Fifty years after leading a company of soldiers up Hamburger Hill, Gerald “Bob” Harkins sees the assault against burrowed-in North Vietnamese army forces no differently than he did then.
“Our mission in life was to find the NVA and kill them,” said the 75-year-old Harkins, who now lives in Georgetown, Texas. “And we found them, and we did our best to kill as many as we could.
“The hill itself had no meaning. It was just a piece of dirt. The thing that made it important to us was the NVA unit there.”
In the wake of the battle in May 1969, there was no such clarity in America, where anti-Vietnam War protests were in full swing and elected lawmakers loudly decried the bloody Battle of Hamburger Hill, a 10-day meat grinder that left 72 U.S. soldiers dead and hundreds more wounded. Unlike the brief clashes that had characterized most jungle engagements during the Vietnam War, this battle had lasted long enough for American journalists to arrive and report firsthand on its ferocity.
