The Rock Apes of Hill 868: The Battle of Dong Den

Early 1966. Quang Nam Province, in the I Corps area. Seabees had blown the top off Dong Den Mountain to create a Divisional Outpost/Landing Zone and Radio Relay site for the Third Marines. At 868 metres, the summit was known as Hill 868. It lay about 12 miles west-northwest of the Da Nang Air Base.

It was dark. The Marines on the hill reported movement in the foliage, a possible large formation of enemy soldiers. The Captain on the radio told them to stay in place. Then a different report came through: "We have a large number of apes all around us." In Vic Socotra's version, they added: "These rock apes are getting close."

The Marines asked permission to fire, but the Captain refused. Gunfire would give away the position. "If he gets the handset he can tell you himself," came the reply. The Captain ordered them to throw rocks to chase the apes away, and they did. "They're throwing rocks back at us and throw harder than we do! Request permission to fire!"

Over the radio came a loud thump, possibly a sizable rock striking the radioman, then a scream. Still the order stood: "No shooting!! Don't give away your position!" The last call was short: "We're fixing bayonets…We're goin' hand-to-hand!" Then the hill exploded into a one-sided firefight. All the sounds came from American weapons.

A reconnaissance squad reached the summit afterwards. In Pete Mecca's telling, they found dead rock apes and unconscious Marines. Four Marines were seriously hurt and medevacked. Socotra put it in one line: "Marines and rock apes strewn all over… four serious med-evacs, none of them apes."

No account describes the Hill 868 animals on their own. Mecca's general profile gives rock apes of 4 to 6 feet, with thick, muscular bodies and red, orange, brownish or black hair. Socotra calls them tail-less, about half the height of an American. "In the dark, they were gray."

Nothing from the time has surfaced. No unit record. No named witness. No photograph. We Are The Mighty noted that no bodies were ever found. The details drift between versions. The unit appears as "Alpha Company, Third Marines, 3rd Recon Battalion," though the 3rd Recon Battalion belonged to the 3rd Marine Division. "A large number" of apes becomes "several hundred." One page moves Hill 868 to Monkey Mountain, the setting of other rock ape stories.

Sceptics point to misidentified primates. Jason Brazeal identified photos said to show rock apes as red-shanked douc langurs. Snub-nosed monkeys and macaques have also been suggested. Mecca rejects both an orangutan and the theory of combat stress and drugs. Beatnik Bytes read it as folklore that grew: "What was 3 became 9 and what was a monkey but jokingly referred too as an ape by troops became Sasquatch."

The oldest dated version is Socotra's, written around 2004. Beatnik Bytes traces the story to Kregg P. J. Jorgenson's 2001 book Very Crazy, G.I.!, a link still unconfirmed. Mecca's 2023 column, "In search of Vietnam's Big Foot," carried it into local newspapers. Vietnamese scientists did search for người rừng. Ornithologist Võ Quý reportedly cast a footprint in 1974. In 1982, Trần Hồng Việt reportedly cast prints measuring 28 by 16 cm. The battle on Hill 868 remains a story without a record. Vietnam's own chapter in the lore of Bigfoot.