HILL 41 WITH THE SPOONERS AND BILL STILWAGEN

Among the most visually stunning and emotionally wrenching stop on our tour was Hill 41, where  Mark Spooner was stationed during a portion of the war.

Just west of Danang, and with legendary Charlie Ridge rising in the background, Hill 41 represented what were in many ways some of the most intense moments Mark  Spooner spent in Vietnam as a forward operator attached to Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.

As we drew up to the hill—ironically, stuck for a while behind a busload of young Vietnamese Marines just setting off for duty with several hundred relatives following on scooters to see them off—Mark’s first impression was how the size of the hill had changed. 

“It’s almost disrespectful,” he said with a nod toward the men of his division who perished there.

Hill 41 is currently under strip mine deconstruction for an adjacent brick factory, and is only about fifty percent of the width it was when Mark was stationed there in 1968.
It’s still 41 meters tall, however, and winding our way among the quartz and clay, we made the trip to the top, with Bill Stilwagen, our supremely gracious bush guide (and former door gunner with the Purple Fox Squadron) leading the way.

Once on top, it took Mark a moment to orient himself since the hill, barren of foliage in his memory, was now overgrown, but once he’d located some of landmarks he recalled, including distant paddies and valleys where he’d gone on search-and-destroy missions as a teenager, he was able to share a true moment of closeness with his daughter, an Iraq war veteran.

Afterward, Jennifer said, “I did feel very close to my father up there—I’d heard of these places, the hills where he’d fought, but I really never expected to be here beside him, actually smelling the smells and looking out over the Vietnam countryside—however it’s changed.”

Certainly, the slow destruction of Hill 41 may seem sacrilegious to a Marine who was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, but in another way, seeing it transformed slowly into bricks, also represents a country in the process of rapid development.

Mark Spooner says, “When I see  the people here prospering, raising their children in peace, I think the American military did its job.  After all, that’s the result we were after.  I think it’s ‘mission accomplished’.”