FOREWORD

When leaders make mistakes, men die!

This book is about the men who paid the price on Hill 65—the dead, the wounded, and those who returned home carrying injuries no bandage could cover.

Men like Clair Thurston and David Ugland, young officers who would not come home.

Men like Dennis Rutowski, whose death on Hill 65 would reach across generations and eventually help bring this story into being.

Men like Lawrence Joel and Chaplain James M. Hutchens, who were wounded while moving toward men who needed them.

And men like Mike DeFrancesco, Al Conetto, and so many others who survived the battle but carried pieces of it with them for the rest of their lives.

History usually records battles through maps, timelines, unit symbols, movements, casualty figures, and after-action reports. Those things tell us where men went, when the shooting began, and how the battle ended.

What they cannot fully show is the human element.

Battles are not fought by lines drawn across a map. They are fought by frightened, exhausted soldiers forced to make life-and-death decisions in seconds. Their language is not always polite. Their humor can be dark, vulgar, and blasphemous. Sometimes that humor is the only thing keeping fear under control.

You will see that in this book.

The men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade volunteered to become paratroopers. They came from different races, regions, religions, and backgrounds, but none of those differences mattered when the firing began.

They bled paratrooper.

On Hill 65, they fought as one. They carried the wounded, protected the fallen, and refused to abandon one another.

Some became famous for what they did.

Others remained known mainly to the men who stood beside them.

All deserve to be remembered.

Paul Rutowski has gone beyond the official history to restore the voices, personalities, courage, fear, sacrifice, and humanity of the men who fought there.

They are the real heroes—the soldiers who laced their boots, shouldered their weapons, and entered the jungle without knowing whether they would ever walk out again.

When this story is finished, you will understand the pride behind the words:

All the Way, Airborne!