No Satisfaction - Operation Hump, November 5-8, 1965

The 173rd Composite Airborne Brigade was composed of units from the USA, Australia, and New Zealand. The 173rd was a “showcase” unit that embodied wahat was to have been an international effort to combat the spread of Communism in South Vietnam. From the start the unit was engaged in battles with the National Liberation Front’s 9th division for control of the province. In November two battalions, one from the 503rd US Airborne Regiment and another from the Royal Australian Rifles, where deployed to once again “search and destroy” the elusive Viet Cong. The offensive was dubbed Operation Hump. This time, however, the Communists elected to stand and fight as their brethren had done further north earlier at the A Shau Valley. What resulted was one of the bloodiest and violent fights to that point in the war, sowing the first doubts among the US and Allied forces that perhaps victory for them was not “just around the corner”… Perhaps you can do as well or better?