{"id":98669,"date":"2019-01-04T11:35:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T16:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=98669"},"modified":"2019-01-04T09:13:37","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T14:13:37","slug":"guest-column-a-lucky-viet-nam-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=98669","title":{"rendered":"GUEST COLUMN: A Lucky Viet Nam Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Harry Hood<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In Viet Nam I was in a battalion recognizance platoon. I had\nno rank. I was not even a squad leader, as I remember. Thus, I really had very\nlittle or no knowledge of where and what the platoon was doing, where were we\ngoing, what area were we to work in, how long would we be out in the boonies or\nhow long before we caught a break and stood down. One of our maneuvers took\nplace in early May 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I arrived in country April 6, so I had not been there long. We\nwere loaded on big trucks and carried through the city of Hue to a spot on the\nnorth side of Hue. I always thought the Army had planned a large ambush to\ninclude two battalions of men. I always thought it was one of the dumbest\nmaneuvers of the war. You are not going to surprise anyone secretly with 2,000\nmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was 50 years ago. It is possible it happened a little\ndifferently from what I remembered. I had the opportunity in August 2017 to\nspend a weekend with one of the guys who was with me in Viet Nam. Sgt. Tim\nHauert and I reviewed my pictures and his pictures and he told me what that\nmaneuver was. It was the assembling of forces to make a strike on Hamburger\nHill in the A Shau Valley. My battalion and my platoon were scheduled to be\nincluded in that maneuver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the last minute, they pulled us out and held us in\nreserve. I have always said I was very lucky in Viet Nam. This was probably my\nluckiest moment. I am writing this in the hope that other [VFW] members will\nshare some of their interesting stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hamburger Hill<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The battle on\nHamburger Hill occurred in May 1969, during Operation Apache Snow, the second\npart of a three-phased campaign intended to destroy North Vietnam Army<\/a> (NVA) Base Areas\nin the remote A Shau Valley<\/a>. This campaign was a series of\noperations intended to neutralize the A Shau, which had been an infiltration\nroute into South Vietnam prior to 1966, when the North Vietnamese seized the Special\nForces<\/a> camp in the valley during the Battle\nof A Shau<\/a> and established a permanent presence. Subsequent U.S.\nefforts to clear the valley had been consistently unsuccessful. Lieutenant\nGeneral Richard G. Stilwell<\/a>, commander of XXIV Corps<\/a>, amassed the equivalent of\ntwo divisions, and substantial artillery and air support, to accomplish the\ntask. The North Vietnamese had moved their 6th, 9th, and 29th Regiments into\nthe area to recover from losses sustained during a previous U.S. Marine<\/a> operation (Operation Dewey <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. losses during the\nten-day battle totaled 72 KIA and 372 WIA. To take the position, the 101st\nAirborne Division eventually committed five infantry battalions and ten batteries\nof artillery. In addition, the U.S. Air Force<\/a> flew 272 missions and\nexpended more than 500 tons of ordnance.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. estimates of the\nlosses incurred by the 7th and 8th Battalions of the 29th NVA Regiment included\n630 dead (discovered on and around the battlefield); including many found in\nmakeshift mortuaries within the tunnel complex. Yet no one could count the NVA\nrunning off the mountain, those killed by artillery and air strikes, the\nwounded and dead carried into Laos or the dead buried in collapsed bunkers and\ntunnels.[3]<\/a> During\nthe ten-day battle, U.S. forces captured 89 individual weapons and 22 crew\u2011served\nweapons.[1]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major General John M.\nWright quietly abandoned the hill on June 5. The debate over Hamburger Hill reached\nthe United States Congress<\/a>, with particularly\nsevere criticism of military leadership by Senators Edward\nKennedy<\/a>, George McGovern<\/a>, and Stephen\nM. Young<\/a>. In its June 27 issue, Life\nMagazine<\/a> published the photographs of 241 Americans killed in one week in\nVietnam; this is now considered a watershed event of negative public opinion\ntoward the Vietnam War. While only five of the 241 featured photos were of\nthose killed in the battle, many Americans had the perception that all of the\nphotos featured in the magazine were casualties of the battle.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The controversy of the\nconduct of the Battle of Hamburger Hill led to a reappraisal of U.S. strategy\nin South Vietnam. As a direct result, to hold down casualties, General Abrams\ndiscontinued a policy of “maximum pressure” against the North\nVietnamese to one of “protective reaction” for troops threatened with\ncombat action, while simultaneously President Richard\nNixon<\/a> announced the first troop withdrawal from South Vietnam.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Harry Hood In Viet Nam I was in a battalion recognizance platoon. I had no rank. I was not even a squad leader, as I remember. Thus, I really had very little or no knowledge of where and what the platoon was doing, where were we going, what area were we to work in, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23677,23808,8,21571],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story","category-veterans"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-pFr","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Guest-Column-Logo.png?fit=406%2C200&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}