Honeycutt's battalion moves into the jungle toward Hill 937; the enemy is waiting

On May 13, 1969, Lieutenant Colonel Weldon Honeycutt's 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry began moving on foot through the triple-canopy jungle of Dong Ap Bia — "the mountain of the crouching beast" — toward a ridge the Army called Hill 937. The PAVN 29th Regiment, veterans of the 1968 Battle of Hue, had dug into concentric bunker positions and decided to stand and fight. What followed over ten days would cost the 101st Airborne 56 killed and 367 wounded, prompt a $10,000 bounty on the battalion commander, and force a reckoning with American strategy in Vietnam…