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Two days later, on May 20, after more than 20,000 artillery rounds and 155 air strikes had virtually denuded the top of 937, the assault force finally took the hill. The U.S. command claimed that 622 North Vietnamese had been killed, though only 182 weapons were found, indicating that the dead might actually be considerably fewer. Specialist Speers, who had begun the battle as a squad leader, came down as a platoon commander—such were the U.S. casualties.
No Orders. The reaction in Washington came quickly. Mindful of similar assaults in the past—when hills were taken at high cost and then quickly abandoned—Senator Edward Kennedy charged 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." After initial hesitation, the Army fought back, describing the battle as a "tremendous, gallant victory." Major General Melvin Zais, commander of the 101st, observed that "the only significance of Hill 937 was the fact that there were North Vietnamese on it. My mission was to destroy enemy forces and installations. We found the enemy on Hill 937, and that is where we fought him." Bypassing the hill would have made no military sense, he explained, because it would have given the Communists control of the high ground. "It's a myth that if we don't do anything, nothing will happen to us. It's not true. If we did pull back and were quiet, they'd kill us in the night." Zais said that he had received no orders to keep casualties* down. Could he not have ordered B-52 strikes against the hill, rather than committing his paratroopers? The general said "absolutely not"—air power could not possibly have done the job.
In strictly military terms, Zais' explanation made eminent sense, particularly since U.S. units are still operating under orders, first issued at the time of the bombing halt, to exert "maximum pressure" on their foe—part of the U.S. version of "fight and talk." Nixon, like Lyndon Johnson before him, probably feels that lack of such pressure could erode the allied negotiating position in Paris. But the war and domestic reaction to it have gone far beyond purely military considerations now, and the battle of Ap Bia raises the question of whether or not the U.S. should try to scale down the fighting by rescinding the maximum-pressure order. The Communists might follow suit and U.S. casualties might be reduced.
All of that mattered little on Hill 937. When the battle was over—while helicopters flew out stacks of holed American helmets and bloody flak jackets—TIME Correspondent John Wilhelm found a piece of cardboard and a black 101st neckerchief pinned by a G.I. knife to a blackened tree trunk. "Hamburger Hill," a soldier had scrawled on the cardboard, and someone else had added the words, "Was it worth it?"
* Which, for the week preceding the final Ap Bia battle, reached the second highest toll of 1969, with 430 Americans killed.