I read the accounts of Hill 875 too, and the incident where the Marine fighter/bomber pilot dropped the 500 pounder on the battalion aid station. I wept when I read about it. I really did. And yet elements of that unit hung on for a long time until relief arrived and they were able to storm the rest of the distance to the top. The enemy had crept away, but you know that the North Vietnamese had to have suffered horrific casualties too, otherwise they would have stayed and fought off an understrength American force. The NVA had policed their dead and wounded, so we had no idea exactly what their casualties were. But they had to have been mauled.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that it happened only six years before I reached 18 in 1973 when I joined the Army. I knew a lot of veterans of that war, and I’m damn proud of them. Even in my Leftist days in college and then the seminary I harbored no disrespect for our veterans or our military. That was another bone of contention between the other Leftists I knew. They didn’t like the fact that I was Catholic and a U.S. Army veteran who was unashamed of his service and of the U.S. military. I never really had a future on the Left anyway.