The fact that the American troops had prevailed made little impact on the outrage simmering at home in the wake of reporter Sharbutt’s newspaper accounts of the battle. In the Senate on May 20, Edward Kennedy of New York angrily denounced the attack on Ap Bia, charging that it was “both senseless and irresponsible to continue to send our young men to their deaths to capture hills and positions that have no relation to this conflict.” He proclaimed it “…madness…symptomatic of a mentality and a policy that requires immediate attention. American boys are too valuable to be sacrificed to a false sense of military pride.”

The Army responded. In a press conference, General Zais claimed “the only significance of Hill 937 was the fact that there were enemy on Hill 937, and that is why we fought him there.” Insisting that the battle had been a “tremendous, gallant victory,” he elaborated that he had received no change in mission and that the battle for Ap Bia was in keeping with the guidance to exert “maximum pressure” on the enemy.

The intensity of the controversy heightened on June 5 when orders were given to abandon Dong Ap Bia. Just two weeks later, military intelligence reported that more than 1,000 North Vietnamese Army troops had moved back into the area and reoccupied Dong Ap Bia as soon as the U.S. and ARVN forces withdrew.

Further incensed, Sen. Kennedy asked from the Senate floor, “How can we justify sending our boys against a hill a dozen times, finally taking it, and then withdrawing a week later?”

Media reaction was likewise sharp. An article in The New York Times declared “the public is certainly entitled to raise questions about the current aggressive posture of the United States military in South Vietnam.” The June 27, 1969, issue of Life magazine ran the photos of 241 servicemen killed in Vietnam the previous week, including five who had died in the assault on Hill 937. Many readers no doubt thought that all those pictured had died at Hamburger Hill.

The battle for Dong Ap Bia came at a time when support for the war was on a steeply downward path. A February 1969 poll revealed that only 39 percent of the American people still supported the war, while 52 percent believed sending troops to fight in Vietnam had been a mistake. While a tactical success in keeping the North Vietnamese off balance in I Corps, the battle for Hamburger Hill resulted in a public outcry against the seemingly meaningless nature of the struggle, which resulted in such a bloody expenditure of lives only to have U.S. forces abandon the battlefield shortly after the fighting was over.

For much of the American public, Hamburger Hill crystallized the frustration of winning costly battles without ever consummating a strategic victory. The battle had been won but at a very high price—then only to be abandoned for the Communists to reoccupy. Giving up such hard-won territory seemed to typify the purposelessness of the war. To many Americans, it served as proof of the Nixon administration’s failure to make any substantive changes to the American approach in Vietnam.

The controversial battle ultimately led to a reappraisal of U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War. Nixon administration officials admitted to Hedrick Smith of The New York Times that such costly victories would further undermine public support for the war and thus shorten the administration’s time for successful negotiations that were ongoing in Paris. The public outcry against the seemingly senseless bloodshed at Hamburger Hill appears to have had an impact on deliberations in the Nixon administration about the way ahead in the war. If the president was going to have time to achieve “peace with honor” as he had promised in his election campaign, he had to make sure there were no more Hamburger Hills. He gave explicit orders to General Abrams that he was to “conduct the war with a minimum of American casualties.”

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