Ambush Valley: I Corps, Vietnam, 1967

by Eric Hammel

AMBUSH VALLEYI Corps, Vietnam, 1967—the Story of a Marine Infantry Battalion's Battle for SurvivalEric HammelIn the summer of 1967, the Marines in I Corps, South Vietnam’s northernmost military region, were doing eveything they could to lighten the pressure on the besieged Con Thien Combat Base.Still fresh after months of relatively light action around Khe Sanh, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was sent to the Con Thien region to secure the combat bases’s endangered main supply route. On September 7, 1967, its first full day in the new area of operations, separate elements of the battalion were attacked by at least two battalions of North Vietnamese infantry, and both were nearly overrun in night-long battles.On September 10, while advancing to a new sector near Con Thien, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was attacked by at least a full North Vietnamese regiment, the same NVA unit that had attacked it two days earlier. Isolated into two separate defensive perimeters, the Marines battled through the afternoon and evening against repeated assaults by waves of NVA regulars intent upon achieving a major victory. In a battle described as “Custer’s Last Stand—With Air Support,” the Americans prevailed by the narrowest of margins.Ambush Valley is an unforgettable account of bravery and survival under impossible conditions. It is told entirely in the words of the men who faced the ordeal together—an unprecedented mosaic of action and emotion woven into an incredibly clear and vivid combat narrative by one of today’s most effective military historians. Ambush Valley achieves a new standard for oral history. It a war story not to be missed.PRAISE FOR AMBUSH VALLEY“Ambush Valley recounts the heroic performance in the summer of 1967 of the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines . . . as it defended the U.S. combat base on a hill called Con Thien. . . . [It] is a fresh, highly personalized, and vivid narrative focusing on one “theater” of the Vietnam War from the perspective of those who fought there.” ——Sea Power“Another of Hammels harrowing eyewitness accounts of a Vietnam War campaign that remains a puzzling episode in a bitterly debated conflict. . . . [The] firsthand recollections afford a vivid, inspiring record of bloody set-piece battles . . . ” —–Kirkus Reviews“This harrowing action is told almost entirely in the words of the survivors in a style that resembles the script for a documentary. By switching back and forth between voices Hammel is able to reinforce or expand on moments in the action; the device elevates this oral history of small unit action over most of its kind.” —— Library Journal“The desperate defensive tactics as well as the raw emotions of the men are vividly conveyed in this memorable mosaic of concentrated warfare. Superb oral history." ——Publishers Weekly“Hammel has expertly woven recollections of numerous participants into a concise yet vivid tale of survival. I marvelled at his ability to present a complete account without gaps or reliance on extended narration. . . . I became so involved I did not want to put it down. ——Marine Corps Gazette“The narrative is hard and gritty—from the gut.” ——Friday Review of Defense Literature

Genres: Military History, Military Fiction

372 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 1990

About the author

Eric Hammel was born in 1946, in Salem, Massachusetts, and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Central High School of Philadelphia in January 1964 and earned a degree in Journalism from Temple University in 1972. His road to writing military history began at age twelve, when he was stuck in bed for a week with a childhood illness. Eric's father bought him the first paperback book he ever owned, Walter Lord's Day of Infamy. As he devoured the book, Eric realized that he wanted to write books exactly like it, what we now call popular narrative history. Lord had pieced together the book from official records illuminated with the recollections of people who were there. Eric began to write his first military history book when he was fifteen. The book eventually turned out to be Guadalcanal: Starvation Island. Eric completed the first draft before he graduated from high school. During his first year of college, Eric wrote the first draft of Munda Trail, and got started on 76 Hours when he was a college junior. Then Eric got married and went to work, which left him no time to pursue his writing except as a journalism student.

Eric quit school at the end of his junior year and went to work in advertising in 1970. Eric completed his journalism degree in 1972, moved to California in 1975, and finally got back to writing while he operated his own one-man ad agency and started on a family. 76 Hours was published in 1980, and Chosin followed in 1982. At the end of 1983 Eric was offered enough of an advance to write The Root: The Marines in Beirut to take up writing books full time. The rest, as they say, is history.

Eric eventually published under his own imprint, Pacifica Press, which morphed into Pacifica Military History and IPS Books. At some point in the late 1990s, Eric realized he had not written in five years, so he pretty much closed down the publishing operation and pieced together a string of pictorial combat histories for Zenith Press. Eric nominally retired in 2008 and took up writing as a full-time hobby writing two novels, 'Til The Last Bugle Call and Love and Grace. Fast forward to 2018 and Eric was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and on August 25th 2020, Eric passed from this life to the next at the age of 74.

Reviews

[a.t.m. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book about marine's and their struggles against the nva in 1967 deserves 5 stars.

This is a heavy book that starts out by recounting a need for every able bodied marine needed to conduct a search and destroy operation. The way it was conducted was a call for volunteers and short timers were not exempt. Even marine's that had less than three weeks in country were asked to fill the ranks. I find this part of the book to.be tragic because it is not revealed how many of these marine's were either killed or wounded. The story is about marine's being short hanuhhded and having rifles that had a tendency to jam in the middle of a fight and this adds to the nightmare. How many marine's died because of this debacle? it is criminal and yet we are lead to believe that because we inflicted more casualties than we suffered, it is a victory.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Vietnam war and the history of the United States Mariner Corps. Welcome home to all that served.

[Frank Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I have read by this author, and like the first was not a disappointment! You have to keep telling yourself that this really happened and its not fiction. Thank you to all who served and died in "Ambush Valley."

[James]

Deserves 5 stars. It's an amazing perspective of a marine battalion and their struggles against the forces of the Vietnam communists. You really begin to feel the high AND lows of combat in the Vietnam conflict, through the eyes of was heroes who were actually there.

Respect.