Fellow US soldiers grieve and mourn beside the body of a US soldier killed in action after the Battle of Dak To in the Shan Valley in a battle between US and Viet Cong soldiers in the Vietnam War. During the fierce civil war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam, US soldiers were caught in the middle of the conflict and were killed in action.
The 1st North Vietnamese Division attacked an allied outpost near Dak To on the Central Plateau. The US Army's 4th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division (Airborne Division) and approximately 1,400 troops of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, reinforced by South Vietnamese troops, engaged some 12,000 North Vietnamese troops and Vietcong in the difficult, jungle-strewn hills On 19 November 1967, in the Battle of Dak Tho The bloodiest fighting took place. Troops of the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the US Army encountered an ambush attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces at Hill 875. By 23 November, after weeks of intense fighting, most of the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong had been destroyed and forced to withdraw; the North Vietnamese regiments that were to be part of the Tet Offensive from 30 January 1968 were decimated.
The Battle of Dak Tho from 1 to 30 November 1967 was the largest and most costly battle in the Central Highlands of Vietnam since 1965. Dak Tho was bordered by Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and from 19 November an even larger battle over 875 was fought in the Shan Valley below Hill 875. More than 100 US paratroopers were killed and about 250 wounded in four days of fighting over the hilltop. Hill 875 was occupied by US troops, but they left the area a few days later and Hill 875 was abandoned. The 1,400 infantrymen of the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, who fought for three weeks in the Battle of Ducto, suffered 60% casualty losses, including more than 200 killed and 650 wounded.
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