Dak to: America's Sky Soldiers in South Vietnam's Central Highlands

This is one of the best volumes about a desperate, bloody battle during the Vietnam War. Fought between the veteran paratroopers of the 173d Airborne Brigade and North Vietnamese Regulars in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in late 1967, the author demonstrates through graphic prose and primary evidence just how savage and vicious the fighting in Vietnam was. This legendary fight took place almost immediately before the TET offensive of January 1968 and ruined some of the NVA units that were to take part in that offensive and helped ruin the chances for the Comminists to gain victory. Victory in this fight came at a heavy cost, and this book chronicles just how savage and desperate, and how heart-breaking the American losses were.
For me personally, this book means much, as my brother was a company commander in the 2d Battalion of the 503d infantry, one of the four infantry battalions of the 173d Airborne Brigade, and he was killed in action leading his company on Hill 875.
This book is as good as We Were Soldiers Once And Young, and it is one of the best books I have read on the war in Vietnam. It shows the courage and skill of outnumbered Americans who fought, died, and never quit-something that never really came out of the general media coverage of that unpopular war.
This volume is highly recommended and the author is to be congratulated for he has told a story of high valor and much suffering, and of the ongoing skill of the American soldier doing his duty, appreciated or not, in foreign lands fighting and defeating a skilled and determined enemy.
Virtute et Valore

Edward F. Murphy, Dak To: America's Sky Soldiers in South Vietnam's Central Highlands (1993, New York: Pocket Books edn., 1995)
The appearance of this marvelous little book is deceptive. Its pocket-book format might suggest a brief regimental history or narrow personal account, but author Edward Murphy's text is, in fact, a captivating and relatively sophisticated narrative of the 173d Airborne Brigade's five-month campaign in 1967 in the dense jungle of South Vietnam's Central Highlands. The fighting around a small hamlet called Dak To proved to be especially hard for two reasons: the first concerned the physical conditions and the second was in the nature of the enemy. Daytime temperatures were in the upper 90s, with humidity in excess of 90 percent, and the moisture brought out mosquitoes and leeches. At times, it rained hard practically every day. According to Murphy, "frequently [the American paratroopers'] clothes rotted in the damp jungle," so, about once a month, fresh fatigues were delivered by supply helicopter to the field. The jungle was so thick that visibility often was limited to a few meters, and nearly every foot of ground was covered by vegetation. Sometimes the paratroopers had to carry chain saws to cut through the jungle and to make landing zones for their supply helicopters. (It could take two hours of hard work to hack a landing zone out of the jungle.) Enlisted men carried their weapons, ammunition, and personal gear on their backs in rucksacks which weighed from 75 to 90 pounds. During the rainy season, marching 1,000 meters through the jungle in a day was considered "good progress."
The physical conditions often negated the United States' vast superiority in weapons technology. For instance, according to Murphy: "Artillery [could] be ineffective in the jungle...[because] shells [had] the tendency to burst in the tops of tall trees, scattering shrapnel harmlessly about." "Too often, airstrikes and gunships could not effectively penetrate the thick jungle canopy." Furthermore, according to Murphy: "To prevent U.S. air strikes and artillery from decimating its ranks, the [North Vietnamese and Viet Cong] `hugged' the Sky Soldiers, closing to within ten to twenty meters of their perimeter." In addition to the difficult conditions, and in contrast to the combat farther south, which was mostly against Viet Cong irregulars, the paratroopers, many of whom were still teenagers, battled elements of the North Vietnamese Army, "professionals who [knew] how to fight." The fighting often was brutal. One of the favored weapons of the North Vietnamese was the RPG, a Soviet-manufactured antitank rocket used as an antipersonnel weapon against American infantry. Furthermore, there was nothing chivalrous about the war at Dak To. After one fierce firefight, Murphy reports, a medical specialist "could hear the wounded screaming for mercy as the NVA walked among them, executing those paratroopers still alive." On another occasion, when the paratroopers returned to the site of one battle to recover their dead, they found that "corpses had been mutilated, their features destroyed, ring fingers cut off, and ears removed." Early in the book, Murphy writes that the "173d possessed great morale. All its men were volunteers for airborne training and most had volunteered for South Vietnam." During the Dak To campaign, however, the paratroopers' frustrations mounted. At one moment, when a "friendly" artillery round landed too close for comfort to an American captain, he grabbed his company's radio handset and screamed: "Send another round this way and I'll kill the son of a bitch who fires it." One of Murphy's clearest themes is the gradual erosion of the paratroopers' confidence in their superior officers. According to the author, the generals' "grand plans meant little to the average Sky Soldier. All he knew was that he was out in the boonies, humping day after day in the monotonous mountains and valleys of the Central Highlands." Furthermore, Murphy writes that when Gen. William Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, flew to Dak To on June 23, 1967 to talk with the survivors of one fierce battle, "You took on a tough NVA unit and whipped their asses," a sergeant whispered to a buddy, "Wonder what he's been smoking?" Murphy offers many glimpses of the cruel ironies and inequities of war. In one instance, after a Marine jet dropped a 500-lb. bomb directly on an aid station for wounded American paratrooper, an American officer on the ground pleaded into a radio: "No more f------ planes. Please no more planes. You're killing us up here. Stop it." The bomb wounded over 80 men badly enough to be brought to the aid station, but nearly all the medics were dead. Meanwhile, the pilot returned "to his base at Da Nang with its air-conditioned officers' club, ice-cold beers, hot showers, and clean sheets," The ongoing controversy about the accuracy of "body counts" is on display here. At one point during the Dak To campaign, when North Vietnamese dead were reported as 1,644, Gen. Westmoreland stated in a press conference: "I think [the battle was] the beginning of a great defeat for the enemy." According to Murphy, however, "these figures are suspect,"and the actual number probably was closer to 1,000. (After one battle, the 173d's after-action report stated that 513 NVA had been killed even though the best estimate of men engaged in the battle was that the number of enemy of killed in action actually was 50 to 75.)
One veteran master sergeant, who fought in three wars, told the Murphy that, in 25 years as a paratrooper, he had never seen anything approaching the death and destruction at Dak To. The author leaves no doubt about the paratroopers' bravery or the 173d Airborne Brigade richly-deserved reputation as one of the elite units of the United States' armed forces. But the answer to the larger question - What were American fighting men doing in the jungles of Vietnam in the first place? - remains unanswered.

This true account of the 173rd in the central highlands of Vietnam kept me turning the pages. It is a must read for all who appreciate the sacrifices of our brave American soldiers.

Wow this was a really great book. This is the first novel I've read about the role of a paratrooper in war, and I'm glad i chose this book to be the first. Edward Murphy kept me hooked the whole way from start to finish. I couldn't ask for a better Vietnam war novel. Great book. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes to read war novels.