In the United States It Vasn*t in the Neis-- the Loss of Hill 875

An ironic footnote can be added to the history of the battle for Hill 875, which cost American soldiers over 1,000 casualties and raged for nearly a week in the latter part of November, The following brief Agence France- Presse dispatch was Steoyyerys by I.F.Stone in the Dec.4 London Times; "Dakto, South Vietnam, Dec 3 —- Hill 875, which was captured 10 days ago, after a 5-day battle that cost 158 American lives, has already béen abandoned. U.S. parachute troops who had been guarding the peak about four miles from Cambodia have returned to Dakto after blowing up the massive bunkers and fortifications on and around the summit. *No explanation has been given for the withdrawal. Cf all the numbered ridges which earned fleeting fame during last month's big battles, oly Hill 1338 remains in American or “outh Vietnamese hands. "The others have been abandoned aftsr attempts to destroy the bunkers which protected them..." Stone states in his Dec 18 Weekly, “We saw the same dispatch in the Paris Le Figaro but in no U.S. wire service or newspaper, not even in the New York Times which subscribes to the French press service. "Why is this news witheld from the U.S. public? So it cannot ask why so many lives were spent on taking hill the enemy can now reoccupy? If they aren't worth holding, why were they worth capturing? What happens to the fable they were of such strategic significance they had to be taken at any price?" A number of good question -~ and so far the only answer seems to be the one an anonymous infantry officer gave the Wall Street Journal: (The Valley) doesn't have any strategic value. Neither does the hill.”