Read the directions for each part below. You'll be watching videos and reading articles before completing each section of your packet. Write all of your answers in your packet. All of your answers should be in complete sentences. Fill up the lines.
This assignment is due by the end of class today.
First, start by watching this Brain Pop video on the Vietnam War then complete the "Vocabulary" and "Graphic Organizer - Debate." Be sure to wear earbuds.
You can find the video here.
The log in for Brain Pop is sanjosems, password is scorpions.
Second, read the article below, "Into the Killing Zone" by Frank Boccia and complete "The Soldier's Perspective Questions."
Into the Killing Zone by Frank Boccia
May10: The Battle Begins
I had been in Vietnam for a few months before Hamburger Hill. I was a fairly popular platoon leader. Sure, I was strict and demanding. But I made an effort to know all my guys y name. I'd ask them about their families. I wanted them to know I cared about them. We were a tight platoon.
Lieutenant Colonel Weldon Honeycutt was a different breed of cat. He was tough and abrasive. He had these ice-blue eyes that looked at you like he might just cut your throat. No one liked him. but he was the best combat commander I've ever seen.
His code name was Blackjack. He told me that the only reason the army made me an officer was because I was too educated to do anything else. He said I had a lot to learn about leading men and making though choices in battle. I was furious at him. He made me feel about an inch tall.
My battalion, the 3/187th, went into the A Shau Valley on May 10. The A Shau had a terrible reputation as a dangerous hideout for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).
None of us talked about it, though. It was like the elephant in the room. Still, we weren't strangers to combat. We'd been in a hard fire fight at another mountain called Dong Ngai. After that fight, I expected this one to be easy.
The sky above the valley was filled with helicopters--Hueys, as the were known. As my platoon prepared to move up the hill, it seemed like very helicopter in Vietnam circled over us. I'd read accounts of D-Day in World War II and how soldiers were awestruck by the sight of all the ships around them. That's how I felt. There were hundreds of soldiers in the valley. I got goose bumps. I thought, "Is the entire army here!"
Before my platoon moved up the hill, fighter-bombers and artillery helicopters bombarded its slopes with air strikes and napalm, gasoline-based firebombs. It didn't seem like anything could be alive up there.
But as we approached the mountain, I could tell this mission would be more difficult than I anticipated. Each step was a struggle. Narrow trails snaked up the hill into the jungle. The canopy was so dense that we could barely see a few feet ahead of us. The vines kept out the light and the fresh air. The jungle smelled rotten. It gave me a feeling of being completely out the world.
Suddenly heard shots over our heads. An intense blast of RPG's (rocket propelled grenades) and AK-47' gunfire cut through the trees. I couldn't see where it was coming from -- bushes, vines or rocks.
WE hit the ground and returned fire. But the skirmish was brief. The enemy was gone as mysteriously as they'd arrived.
For the third and final part read this article on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and answer the questions on The Wall.
When you are finished turn in your packet. But sure your name is on it.
