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Hill 875 |
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During the fierce battle for a hill
called 875
Elite Airborne Infantry struggled just to stay alive.
These leather tough men,
These hard fighting men,
Were the best of men,
And they were the worst of men,
But they were men...
They were our brothers.
They were our fathers.
They were our favored sons.
They were the handsome "Boy Next Door,"
That all young girls adore.
Winged Airborne heart
Fighting soldiers from the sky,
Fearless men who jump knowing they might die,
The flowers of American youth,
Defending freedoms from tyrants uncouth,
Inspired by honor distilled from heavens above,
More than self their country love.
Winged Airborne heart
Airborne sky troopers patrolling an unnamed hill
Came under intense recoilless rifle fire.
A withering blanket of VC rifle grenades
made the situation dire.
Fearing their lives might soon expire,
The 173rd Airborne
Fighting all bloody morn,
Withstood wave after wave of attacks,
Displaying bravery in a hundred single,
Gallant acts,
Struggling in close quarters hand-to-hand,
Determined at all costs to make a stand.
Winged Airborne heart
173rd Airborne elite, pressed to evict
The North Vietnamese Army by combat edict,
To give Charley the boot,
From his dug-in fortress route,
From hilltop enclave entrenched,
Like a honeycombed beehive
On a hill with no name, just numbered 875.
Winged Airborne heart
Airborne infantry assaulted the ridgeline,
Facing NVA regulars, top of the line,
Dug in Heavily mid 875 hilltop mists,
Fighting mad like hornets around a nest pissed,
Repelling Airborne infantry attacks
Launched on their lofty summit sublime,
Time after time after time.
Winged Airborne heart
Up the bloody hill
Filled with faith and hope still,
The "Boys next door" advance
Gambling heavily on chance,
Inch-by-bloody-inch,
To the NVA's perimeter trench.
They crawled within 25 yards
Of bunkers a lofty summit guards,
Through withering fire of artillery barrage,
Encircling them in smoking camouflage.
Winged Airborne heart
Mid ear shattering din thundering
Mid devastating fire blistering,
Mid air support close in
Exploding the hill in smoke again,
And yet again,
Feeling heat of Charley's mortars Incoming,
Mid annihilations deadly ring of fire raging,
Astride a burning, exploding, funeral pyre.
Winged Airborne heart
With coming dawn,
Charley unleashed a blistering attack,
To prove of fighting will they had no lack,
Bent on driving Yankee usurpers back.
Charley would not soon give or flinch,
Quite comfy in elaborate tunnels and trench.
Charley had not dee dee'd and fled
Bunkers with thick dirt roofs overhead.
In fact,
Charley would be fortified there still,
If not for American will.
Winged Airborne heart
Sky troopers encircled the Cong's position,
In the face of intense demolition.
Moving through an inferno still burning,
A hill still smoldering,
With American blood and ash blackened.
Up the hill by grim battle charred,
Airborne infantry relentlessly charged,
Through a gauntlet threatening destruction,
Through shadow of death's imminent obliteration.
Brave men could not this battle undone leave,
Though NVA loomed so close,
You could hear them breathe.
Winged Airborne heart
Airborne talked prideful talk,
Now it was time to walk the walk.
Through the very pits of hell,
hearing Charley's cursing yell.
Amid carnage dark'ning dim,
Brimstone raining down on them,
Pungent fear in throats lumping,
Foul hatreds around them smelling,
Men from the land of the brave
All around them crying,
Men from the home of the free
All around them dying,
Machine guns pumping
God awful fearing,
Gut-shot brothers around them groaning,
Hearts and beings churning,
In primal screaming,
Nostrils pure hate breathing,
Dreams of death souls torturing,
Breathlessly through acrid smoke running
Lungs burning,
Countless dramas unfolding,
Of heroic soldiers rescuing,
Being rescued,
Shooting,
Being shot at,
Grenades throwing,
Ducking grenades down on them rolling,
Hoping, praying, cursing the Vietcong,
Hiding from the Vietcong,
Hiding from themselves.
Winged Airborne heart
With fixed bayonets on rifles M-16,
Cascading rivulets of sweat down foreheads careen,
On charred infantrymen faces sheen,
Hot swelter on brows shining,
Down camouflaged faces coursing,
Down faces caked with chalk and mud,
Unsure the rivers weren't life blood.
Winged Airborne heart
Soldiers from both sides,
See eye-to-eye the surging tides,
See faces of others fearing death,
See the last vestiges of humanity bereft,
See face-to-face incarnate foes,
Brother shadows,
All their beings absorbed with hating,
Each consumed with Killing,
Each preoccupied with the others dying.
Winged Airborne heart
Tremendous fears flutter in their head,
These soldiers fighting and dying,
In the abode of the dead.
War is an unholy estate,
A malingering Devil's hate,
Where condemned soldier's time
After time after time after time,
In horrible combat rhyme,
Deliver pure souls
To war's most Satanic roles.
Forced to kill or be killed,
War causes a strained separation from God...
Tumbling from the precepts of the iron Rod.
Yet strangely, in war,
Soldiers are never nearer to God!
Winged Airborne heart
Who will this fray win,
By the rockets red glare,
In horrors deep'ning pit of despair,
Mid bombs bursting in air?
Each man wagers a meager immortality
That he will not be a fatality,
In battles basic futility.
The summit of Hill 875
Goes to he standing last, still alive.
Winged Airborne heart
These leather tough men,
These hard fighting men,
Were the best of men,
And they were the worst of men,
But they were men...
They were our brothers.
They were our fathers.
They were our favored sons.
They were the handsome "Boy Next Door," |
By
Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2005
Listed August
1, 2010 |
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About
Author...
In 1966-67, Gary Jacobson served with B Co
2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam as a combat infantryman and is the recipient of the Purple
Heart.
Gary, who resides in Idaho writes stories he
hopes are never forgotten, perhaps compelled by
a Vietnamese legend that says, "All poets are
full of silver threads that rise inside them as
the moon grows large." So Gary says he
writes because "It is that these silver
threads are words poking at me � I must let them
out. I must! I write for my brothers who cannot
bear to talk of what they've seen and to educate
those who haven't the foggiest idea about the
effect that the horrors of war have on
boys-next-door."
Visit Gary Jacobson's site for more information
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