HILL 461 (LZ Sierra)

2-12 September 1968

Hill 461 (Background)
**I took this picture from LZ Mack just a few
weeks after the battle for Hill 461

"The harder the conflict, the
more glorious the triumph."
- Thomas Payne

The story is best told by our then Executive Officer, Lt. Dennis Richardson. The following are
excerpts from his article entitled With Bravo 1/3 on Mutter's Ridge. The following is
printed with his permission:

THE TYPHOON:

After a scheduled supply drop late in the day with our extra food and water, we expected to stay in our perimeters that night and head north the next morning. The supply drop never came. Mother Nature had something else in store for us. A tropical storm developing in the South China Sea, east of us, gained unexpected strength and became a full blown typhoon. It turned west, right at I Corps and us. For whatever reasons, and I'm sure they were very reasonable and fully justified, our two Marine rifle companies on those two small hilltops on Mutter's Ridge, did not get resupplied.

For the next five nights and four days, we would not see the sun, the surrounding hills or the valleys below, let alone anything flying. We would only know Alpha Company was still there, less than 100 meters away, because they let us know they were still there, just as wet and hungry and miserable as we were. We would have all the water we wanted to drink--a first for Mutter's Ridge.

The rain came just as we finished our fighting holes for the night...then the clouds came right down on us and opened up. And the wind blew and the rain came at us sideways. We couldn't see more than a few meters. Making it to the next fighting hole was a major undertaking. The ground was slick, wind-driven muck, all but impossible to stand on...all we could do was hunker down and survive. The holes filled with water and stayed full. Huddled, shivering against a buddy in a soaked poncho-liner under a leaking poncho shelter was better than being out in the cold, driving rain...I huddled in a four-man hollow, trying to share warmth with my Platoon Sergeant, radioman, and a Corpsman.

There wasn't any food for the last two or three days of the storm. What C-rations we had each carried in our packs was gone by the end of the second day, if not the first morning. We searched every pocket of our equipment and dug around in old trash pits for anything previously thought to be inedible. We each had one stale, round cracker with crusty, bland cheese spread on it, to chew on. It seemed like a banquet.

Some time during the night on the fifth day, the storm finally spent itself. Sunday dawned clear, hot and steamy; but dry. We were resupplied by chopper before noon. Water and cases of C-rations and radio batteries. We each bragged about how many C-rations meals we were going to eat. Most of us couldn't finish one. Our stomachs had shrunk so much.

We were told the typhoon we had just endured on that hilltop in the open was one of the worst storms to ever hit Vietnam. It got our vote.

THE BATTLE:

Mutter's Ridge connects several high spots, one of which was Hill 461 (a surveyed, bench-marked knob, map-marked as 461 meters above sea level) about a kilometer northwest of our hilltop LZ. Hill 461 is just three clicks below the DMZ...the steepness of the terrain restricted our movement to the high ground and, therefore, marching by column; not the most secure of battle maneuvers in terms of reaction and support.

The point elements of Alpha Company were ambushed in the early afternoon and pinned down on the ridge line trail just short of Hill 461....For reasons not made clear to me, Bravo was ordered to pass through Alpha company and take up the attack, still in column, through the ambush site and toward Hill 461. Passing through Alpha took most of the rest of the day. By dusk, we were being held up under heavy enemy small arms and machine-gun fire, just short of a narrow draw at the base of Hill 461. We had taken three KIA's in the approach fighting. The company was in combat, two or three Marines against two or three NVA at a time. Make contact, push over and through them and move forward a little, to their next strong point....Enemy heavy rifle, rocket and machine-gun fire still had our forward elements pinned down from their hidden positions somewhere on the forward slopes of the hill....we were going to be trading fire with them for most of the night; not so much for tactical gain but to harass them and to make sure they knew we had no intention of breaking off...It was a long night.

With daybreak, we were able to spot their fighting positions and resume our attack to the base of the hill....As we were spreading out and nearly in position for a final rush up Hill 461, the enemy hit us with a shower of 60mm and 82mm motor rounds, tearing into our assault force and shredding them with hot shrapnel. Our senior Corpsman, HM2 Alan "Doc" James, was later awarded the Navy Cross for his efforts during the three-day battle in aiding, comforting and protecting our wounded, at times with his own body. His efforts during this devastating motar attack were noted in particular.

We suffered seven more KIA Marines that day. Bravo started out for Hill 461 with less than 120 Marines instead of the 200 a full-strength infantry company is supposed to put in the field. With a total of 55 dead and wounded, there was not much more than a reinforced platoon left of Bravo company when we reached the summit...Sometime during the rainy night, the NVA tried once more to push us off Hill 461. With fixed bayonets, enemy soldiers came out of the dark of the night and rushed our line at the west peak of the hilltop. Bravo's Marines were ready and met them almost instantly with grenades and rifle and machine-gun fire, dispatching the last one as he fell forward stabbing his bayonet into the ground in front of our screaming and shooting Marines.

The morning dawned on our scattered, chewed-up, exhausted command. It was like finding out we had defended a rain soaked, muddy trash heap. It was littered with the rubble left from driving off the NVA plus our own gear, bodies (theirs and ours), ammo cans, spent cartridges, rocket tubes, soiled battle dressings, and ration containers. It was like a visual hangover from a long binge. It was depressing. The nightmare was real after all....We were not in a victorious mood that morning. We were tired beyond description. We were spent; alive, but spent.

What had we done? We had done our jobs. Just what we were told to do-- that simple. We were to search and destroy North Vietnamese Army units in the Mutter's Ridge area. We found them, engaged them, killed a lot more of them ( 59 confirmed) than they did us. We drove them back north, once again, out of South Vietnam. The intelligence people from the "rear" came out. They poked around the battlefields, looked at the NVA bodies, talked to our survivors, took notes, and made some reports. They concluded that we had destroyed an NVA regimental headquarters site and had fought and defeated more than a battalion of enemy troops, in well-fortified positions. All that would begin to mean something later, after we had been withdrawn from Hill 461(Click here).At that moment it didn't mean much. We were too tired and drained, beat up and hurting to feel much good about anything but breathing.

There were some medals, never really enough, awarded for Bravo's 10 days of action: two Navy Crosses, Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, and 60 Purple Hearts. The medals never really tell the story of combat, especially with Marines. It's always a story about a few, really good men, in harm's way.

 

"Thanks, Lt. Richardson, for describing so well the events surrounding the assault on Hill 461. Semper Fi!" -ajdoc