Vietnam 1967: The 173rd Airborne Fought Five Days for Hill 875

On the morning of 19 November 1967, a point man named Kenneth Jacobson climbed a ridge in the Central Highlands, eight kilometers from the Cambodian border, and smelled the enemy. Three shots later, the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, was on a hill that the Army had only just numbered: 875. This film follows the five days from 19 to 23 November 1967, when about three hundred paratroopers were pressed into a circle a hundred meters across, one American bomb fell into it at about seven o'clock in the evening, and the brigade reached the summit on Thanksgiving morning. It starts three weeks earlier in the Dak To valley and ends with the names on the Wall. It is told from the Army's official history, an Army War College study built on the after action reports, award citations, and the words of the men who were there. Where the sources disagree, for example on which aircraft dropped the bomb, the film says so. It uses real photographs and film of the same units, places and days. Where no picture of the exact place or hour survives, it shows the same units and period. No picture in it is computer-generated. Which unit were you with at Dak To, and where were you on Thanksgiving Day, 1967? If we got a name, a date or a number wrong, the comments are where it gets fixed. Chapters 0:00 Five Days for Hill 875 3:18 Where Three Borders Meet 9:58 The Battalion That Had Been Here Before 15:37 The Sergeant from the 66th 21:17 Rocket Ridge and Company B on Hill 823 28:39 Hill 724 and Task Force Black 35:39 Fire Base 16 and the Burning Dump 41:27 A Number on the Map 45:56 Day One: The Northern Slope 52:30 Day One: Lozada's Outpost 57:40 Day One: A Hundred Meters Across 1:04:48 Seven O'Clock 1:11:34 Whose Plane Was It? 1:15:58 Day Two: Half the Landing Zone 1:23:14 Day Three: Fifteen-Centimeter Slits 1:28:51 Commanders in the Sky 1:34:30 The Other Side of the Hill 1:39:02 Day Four: At No Time Surrounded 1:42:17 The Names on the List 1:47:05 The Night Before Thanksgiving 1:52:07 Day Five: Thanksgiving on Hill 875 1:56:15 Eight Days Later: The Names on the Wall Sources Erik B. Villard, Combat Operations: Staying the Course, October 1967 to September 1968 (United States Army in Vietnam), CMH Pub 91-15, 2017, ch. 5, "Across the Central Highlands." https://archive.org/details/cmh-pub-9... LTC Leonard B. Scott, The Battle for Hill 875, Dak To, Vietnam 1967, U.S. Army War College, 30 Mar 1988, DTIC ADA195360. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA1... George L. MacGarrigle, Combat Operations: Taking the Offensive, October 1966 to October 1967, CMH Pub 91-4, 1998. https://archive.org/details/CMHPub91-4 Medal of Honor citations: Chaplain (Maj.) Charles J. Watters; PFC Carlos J. Lozada (https://www.virtualwall.org/dl/Lozada... PFC John A. Barnes III. The Virtual Wall, "Hill 875" and casualty records. https://www.virtualwall.org/units/hil... Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, "Fight for Hill 875," 19 Nov 1967. https://www.vhpa.org/KIA/panel/battle... CPT Jennifer French, "1,790 Sky Soldiers: the heavy toll of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam," DVIDS, 11 May 2025. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/497585/... The New York Times, 23 Nov 1967, report of General Westmoreland's Pentagon briefing (quoted in the Scott study). Stars and Stripes, "Photo of the day," 22 Nov 2018. https://www.stripes.com/history/archi... Photo and film credits Most film and photographs are from the U.S. Army, the U.S. National Archives (NARA) and the Department of Defense (public domain, works of the U.S. government). Some material is used under license or with attribution, credited below. Thanksgiving 1967 photograph by John Olson, Stars and Stripes. Photos under Creative Commons, via Wikimedia Commons / USMC Archives (Flickr): "Captured North Vietnamese Army Weapons, 8 May 1968," "ARC Light Air Strike Near Camp J.J. Carroll, 4 July 1967," "Waiting for the returns, November 1968" and "3d Battalion, 4th Marines Search and Destroy Mission, circa 1967": USMC Archives, CC BY 2.0 "Medical Team Treats Vietnamese Child, circa 1968," "Scissors Device, March 1966," "Marines Help a Wounded Buddy Into A Stretcher, 12 July 1968": Archives Branch, USMC History Division, CC BY 2.0 "MG Hay in Vietnam": Reincrocci, CC BY-SA 4.0 License texts: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 and creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 More from the same war: Grunt's Field Notes:    / @viet_vet_nam   Crew Chief's Notebook:    / @crewchiefsnotes   #VietnamWar #Vietnam1967 #173rdAirborne