these guys had like the NVA had in radar and knowing when something's coming but like you know a helicopter coming up over the hill it's like oh shit there's a helicopter like yeah it's not secretive but yeah. Oh look helicopter. Yeah. You can hear them from quite a ways away. They make a lot of noise. They do. But like, you know, you still have like, oh shit, we got 20 minutes to scramble and get on these guys. If it was the stealth Black Hawk, you get a free Black Hawk at the

end of it. Because they just crash it directly into your house. The landings began on May 10th, 1969 and started like so many other of these so-called search and destroy missions. Soldiers encountered a little bit of light resistance and found a few caches of weapons and radios here and there. They even managed to capture some documents that did give some intelligence that said that there was a sizable enemy presence in the valley, including an entire enemy regiment I do need to point out here though. The Aisha Valley is huge. That's like saying there might be an enemy regiment in

Rhode Island Well, thanks. It really whittles it down there could be though. Yeah, there could be let's not let Rhode Island off the hook here Tiny-ass yeah can't trust them. They're like the Germans. They have to be occupied. At all times. What do you even call a Rhode Island person? Rhode Islander? I think so. Rhodey? You can't say Rhodey because it makes them sound like they're a racist from Rhodesia. Are they even a state or are they commonwealth, like Massachusetts?

I don't know. I don't recognize their sovereignty. I don't recognize any place I can't find on a map, and that's Rhode Island because it's tiny. Rhode Island ancest it's tiny Rhode Island Ancestrally belongs to Albania. That's for them to decide. It's all Albania all the way down. I tell you I love the Albanians that move to America and set up companies here because we have a couple of them and you know They're Albanian because they fucking love that double-headed eagle which to be fair is pretty badass. It slaps Yeah, as far as flags go, it's up there.

It is, like, I would put that on all of my shit too because it is a pretty, like, it's a cool looking double-headed eagle but like doesn't have any like horrible historical context to it. Give it time. The stars and bars, the Confederate flag, like it's kind of a cool looking flag. Unfortunately, it's the flag of a bunch of assholes.

So if you have a flag with like, you know, a red flag with a black eagle on it, that's like simple. The jumps out at you. It's not like a fucking boring tricolor of some kind. Like nobody cares about three stripes, man. The only three stripes anybody should care about to Ditas. Exactly. Also on the Albanian flag.

Exactly. The eagle is wearing three stripes. Now all of this is being led by a lieutenant colonel name alert here Weldon tiger honey cut. Oh, hell. Yeah tiger being a nickname that is a middle name But yeah, how much would your parents have to hate you to name you tiger? I'm sorry That's a badass name though Like if I'm gonna die senselessly in a valley in Vietnam one, I I better have a good operation name. Two, I better have a good nickname from my friends. I don't want to be going on Operation Enduring Southern Vietnam and be,

you know, nicknamed baby face or something like that. That's just not good. You're not going to have a good time there. You don't want your Lieutenant Colonel to be named baby face. Exactly. It's a good reason why Nate never became a Lieutenant Colonel. Otherwise that would have been his name. Exactly. It's a good reason why Nate never became a lieutenant colonel. Otherwise that would have been his name It's like being commanded by like the baby for the baby's face of the son from Teletubbies Or you know, oh, you know what they should make a version of boss baby That is general baby or maybe sergeant major baby

Admiral baby gets caught up in the fat letter Keeps banging prostitutes. But I will say, don't be too happy about being commanded by a guy named Weldon Tiger Honeycut quite yet. Now, he looks off into the distance and sees what on his map is labeled Hill 937, which is just its height in meters. Nobody thought this thing was important, but its vantage point stuck out to him. It was tall, stood on its own without anything else

around it, with a good command of the valley. Honeycutt's decision making process boiled down to, well, if I was going to build the position in the valley, I'd put it there. So maybe they would too. Also, if they didn't, well, now I'd have a good position. That is the best decision he's going to make. That is a correct assumption. That is a, you should be, you want an observation point. You know, I was in Assadabad for a while, that's in a valley, and they put observation points all around so that we wouldn't get rocketed on a regular basis. Instead the observation points got rocketed instead.

Ah yes, Team Human Shield. I was on one of those observation points. At one point I was like, can I go up to the observation point with you guys? You know, just like, spend a day out there. They're like, no, we spend a week up there. It's a fucking half a day walk and you're just gonna be stuck there eating MREs and shitting in bags.

Like, well, that's enough for my public affairs experience here. I'm gonna get back on a helicopter and have a local national do my laundry. Thank you. We fought two very different wars. We did. Hey, I took some quality shits into those bags, Francis.

Don't you hate on my process? I've had, hey, I've shit in a wag bag before. I've had the full experience of pooping in a hole in the middle of nowhere. You know, there's a reason why I became public affairs, though, is because you don't do that very often. Yeah, and I don't hate you for it. It's called maturity. You know know when you're younger and your

Combat armed soldier you hate people with your job because like why didn't I fucking think of that? I loved letting the other e5s in Iraq when I went knows it's like, you know We make the same amount of money and I have an air-conditioned hooch all to myself So yeah, I'm gonna go take a nice hot shower and eat a good meal. You enjoy hating your life. Well, neither of those were really anything that anybody had. Well, we definitely had hot showers because all of the water tanks were above ground. So like you had no other option than a hot shower when it was 130 degrees all day.

Yeah. Well, a cold shower is refreshing until it's not. Yeah. Now tiger or honey cut. I'm not going to keep calling him tiger cause I'm, I'm going to is refreshing until it's not. Yeah. Now Tiger, or Honeycutt, I'm not gonna keep calling him Tiger because I'm gonna give you a little spoiler here. He doesn't deserve such a cool nickname. Honeycutt orders two of his companies to go up and recon the hill and tell them if they find anything.

The detailed orders are literally not much better than what I just said. Just go up that hill, see what happens. See what you see, yeah. Go up there, see if you get shot at. And most importantly, see if you can get to the top before it gets dark outside. They didn't. By dusk, they ran into the first defenders of what would eventually earn the nickname Hamburger Hill.

And the two companies dropped back and called in fire support to bomb the living shit out of them. The next morning, they found the incoming fire had turned the hill, which was normally covered in trees and bamboo thickets, into something of an obstacle course. Because it's not like it just evaporates trees and bamboo is famously tough. It just kind of turns it into a jungle gym, but one that will kill you. Yeah, nothing like having to haul your 60 pounds of gear up a hill over a bunch of logs and shit. Just make it a little bit. I mean, look, I get it. You got to blow the hell out of it, but that's one of those drop some napalm on it and give it three days kind of things, I would think, instead of just

dropping bombs on it. But you know what? I'm not General Honeycutt. You know, hindsight's always 2020s. How dare you? Lieutenant Colonel Honeycutt. Lieutenant Colonel. I'm not the tiger of the valley here. Yeah. Don't you promote that man. At best, the soldiers had maybe a hundred meters of visibility, which is, you know, famously bad. Not a lot. Yeah. It's not enough, I'll say.

I don't want to get in a firefight with a guy a hundred meters away from me. That's bad. That's called close quarters, and that's when you die. Yeah, I don't like my odds. They didn't really see the enemies outside of a few dead bodies and a blood trail leading them further up the hill. When they reported this, they were ordered to keep going and locate where the enemy wounded had been taken because that would of course lead them to some form of headquarters.

I'm just thinking of like Vietnamese Bane who's just standing there is like, they expect one of us dead on the hill brother and Just to keep dragging the Americans up the hill pick up your car and snap your back You merely showed up to hamburger hill I was born into it I can't do a Bane I can't do accents I'm not the accent guy. No, you're not. That's fine. I mean, Tom Hardy's Bane kinda just sounds like Scooby-Doo to me. Hahahaha. Ruh-roh, Batman. Yeah.

Hahaha. So they begin following the blood trail, and as they go, they find communications wires sticking out of the dirt and clearly leading to the nearby Laotian border, which is only about a kilometer away. There is obvious hints that something bad was going to happen, but the soldiers didn't really have time to do anything further before snipers opened fire on them. Then the NVA burst out of the ground in front of them. Oh god. Oh no. Now we have communist Diglett. because famously the NBA to escape air attacks and aerial reconnaissance built

tunnel networks. There's these pop-up holes that are always nicknamed spider holes which would be very well camouflaged to the point that you could not see them until a man appeared in them in front of you. Just the ground opening up and little Vietnamese people with AK-47s popping out of the ground. Not a good time. Yeah, and unlike Diglett, super effective. Super effective. The NVA used surprise attack. It's super effective.

Sand attack. Now this happened in front of them, besides them, even behind them sometimes as they were going, and within seconds they're getting shot at from every direction. They're dropping left and right. One guy was shot directly in a claymore mine that he happened to be carrying, blowing him to pieces like something out of a fucking video game and I have to say I did not know that was possible. It was a test too by a firsthand account of an American veteran of the war. Maybe he blew up from something else but I do know a man exploded.

At some point in time, a Claymore mine detonated on this man. Now, the exact detonation sequence we don't know. Maybe he was a suicide bomber. Maybe it's part of project 100,000. We're just like, man, you all dumb as fuck. We're just gonna strap you full of Claymore mines. Yeah, it's like ye olde Vietnam ERP, you know, the explosive, you know,

reactive armor or ERA, sorry. Infantry ERA. We're just going to put yourself full of plastic explosives. You can't blow me up. I'll blow me up. Exactly. And I'll blow up in seven different directions. And you know, in a war like this, where you got a whole bunch of people

popping up all over the place, that's pretty good, unless literally anybody is standing next to you. So there was a few people standing next to him They caught like shrapnel I don't know if it was like the balls inside of a claymore mine or possibly a shard of this man's bone I Got fucking Phil's tooth lodged in my face Little bit a little bit of everything in there a little potpourri of Phil here Phil Pery at this point everybody scampers trying to run for cover and just what they thought they found cover more NVA soldiers pop out of more spider holes that begin shooting at them as

Frank Bosia an officer who was there and wrote a book called The Crouching Beast about the battle, which is pretty good as one of the sources I used, said quote hollow booms claymores two doll flat slams RPGs AK-47s like a stabbing icicle the sounds registered and then a vicious mind-freezing deep thumping, the pounding crushing sound of a 51 caliber machine gun. Then the screaming started, yells for help, or a medic, an inarticulate scream of fear and agony. This all happened within seconds.

The way Frank Bosia describes it is like they're walking through this place which is completely quiet, no gunshots whatsoever, and then suddenly the world exploded. That sounds like a bad time I guess you've got the guys coming out of the spider holes you've got directed artillery coming at you how are these guys communicating like how is the NBA like? They have radios. Okay. Yeah they have radios they have hardwired radios because this is a prepared defensive position. Well this is a army, right? Yeah, yeah. One American, Lieutenant Charles Denholm, lost his rifle because he ran away so quickly, and then tripped and fell, found himself landing right alongside one of these spider holes.

At the same time, an NVA soldier popped out of it to shoot at him, leaving Denholm to literally dive head first down the hole, armed only with a knife, and begins frantically stabbing his way through the tunnel, because then he got lost and had to stab his way out of the tunnel. But they did succeed in something in all of this, kind of. They did find the main enemy position in the Aesha Valley, however, they were now paralyzed and unable to move because of all the chaos. Nobody had any idea where like the companies immediately get separated by Platoon.

The Platoons have no idea where one another are. Dudes are getting lost down fucking tunnels. People are exploding. It's complete utter chaos. And to Honeycutt, this is exactly what he wanted. He immediately ordered more companies up the hill because he had finally located a fight, thinking he was going to have this real battle that America always wins, right? Which is funny because we don't.

We don't always win those battles. No! I mean, it could be argued that the US loses this battle, but we'll get to that point. Which is funny because we don't always win those battles. No! It could be argued that the US loses this battle, but we'll get to that point. Honeycutt is in a great mood, and then a Cobra attack helicopter whirls around and bombs the living shit out of his command post on accident. It kills two people and wounds 35. And if that wasn't bad enough, NVA artillery stationed over

the border at Laos then begin to shell him too. In the accidental team up Honeycutt's command post is entirely destroyed and he is forced to run through the jungle ordering Mormon to go up the hill. And they do. American artillery and air power continued to bomb the hill as well. And this is normally a good thing. However, it has unintended consequences. Namely, bombs and shells blow huge clearings into the hill. Clearings that now have no cover or concealment. Clearings that American soldiers would now have to run through

in order to get up the hill and reinforce the people already there. I bet the tunnels are doing great during this whole time though. Oh, they're completely unscathed. The bombing is just literally just fucking over the Americans at this point. Yeah. Pretty much every, uh, all of this is just really like, uh, and still over a hit. Like there's other hills I imagine, right?

Like you could probably not in the immediate vicinity, but nearby. Sure. It's like, maybe this hill isn't worth it. But, you know, also I'm not a bloodthirsty American lieutenant colonel. So no, no Americans were discovering this little problem of like suddenly they're running through the open up a hill around the same time they discovered that. Oh, fuck. The NBA have bunkers and trenches built into the hill and they're now firing directly down onto them. And of course the bombing and artillery made them shooting at them much much easier because now they

have nothing to hide behind. Yeah it's great. It's your own Vietnamese D-Day man. Just run across the beach into withering machine gun fire. You have a great time. These positions were made purposefully so they could not be seen from the outside. We're not talking about World War Two style concrete bunkers sticking out of the top of a mountain. The NVA created everything with one thought in mind, hiding from air power, recon, or attack. These positions are built into the hills themselves and camouflaged to the point that you could not see them until you were looking directly at them from a few meters away. Until there's a little guy in NVA uniform popping out of a hole at you. Yeah, yeah, then you get the

surprise hole. The worst jack-in-the-box ever. I mean best if you have to be the Vietnamese guy, that must rule. Like surprise motherfuckers. So Americans are finding the positions pretty much as they were walking up on them, meaning every firefight happened at nearly point-blank range. This also meant that for the Americans to call in fire support, whether air or artillery, they would have to withdraw first, making enough space so they didn't accidentally blow themselves up with their own power. Again, or more often.

Or what will happen again later in this episode. This meant that every time the Americans happened to gain ground, they would run into a bunker, withdraw, haul in a bombing run or a bombardment, which would barely scratch the fucking bunker, only for them to have to climb back up the hill right back at the same bunker. Each time one American platoon or company advanced, it would be shattered to pieces, pick up its wounded and run back down the hill right back at the same bunker. Each time one American platoon or company advanced, it would be shattered to pieces, pick up its wounded, and run back down the hill. Americans were also discovering that the positions

that the NVA built were too strong for any of their personal weapons to destroy, unless they got lucky enough to slot the bunker straight through the opening with the shoulder-fired rocket, which I need to point out here, shoulder-fired rockets are not like they seem in video games in the movies they're actually wildly inaccurate it's an unguided rocket like they're not made to be slotted through a bunker and of course modern day rockets are more accurate

than the ones back then were but the shoulder fired ones that the average infantryman carries not that much more nope nope no i've Nope. I fired them. They're not that accurate. Nope. That's just kind of like anytime you hear a helicopter being taken down by an RPG that's like either that's the luckiest shot you've ever heard. Like Francis hold that thought. I know. I know. Don't worry. That's coming baby. But the NVA also knew this so dudes carrying rockets have to be on the top of their snipers hit lists right below dudes carrying radios and anyone who happened to look like they were in command just under machine gunners. They had like, you know, a hierarchy of who they

needed to dome the most. Honeycutt was clearly in over his head. When he tried to get another landing zone made closer to the hill so he could more easily command the operation, the helicopter that was carrying the engineering crew to do the job was nearly shot down. So he called in more airstrikes on the hill to silence the enemy guns, only for the next helicopter coming in to get hit by an RPG and explode. Like you said, they're not accurate. They're not easy to hit a target, a moving target in the air with an RPG. So that dude's either like the fucking sniper with the RPG or he's like me playing Call

of Duty and he's just really fucking lucky. He just hop up and down so you don't get shot at. I will say the NBA practiced a lot at doing this because it was a very effective anti-aircraft tool in trained hands. And also the way American helicopters tended to land was they had to slow down first of course which makes them a sitting duck. It's true. Most of them were not just slapped out of the air at full tilt it was as they were coming into land or as they're taking off which will happen again during this episode and as if all this wasn't bad enough

it's clear that the NBA was willing to stand and fight rather than bloodying some American noses and then withdrawing, which is what they would normally do. They were close to their own supply system and reinforcements. They had a ton of stocks of medical equipment, ammunition, food and water inside Hamburger Hill itself, meaning they were going to give the Americans exactly what they were looking for yeah they've also got artillery in Laos where yeah technically we weren't allowed to go which I know history and all that we'll get there all right I know I know technically history makes fools of us all

on that one but effectively you couldn't take your regiment into into Laos you couldn't yeah yeah we're gonna go and fuck up those artillery pieces it wasn't part of the battle plan either like they couldn't just suddenly send 500 dudes on a kilometer march into Laos in the middle of all of us and as it turns out the Americans were not actually expecting this straight-up fight despite that being again the entire point of the operation exactly what they were looking for I can't believe I found the thing I was looking for. It's that guy who was like egging someone on to fight them and then they get punched in the face.

Like, I can't believe this guy punched me. The dog finally catching the car and just not knowing what to do with it. And the car jumps out of a spider hole and runs over the dog. Soon, NVA infiltration teams were sneaking through American lines and attacking artillery positions, something made much easier by the fact that artillery crews were always considered so safe miles behind what could be considered the front line that nothing was ever put in place to defend them. Meanwhile, up on the hill, American platoons were picking their way forward inch by inch.

They were occasionally getting fucked up by their own airstrikes. Some of them were coming in so close to the forward platoons, they were getting lit up by shrapnel. And this is because while Honeycutt kept just feeding men into this meat grinder up the hill, he was not keeping track where their forward line of advance was, or where anyone happened to be before calling in airstrikes. One platoon was so badly mangled by a botched airstrike they were almost entirely destroyed, like wounded to the point of no longer being useful and having to be pulled back.

Another platoon moved forward only to get harassed by snipers in the treetops, and soldiers had to spray wildly and fully automatic up at the treetops as they advanced to try to suppress them. NVA snipers had a habit of tying themselves to trees with rope for safety, a kind of communist OSHA I suppose, North Vietnamese OSHA, and this meant when soldiers did shoot them they'd fall out of the tree but their bodies would dangle from the ropes creating the world's grimest fucking wind chimes. Ugh Jesus Christ.

Thank god they weren't covered in claymore mines too. Nah I guess they should have been wearing their human ERA suits. Platoons that had pulled back to the rear to set up logistical bases or medical evacuation stations, field hospitals, thought they were safe but they weren't. Those infiltration teams kept popping out of the ground, and, or failing that, snuck through the brush and seemingly appeared out of nowhere right in front of them, launching surprise localized counter-attacks. This forced more men to run away from those rear positions up the hill, or others to run

down the hill to support and secure them, all while their commander was seemingly calling in airstrikes at random on top of their head. Everything is just going insane. The NVA's elevated position also meant that they could bring down their own devastating fire on the Americans in purposefully built clearings as they advanced. Even beyond the ones that the Americans happened to create on accident. They clear cut whole belts of the hill. So like, yeah, when they reach this part they have nothing and we can dump automatic weapons fire on them and wipe them out.

These guys sound like they were ready to hold this hill. Yeah, they were ready to give the Americans what they wanted. They want to take this hill. And it seems like they were like, look on the map, this hill looks good. Let's go get it. And they did not do any kind of decent reconnaissance to say, Oh wait, there's like 5,000 guys there and they're going to fuck our world up. That's the thing is like, you've got to give the NBA credit. They knew where the American strengths were.

That is anything in the sky above their head. So instead of building, you know, a protruding defense, which we would have done, right? You build, yeah, we build foxholes and trenches and bunkers and things of that nature, but you can see them. Even if you camouflage them, if you have air power, you can see them. Where the Vietnamese were smart enough to know we can't do that, they'll see us from the air and then bomb us so badly our corpses will even be recovered. So they worked underground or they built their reinforced bunkers, normally

like timber and things like that and earth into the hill. Nothing stuck out. They couldn't be seen. It seems like spider holes really aren't a big part of warfare anymore, which I don't know if like building a tunnel network like that just takes a lot of time and takes a lot of effort to get there. It's an industrial effort. Yeah. You can't, you can't just like, Hey, let's go to this Hill. We're going to build some tunnels there and we're going to hunker down.

Like, as you said, you build trenches, you build a some kind of pillbox. Yeah. You have to build structures up, but this is more of a, like, we're going to hold this Hill and, but we're going to start the process a year ago to really dig into here because we know that we want to hold onto this hill. The Americans are just walking into a fucking meat grinder as we say that, and they had no idea at any point in time, you could be like, Oh shit, they're incredibly well defended here.

Let's get out of here. Yeah. Maybe don't go up the hill anymore. Let's drag some of those, uh, uh, Davy Crockett's out of storage and then we'll take care of them. But don't forget to stand precariously close to them when they go. Very close, very close. And then walk towards the mushroom cloud. It's one of those things that, again, people don't give the NVA enough credit of how much

of a modernized, organized, and industrialized military that they were. Their logistical network was second to none for a comparable military it's like they understood what their weaknesses were and they worked around it to counter what the strengths of their enemy were which is why i get really like it irks me whenever anybody says like they're farmers wearing sandals it's like sure there were wings of the war effort namely the vietcong that that is what they were but most of those were elements of the NVA, and the heaviest fighting was done by the NVA and their magnificent capabilities to fight the kind of war that they needed to fight. Like for instance, being able to build a fucking massive

tunnel network that could stand up against literally thousands of pounds of explosive and napalm, and the tunnel networks had hospitals in them, they had barracks in them. You lived underground to withstand the bombardment. It probably wasn't a great existence, but it's certainly better than getting your bones turned to ash by napalm. There's worse ways to live and certainly worse ways to die. And while they have the Americans effectively trapped on this hill now, right? Because they know the Americans better than the Americans do. They know that they're not going to pull

back. They have them trapped in this battle now. They have them trapped in a meat grinder. It's not the other way around. And as they're on the hill, they can get on their radios and call back over to Laos and call accurate directed fire from mortars and artillery directly on them as they advance up the hill. And the NVA's RPG gunners turned out to be fucking rocket snipers of their own regard because they could pot a rocket directly into a squad of men at a dead sprint. Jesus. But that wasn't the only thing the rocket gods of the North Vietnamese Army were targeting. Americans would pull their dead and wounded back far enough to the point they were safe. Down, off the hill and further

into the valley. And then of course call in for medical evacuation. The helicopters didn't land though, it was too hot for that. Instead there's another system. They'd effectively bring a winch down, put a casualty on it and then they'd be winched up. Okay. Of course to do that, the helicopter has to remain... Stop moving! Mostly stable, yeah. Making it a sitting duck and a perfect target for the RPG Jesuses of the NBA. In one case, a rocket exploded. The helicopter fell straight down, crushing the man that was on the winch.

The helicopter's blades then snapped off and flew around like scythes and sliced through another group of men that were standing nearby. Which is, I don't know about you, the ultimate fear when it comes to helicopters is being butchered by the blades. Yeah, I was never worried about a helicopter crash, I was worried about a helicopter crashing near me. Yeah, yeah. On May 14th, the battle over the hill showed no signs of progress. Days of

fighting and near-constant bombing with aircraft, artillery, and napalm didn't really put a dent in anything. In fact, according to aerial recon, the NBA were still managing to get reinforcements up the hill, despite the fact the Americans had the hill completely surrounded. The reason for this is quite simple. We've already kind of explained it. Tunnels. They had reinforcements in other hills, and all of the tunnel networks connected. Oh, nice. And places where it didn't, they would just infiltrate at night. Because the valley is your friend if you know it. If you know it.

If you don't, you're fucked. Yeah, if you know where all the little potholes, all the elephant grass is, and you can sneak around, man. It's not a good time to be American. Each day the Americans would advance, somewhat piecemeal and unorganized between different companies, get fucked up and pull back. While at night, the hill would be bombed around the clock. Then in the morning, they do the same thing

over and over again. Or as one soldier put it, quote, "'We went up that day, we got ambushed, we withdrew. "'We went back up again the same day, "'probably within 20 or 30 minutes. "'We got hit again, withdrew. "'Spent the the night went up there the next night to recover the dead bodies The next afternoon we started going up again at 1 30 in the afternoon. We got hit again at this time We're going what the fuck is going on. I'm sure everybody's got that question on their lips even even the NBA

These guys serious still coming. Okay. Okay fine NBA. Look, what the fuck? Are these guys serious? They're still coming. Okay. Okay. Fine. Meanwhile, like the general of the NBA troops there is like, they must know I have my case with my wood crisp can of white monster hidden below. They're after my treasure. Like the suitcase in a pulp fiction. They open it up. So honey cut finally decide on a coordinated actual combined offensive between the various units on all three hills at the same time. You have Hamburger Hill in the middle, the

most important, and you have two other hills that are a little bit further away. But he did so right as a blinding tropical rainstorm swept over the area, reducing visibility on either side to virtually zero. Now this is normally when you call off your operation. Stop, stop for a bit. Lick your wounds. He didn't. No.

And for the NVA, obviously their battle plan is quite easy. They don't have to move. Yeah, they're, I mean, things are flooding, sure, but they don't have to advance through this mess. They just have to wait for Americans to stumble through the blasted muddy jungle hellscape They've created directly into their guns, which is exactly what they did And this is like even you know on the American side say you get to the top of the hill You still haven't won the hill like there's no yeah, they're inside the hill right and also like four kilometers away in Laos

Like okay, we did it. We're on top of the hill. Oh, shit. They're still bombing us. Like there's no wind scenario here. Yeah. The guys in Laos can just keep shelling you. I just want to know. I want to ask Honeycup, what does a wind look like here for you? Because it's none of this stuff. Doesn't know. I'm willing to bet he doesn't know. I mean, it kind of goes back to the very, very deeply flawed aspect of attrition warfare that the U.S. was conducting in Vietnam, where winning just meant killing as many of the enemy as possible. Where it's just like, you know, people, like land doesn't matter so much. The people don't matter so much. Well, what matters is body count. So

they're involved in a battle to try to kill as many of the enemy as possible. Question mark, question mark, question mark. Then then we win a free and fair Vietnam. Yeah, which yeah, obviously it means America one Nobody tell honeycutt. I think he died. He didn't die during this battle, but I'm pretty sure he died shortly thereafter We're still the rain was so bad that units couldn't find one another to give each other support They couldn't see NBA positions to begin with and support. They couldn't see NVA positions to begin with, and they literally ran into them in a kind of too late to do anything other than scramble away

and try to fall back in the torrential downpour. However, on the other two hills, Hill 900, 800, things were going much better. Not because the entire situation wasn't totally screwed, but simply because those hills were not considered as important by the NVA and they're much less defended. Allowing soldiers to advance through the slurry of mud and napalm remains through the NVA bunkers that were there. Or at least it's what

they thought. One American unit, Charlie Company, was only 40 meters from the summit of Hill 900 when the NVA at its peak simply left their positions and charged down directly at them. And you might be thinking, why would they do that? That's because the whole time that this company was advancing, a different NVA group was circling around behind them. So they were charging down to get them to withdraw and then run directly into the force behind them.

Meaning the second that they thought they were going to take Hill 900, they found themselves actually surrounded. The company was forced to withdraw in a completely unorganized fashion, sprinting through the driving rain, having no idea where they were before they were completely cut off. This still took them two hours of fighting to do. And Charlie Company lost its commanding officer, its two platoon leaders, and virtually all of its NCOs and 40 enlisted men. On May 15th, the attack continued, again with withering, unrelenting close air support.

And as if on cue, another Cobra attack gunship swooped in and unleashed its full salvo of rockets directly into an American platoon. Then the NVA launched a counterattack, meaning the American helicopters had actually given the gunship swooped in and unleashed its full salvo of rockets directly into an American platoon. Then the NVA launched a counterattack, meaning the American helicopters had actually given the NVA fire support on accident. Ooh, good for them I guess. I mean American Cobra pilots seeing the light and glory of Ho Chi Minh thought in mid-flight, you know?

Receiving the mandate of heaven while you're flying above Vietnam, no that's good. The NVA knew how to fight the Americans in big battles and they had done so before at places like the Ai A Drang Valley. And they knew the way to strangle any American offensive was to overwhelm landing zones and cut them off from their own helicopters, as well as keep the fighting in such close quarters. Air and artillery support couldn't really be used. And they did manage to secure a landing zone from the Americans. But the Americans were eventually able to fight them off and retake it. But again, the NVA had stopped any forward attack on the hill. Captain Butch Chappell arrived to replace

the wounded commander of Bravo Company and again had orders to keep up the attack straight up Hamburger Hill. The soldiers had been fighting up and down the hill nonstop for five days now, and they had nothing to show for it. So they looked their new commander in the eye and told him, Fuck no, we're not doing it. Bravo had lost about half of its men killed and wounded at this point, while Alpha Company lost the same after another attempt up the hill. Chapel was not the only officer to worry about this possibility of outright mutiny.

Tons of soldiers began to tell their officers that they're not going up the fucking hill again. And at this point of the war, this kind of thing was commonplace, though actual mutiny absolutely was not. That was not much of a thing that happened. So officers kind of developed a way to deal with this. They allowed soldiers to bitch, complain and vent to them for a little bit until they calmed down, knowing that once they got it off their chests they would get up and start following orders again and they always did. I did this when I was in

Afghanistan. I told someone I wasn't fucking doing a patrol and they let me say that. They let me call them all the words I could think of and then 15 minutes later I was getting in my fucking truck. It just is what it is. You weren't driving back up hamburger hill though. No, no of course not. It's a little different. I understand, you know, I don't want to go out and drive around until somebody blows up my truck, but like this is also five days of I have watched hell unleashed around me and I'm never gonna forget these things no matter how hard I try. No, I'm not doing this again. Yeah, it's more of just the life of a soldier.

It's easy to control soldiers if you kind of not doing this again. Yeah, it's more of just the life of a soldier. It's easy to control soldiers if you kind of just let them complain. Yeah. And they'll get up and complain while they're working eventually. Reinforcements are on their way. On May 18th, two battalions launched an attack up the hill. And just when it seemed like the Americans had brought enough power to get up the hill, another rainstorm hit them. This one is worse and longer than the last one. Nobody could see shit on the hill. The hill had been blown to a barren moonscape by repeated airstrikes and shelling. And this made the mud even worse. And some soldiers, as they tried to advance, they found themselves trapped in like a quicksand of mud, up to their waist in some places. The weather was so bad that all helicopter operations had to stop, meaning nobody was getting supported at all. And eventually after slogging through the slurry of mud, a

halt was ordered and the men were to dig in, which they couldn't because as soon as they dug in, anything they dug in would just flood. So that's where they rode out the storm and flooded half-built foxholes while wounded left out in the open drowned in the mud and the rain. Oh Jesus. Interestingly, the overall commander of the entire operation, a guy named General Melvin Zeas, seemed to be the only person of any rank who considered calling the attack off. Because the battle had been going on long enough now that journalists were starting to hear about it and camera crews were flying in to report on a rare large-scale battle in the war.

But he knew the optics of the battle through the lenses of a camera and also through the lenses of reality were pretty fucking bad so he considered ending it before too much footage could be shot. However he also believed that the battle was so close to being won that the entire thing could be spun the other way showing American viewers a rousing triumphant victory. I mean, it was a big deal. Walter Cronkite was there. And just to make sure, before the final assault, he brought in two fresh battalions and finally ordered Honeycutt and his men, the guys who'd been fighting this entire time, 10 days at

this point, to withdraw. Units under Honeycutt absorbed at least 50% casualties at best. At worst, they're as high as 75%. Out of 20 platoon leaders, only four under his command were still standing. Zias's order infuriated Honeycutt, who demanded his men be the first up the hill in the final assault. He argued they deserve that honor for all of the blood they shed. An argument he absolutely did not run by the men who were gonna have to actually do the assaulting. And I say this because we actually have, thanks to the journalists there

who were interviewing soldiers as they came off the hill, we have their thoughts. So for context for this quote, Honeycutt's radio call sign is blackjack. A journalist interviewing a soldier who came off the hill in between assaults, and he looked the camera in the eye and said quote, that fucking blackjack won't stop until he kills every goddamn one of us.

Yeah, he won't because he's not going to die. Zayas agreed to let Honeycuttsman stay on the hill as another final assault began on May 20th. As they got to the top of the hill, at areas so thoroughly bombed by 20,000 artillery rounds, 272 airstrikes, and 1 million pounds of bombs, as well as 152,000 pounds of napalm, there was nothing. The NVA had left during the last rainstorm. Here you go, man. Here's your hill.

Have fun. Enjoy it. And you might be wondering where the name hamburger hill actually comes from well We have a soldier to thank that 19 year old James Spears was asked by a reporter what the fighting was like and he said quote Have you ever been inside of a hamburger machine? Which I'm not sure how he I think he obviously means like what grinds the meat or whatever But it does make me doesn't make it sound like some kind of conveyor belt that just makes hamburgers appear. They were there we got buns put on us

we got lettuce put on us we got tomatoes put on us it was the cheese on us dog the napalm and thus the name hamburger hill was born in the end 72 American soldiers were killed but nearly 400 were wounded as for the NBA side we honestly have no idea. Depending on who you talk to, between 100 and 600 bodies were found, but US officers were notorious for overreporting the number of NVA dead in order to make themselves sound better, so between 100 and 600. We now know of course how pointless this battle was and even obviously the entire war, but

did soldiers at the time know? Fuck yeah they did. Virtually as soon as the battle was over, a soldier nailed up a sign on the hill that read, Hamburger Hill, was it worth it? Officers kept taking the sign down and soldiers kept putting it back up. An underground GI newspaper put a bounty on the head of Lieutenant Colonel Honeycutt, offering to pay $50,000 for anyone who murdered him. Hell yeah.

Nobody ever succeeded, but if Honeycutt is to be believed, more than a few people tried. And on June 5th, the US Army's operation in the valley was declared officially over and they withdrew, leaving Hamburger Hill behind, at which point the NVA simply moved right back in. Yep. All we gotta do is wait for you motherfuckers to leave. Look at that, we got a hill again. The pointlessness of this battle turned into a larger conversation of the pointlessness of the war.

Another meaningless battle that nobody explained why it was needed in a war full of them. The anger about the battle eventually reached Congress, with a bunch of people asking openly, really for the first time, just what the fuck are we thinking and it led directly to a change in American strategy in Vietnam as well as President Nixon ordering the first American withdrawals of American forces from Vietnam and starting the end of the American involvement in the war and that is the Battle of Hamburger Hill. I'm glad our war wasn't like that man. Just as pointless pointless, much less bloody, at least if you happen to be American. Yeah. Horrible if you're everybody else.

Right. Like it's, you know, Afghanistan and Iraq weren't too bad for, you know, if you're if you're on the American side, it certainly wasn't this bad. It certainly wasn't continue to assault this hill kind of badly. Over 50,000 Americans died in Vietnam. Yeah, it's it was it was a fucked situation. And this is just one little tiny bit, a little tiny fuck of a big fucked situation. Now, Francis, we do a thing on the show called Questions from Legion. Do you like to ask us questions, support the show on Patreon?

And you can ask us through Patreon, DMs or the discord, which you'll also have access to. And today's question is, what is your favorite grift, defense related or otherwise? The one that always sticks in my mind is the universal camouflage pattern uniform. Oh yeah, yeah. ACUs, yeah. The ACUs were created by a general who was just like, I'm going to retire and then immediately go work in the defense force and force every American soldier to wear the work.

Like, it's not even just that the camouflage pattern was bad. They were just on the quality of the uniform was shit. They were just garbage. Like, and nobody looked good in them. Nobody knew how to wear them correctly. And then they're like, oh, let's put on fucking berets too. Fuck off. Like it was just all of, all of that was, uh, and you know,

because I was directly impacted by, I was directly irritated by it. I was as well. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when they had to start putting mirrors at the exits of every facility because like nobody knew how to wear a fucking beret correctly. So you had to be able to position it on your head the right way.

Everybody looked like shit. And then everybody now mine has to be the bomb dousing rod. Oh yeah. An episode on that years ago. You can go back and listen to it, but to make a long story short, a grifter, I believe in the UK, sold a dousing rod that obviously is not based in any functional science whatsoever to look for bombs, car bombs, whatever, in Iraq, that they then sold to the US government to give to Iraqi security forces. And it was just a metal rod that did nothing. Every dowsing rod is a metal rod that does nothing. But this one finds bombs.

And I mean, they didn't only sell them to Iraq either. They sold them to a lot of people. And then eventually the whole company collapsed under all of the rampant fraud yeah and lying and they did a whole bunch of other crimes as well like money laundering and shit like that but that one is definitely my favorite but Francis that's a podcast you have a different podcast plug that podcast I do if you want to hear some more of Nate and some more of me we have a show called what a hell of a way to dad where we do dad

chats we talk about being fathers and also we me. We have a show called What a Hell of a Way to Dad, where we do dad chats, where we talk about being fathers. And also we just have, we have a lot of other conversations on there. So if you're looking for something a little more low key, a little less a whole bunch of people dying stupidly in a valley somewhere in Vietnam, we have What a Hell of a Way to Dad for you. This is the only show that I host. If you like it, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you years upon years of bonus content side series and audio and video ebooks audiobooks every episode early first dibs on live show tickets and merch and a full suit of eRA armor that you can wear itself like an exploding night of old exactly if the Crusaders had claymore mines instead of

claymore swords would have gone a little different. Attach the claymore ERA to the claymore swords. Francis, thank you so much for joining us. Everybody, thank you for listening and until next time, strap on the ERA. Charge into glory.