Despite the fratricide, the attack ground on. Delta Company almost made it to the top of the hill as the battle degenerated into a close-quarters fight, with friendly and enemy troops separated by only a few meters. By this time in the battle, every officer in the company was killed or wounded and the unit had suffered more than 50 percent casualties.

Honeycutt ordered Charlie Company to the aid of Delta, but a sudden blinding rainstorm halted the attack and the Rakkasans again reluctantly withdrew back down the mountain. Meanwhile, on the south side of the ridge at Hill 900, a large enemy force in bunkers had the 1-506 pinned down.

General Zais arrived on the scene around this time and considered calling off the attack because of the heavy casualties and intense media attention but, backed by General Stilwell and General Creighton Abrams, MACV commander, he decided to continue the attack. He committed three additional battalions (2-501, 2-506 and 2-3 ARVN) to the battle and ordered the relief of the badly battered 3-187, which by now had suffered heavily in the repeated assaults up Dong Ap Bia. A and B companies had lost 50 percent of their original strength; C and D companies had each suffered 80 percent losses. Of the four original company commanders in the battalion, one was dead and one was wounded, and eight of 12 platoon leaders were casualties along with several NCOs.

Despite these losses, Colonel Honeycutt adamantly protested the relief of his battalion, demanding that his men, who had already paid such a high price, be allowed to continue the mission to take the hill, saying all he needed was one additional company. The division commander relented and left the 3-187 in the fight, giving Honeycutt a company from the 2-506 for the new attack.

The brigade plan for the next attack called for the insertion of two additional battalions to the northeast and southeast of Dong Ap Bia. While the 3-187 held the enemy in place on the western face of the mountain, the 1-506 and the other two battalions, 2-501 and 2/3 ARVN, would overrun the summit. Honeycutt again balked, saying his battalion was not going to sit on the side of the mountain to “get our asses shot off” waiting on the other units. He promised that the Rakkasans would take the mountain this time.

At 1000 hours on May 20, after 10 artillery batteries fired more than 20,000 rounds and 272 tactical airstrikes dumped more than 1 million pounds of bombs, and 152,000 pounds of napalm virtually denuded the top of the mountain, the 3-187 once again started up the mountain, supported by the 1-506, which renewed its attack on the southern side.

At 1145 hours, exactly nine days and five hours after Bravo first made contact on the mountain, the Rakkasans, reinforced with the additional company from the 2-506, took the summit—only to find that most of the enemy had already fled. The paratroopers began to clean out the remaining North Vietnamese from the bunkers and trenches, and intense fighting followed with about two enemy platoons that had apparently been ordered to hold until the end.

Finally, by 1700, the hill was secured. Soon after, a trooper cut out the cardboard bottom of a C-ration box, printed “Hamburger Hill” on it, and tacked it to a charred tree trunk near the western edge of Hill 937. Later, another soldier passing by scrawled underneath the question, “Was it worth it?”

This was a very good question. The seizure of Dong Ap Bia had been a costly affair. The 3-187 suffered 39 killed and 290 wounded; the total casualties for the mountain were 70 killed and 372 wounded. More than 600 enemy bodies were found on the hill when the battle was over. It will never be known just how many NVA were killed and wounded and were carried into Laos or were buried in collapsed bunkers and tunnels on the mountain, but a Special Forces patrol on the Laotian side of the border reported that some 1,100 enemy dead and wounded had been removed from the hill during the battle. What is without doubt, however, is that the 7th and 8th battalions of the 29th NVA Regiment had been virtually wiped out.

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