Sitting here on the deck of a cabin on a mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee......looking across at Mount LeConte.
LeConte is the 3rd highest mountain in the Park, at an elevation of 6,600 feet, with a prominence of 5,300 feet.
I just spent the better part of the past 12 months reading and studying the battle on a 3,000 ft hill in 1969 which came to be known as Hamburger Hill.
Coming down here from the flat-lands of Ohio - I first walked out on this cabin's deck and looked across at that mountain... and got chills. "No, that's not hill 937."
(Dong Ap Bia; trans: "mountain of the crouching beast"; 937 meters high)
And I didn't arrive in this area in Vietnam to begin my tour as a medic until 2 weeks later. Still spooks me - the stories I heard at the evac. hospital where I was attached briefly. ( they promptly added my name and blood type on a board - "in case we run out, again")
Looking at these mountains - I cannot imagine fighting a frontal assault against a bunkered enemy to the top*.
Stig*still - 'friendly fire' may have accounted for as much as 30% of the casualties (artillery, jets, Huey's)
