From Somers Point to Hamburger Hill

From Somers Point to Hamburger Hill 

Mid-May 1969 

After finishing their last academic chores at school college coeds Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry left their dorm room for the last time, packed Susan's dark blue Chevy convertible and headed for the Jersey Shore for some good times.

On the other side of the world in Vietnam it is what Lynda DeVanter and Duncan MacRae would call in Army acronym " R&R" - rest and relaxation. 

Since graduating from nursing school in Baltimore Lynda enlisted in the Army and was now working at a MASH field hospital where they had received the first and then second wave of casualties from Operation Apache Snow, an order from Major General Melvin Zais to take Hill #937 - that would become known as Hamburger Hill.

There was Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima in World War II, Pork Chop Hill in Korea and now Vietnam had Hamburger Hill. They were all heavily entrenched defensive high ground positions that had to be taken by direct assault, with heavy casualties on both sides.

While Iwo Jima was strategically placed, there was nothing strategic about Hill #937 other than the fact there were two North Vietnamese regular battalions of 800 men entrenched there mainly underground in a series of tunnels. They were led by a general Ma Vinh Lan, who sat huddled in a tunnel under the hill in Thua Thien Province, scouring maps under a lit lantern that rested on a hard bound book written in Chinese – Sun Tzu – the Art of War, that says an attacking force must be five times as strong as a well-entrenched defender of the high ground.

When the first wave of casualties came in Lynda was playing volleyball with other nurses and corpsman, just as she had on the Ocean City beach.

By the fourth day of the battle the field hospital was full and Lynda and the doctors and other nurses had worked for two days and nights straight on without sleep, so when there was a break in the action Lynda took the opportunity to take a quick cold shower in the canvas draped latrine.

She had been wearing a white T-shirt, stained with some soldier's blood that read: "Anchorage 7 for 1," and put that back on after the refreshing shower. Wrapping her wet hair in a towel she stepped barefoot around some puddles in the red dirt compound.

At the same moment a jeep driven by Marine lieutenant Duncan MacRae was waved through the front gate and kicked up clouds of red dust as it pulls to a sudden stop.

Duncan had seen the long bare legged Lynda walking between tents dressed only in the Anchorage T- shirt and then looking into her eyes recognized her from that memorial summer of '65 at the Jersey Shore.

Calling out "Lynda!" She stopped in her tracks, smiled and walked over to the jeep, glancing at each young googling guy and settling on the driver as she said, "What are the Marines doing here?"

"We're here to bail out the Army, again," Duncan said with a grin.

He didn't have to tell Lynda that the Army was suddenly short of pilots and the Marine unit was called in for support, as the continuing battle was straining equipment, support and supplies, and pilots were in high demand at the moment.

"I wouldn't have even noticed you if you weren't wearing that T-shirt," said Duncan.

"Yea, it reminds me of good times," said Lynda.

"Well I'm on a mission right now," Duncan said, "but I'll probably see you around campus over the next few days." 

"Yes," Lynda replied, without saying her next dreary thought that he would be bringing in more shot up bleeding soldiers for her to patch up.

"When we get back to the Anch I'll buy the first ten rounds," Duncan said as he restated the jeep and Lynda waved goodbye.

“Those ten rounds will only cost me ten bucks,” Duncan explained with a laugh, “since the beers there are seven for a dollar.”

Duncan was a tough guy in the field on a mission, but he loved what he did, wanted to enjoy it and have a little fun while they did it, and that attitude rubbed off on his crew.

Pulling up a few hundred yards the jeep stopped in front of a big tent with a sigh that read: OPERATIONS.

Duncan went in, followed by the three crewmen, who stood back by the tent door flaps while Duncan walked up to a group of six leaning over a table full of sand and introduced himself.

"Good to see you Lieutenant," a full bird colonel said as they shook hands.

The sand table on legs was full of white sugar sand that momentarily reminded Duncan of the clean white beaches at the Jersey Shore, but he quickly snapped himself back to the reality of the situation.

The sand was piled into a series of small hills, one of which was Hill #397 that the colonel kept poking a stick into, saying "Our mission is to take ammo, supplies and fresh troops in and take wounded out."

Then looking at Duncan, he lit a cigar and walked out of the tent, past Duncan's crew. The crew wasn't really necessary, and they knew that - they were only temporarily short of pilots, but Duncan insisted he fly with his regular crew.

One of the five Army pilots standing around the sand table then took out a small box of wood matches, broke one in half and held out six match heads, while explaining that on each of the last three days the lead helicopter was hit by a ground to air missile or rocket as they entered the valley.

The enemy had a rocket launcher but could only use it once and hit the first chopper in the formation.

"Short straw gets the lead," the Army pilot said as he held out the match sticks for each pilot to pick.

Duncan's big hand, that would normally be pounding out and twirling pizza dough on the Ocean City boardwalk this time of year, grasped the hand with the matches, his fist overlapping them all, and revealing a wrist band that each pilot recognized as the silver ball bearings of the turbo charged rotor-blades of a Huey helicopter. The part that made it fly. Their eyes followed the hand up to the face of Duncan, who said, much to the dismay of his crew, "I pick them all so I got the short one and I take the lead."

He didn't get any argument from the other pilots, though one of his crewmen rolled his eyes and the other two groaned.

“Okay Lieutenant, you take the lead.”

As they all walked to a row of six Bell Helicopter HU1b “Huey” choppers, still being worked on by maintenance crews, Duncan was confident he could fly the bird, very similar to the Marines version, and his gunners could handle the weapons systems. But before boarding each man stopped to notice the rows of bullet and machine gun holes that had riddled the fuselage.  

Duncan took off first and as he headed out one of the Marine gunners told the ten teenage Army

soldiers of the 101^st Airborne, 3^rd Brigade, half of them black, about the enemy rocket attacks on the lead helicopter, and they as they realized they were the lead helicopter, a quiet gloom set in.

Two weeks earlier the same ten men in this platoon were sitting at a long table at Kelly’s Café in Wrightstown, New Jersey, drinking beer by the pitcher, provided by the Fort Dix drill sergeant Leroy Brown, from Chicago Illinois, who led them through their pre-deployment training. Brown was also the leader of the base orchestra, and promised them that he would have the band serenade them when they came home, if they came home alive. If they came home alive they would come back as they left, through Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force base, if dead they would come home in a box at Dover, Delaware.

While each of the Army pilots had flow into this valley of death a dozen times, it as new terrain for Duncan, who flew the formation low at tree top level, so they couldn’t be seen until the last minute, but they certainly could be heard. After a few minutes Duncan began to recognize some of the hills that were represented by humps of sand on the sand table in the Operations tent. The second one he knew was the one with the rocket launcher, and the third hill was the Hill #937 - what they now called Hamburger Hill, their target destination.

The side gunners began to open up as soon as they took fire, and before long all six helicopters in the squadron had every gun blazing. When they got to the second hill every pilot in the formation envisioned what they had seen the last three days – a rocket taking out the lead helicopter, but they flew on, and to everyone’s surprise, nothing happened.

Another minute they were hovering over a white circle painted on the red dirt and circling in for a gentle landing, the ten fresh troops began jumping out even before the copter put down. The only thing Duncan wasn’t used to was the continuing flirtation of the rotor blades, as the Marine version had an automatic shut off for carrier landings.

After the new men got out with all of their gear, they were met by shirtless, sweaty and hungry soldiers who took the supplies from the gunners, and within a few minutes, stretchers with bodies on them were loaded aboard before the walking wounded got on and squeezed in and around the gunners, a few sitting on the side door, their legs dangling as Duncan lifted off, pulling back on the throttle stick.

One by one the other five helicopters followed as Duncan led them over the tree line, taking a sharp turn that everyone in the plane could feel, and then straightening out, making a beeline to the FOB – Forward Operating Base and MASH hospital.

With their guns blazing on both sides, and a bullet piercing shooting through both sides of the chopper but not hitting anyone, Duncan pushed it to top speed, and then settled back in his seat, pushed his radio button and said, “Renegade 1 to Zip Lock,” and when he got the return, “Zip Lock, go ahead Renegade one,” he said, “mission complete, on return leg with Renegades one to six. Over.”

Then he looked over to his co-pilot, and with a grin that Jack Nicholson would make famous, said, “Are we having fun yet.”

Just then another round came in the door and hit one of the side gunners, who went down silently. The other gunner turned around and took over his gun and fired it until the return fire ended, then sat down and put his arms around his fallen brother, who looked him in the eyes and said, “Tell my mother I love her,” before he died.

The battle of Hamburger Hill lasted another week, ten days total, and by May 20, 1969, the tactical withdraw of the enemy gave the Americans small victory that came with great cost. There were 630 enemy killed, three captured, and Hill 937 was now cleared, and then deserted and left for the jungle to regrow, as it was of no strategic value.

The Americans had put 1800 infantry into the battle, fired 20,000 rounds of artillery, flew over 200 air missions, dropped 900 tons of napalm, and listed over 400 casualties, 72 killed in action. So many helicopters were shot or damaged they didn’t count them.

The day after the battle, May 21, 1969, Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry drove the Chevy convertible over the Walt Whitman Bridge into New Jersey bound for the Jersey Shore with high hopes. They had never heard of Hamburger Hill, and never would. 

Next: Jimmie, Ritchie and Napoleon in the Village 


Lynda in Vietnam