Lewis Walt, who commanded both the 3rd Marine Division and the III Marine Amphibious Force, focused on pacifying the villages of I Corps’ lowlands and cleansing them as much as possible of Viet Cong and military forces. During their first year in South Vietnam, Marine Corps forces commanded by Maj. Most of the population of South Vietnam lived in the lush coastal plain along the South China Sea where they grew rice in the fertile river valleys. Lewis Walt’s III Marine Amphibious Force would number 70,000 Marines. As the war progressed, the 1st Marine Division in the southern part of I Corps fought a mostly counter-insurgency war against Viet Cong forces, while the 3rd Marine Division in northern I Corps engaged the communist Peoples’ Army of Vietnam forces in continuous fighting similar to that of a conventional war. Fields’ 1st Marine Division arrived in South Vietnam in early 1966 joining the 3rd Marine Division already in-country. That year the Marines changed their focus from pacification of the populated coastal lowlands to countering enemy infiltration south of the DMZ. Marines assault entrenched North Vietnamese forces during Operation Hastings in July 1966. military joint-service command known as Military Assistance Command Vietnam. Marines at Da Nang Air Base on March 8, 1965, the Marines began carving out safe zones for their forces in I Corps, the northernmost of four tactical zones in South Vietnam established by the U.S. The heavy fighting begun the previous year along the DMZ had driven out the Vietnamese peasants-the ground around Con Thien was a wasteland, pockmarked with thousands of craters from the shells and rockets fired daily by Communist forces at the imperturbable Marines, although the red soil still boasted dense vegetation in places.įollowing the arrival of the first contingent of U.S. Standing on the red dirt of Con Thien’s bulldozed plateau, a Marine could look north out over the sand-bagged bunkers, trenches, and barbed wire-laced perimeter, beyond the DMZ into North Vietnam looking west, he could see the rolling hill country and mountains that led toward Laos to the east he could see not only the Gio Linh outpost six miles away, but on a clear day even the U.S. The Americans, as the French did before them, found the hill to be a superb observation post offering a magnificent, panoramic view of the lush lowlands that were traditionally planted with coffee, pineapple, and bananas.

Two of the knolls were side by side and the third was situated south of the left hill. The Leathernecks stationed at Con Thien used the outpost both as an artillery firebase and an observation post.Ĭon Thien, which in Vietnamese means “small mountain of heavenly beings” was translated by the Americans into “Hill of Angels.” The hill actually comprised three knolls in close proximity to each other.

Recognized as a critical defensive position in the First Indochina War, the French had built a fort atop the highest of the small mountain’s three knolls. As the sun rose on May 8, 1967, it illuminated the 525-foot-high hill known as Con Thien where the Marine Corps had established a firebase two miles south of the Demilitarized Zone in South Vietnam.

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