Fighting in the Fog on Hill 829
Fighting in the Fog on Hill 829, January 21–22, 1966. From The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration
Fighting in the Fog on Hill 829,
January 21–22, 1966
SUMMARY: On January 21, 1966, 14 Force Reconnaissance Marines were on a patrol in western Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam, searching for signs of Viet Cong activity. While walking atop a steep ridgeline in fog and drenching rain, the Marines were attacked by Communist troops. During the firefight, 1st Lieutenant James T. Egan, Jr., a forward artillery observer accompanying the mission, disappeared. The other Marines searched for him until darkness fell. The next morning, as the 13 remaining Marines tried to find a way down the mountain through the thick fog, Viet Cong insurgents attacked again, resulting in a race down the steep mountainside in near-zero-visibility conditions. The point man, Lance Corporal Edwin R. Grissett, Jr., also disappeared. Neither Egan nor Grissett were ever seen again. Later evidence showed that Grissett was captured and held prisoner by the Viet Cong. He died after nearly three years in captivity.
FULL STORY: The U.S. military spent most of 1965 stabilizing the military situation in South Vietnam (which had been near total collapse) and shoring up the non-Communist Saigon government. But at the beginning of 1966, U.S. leaders planned to bring the full brunt of offensive warfare against those enemy forces still occupying the South Vietnamese countryside. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and the 3d Marine Division devised a major offensive operation in Quang Ngai Province aimed at destroying the Viet Cong’s ability to fight in the region, named Operation DOUBLE EAGLE. Forces involved included more than seven U.S. Marine Corps battalions and one South Vietnamese Army division. DOUBLE EAGLE had three planned phases. For the first phase, in early and mid-January 1966, reconnaissance troops from the 3d Reconnaissance Battalion deployed to Ba To Special Forces Camp. From that hub, they ventured out to reconnoiter any enemy forces that could be found in a series of search-and-clear actions centered on the Ba To and Tra Cau River valleys.
On January 21, 14 Marines were on just such a reconnaissance mission west of Ba To, in the farthest reaches of DOUBLE EAGLE’s area of operations. Thirteen were from 1st Force Recon Company, 3d Reconnaissance Battalion. The fourteenth man was a forward artillery observer from the 12th Marines. The weather was dreadful. Pelting rains hounded the Marines, and the fog and mist in the western Quang Ngai mountains were often so thick, the Marines could see only 50 feet in front of their faces. To reach higher ground before nightfall, the Marines trudged up to a steep-sided ridgeline called Hill 829, where they began making camp.
As they settled in, the rear guard posted further down the slope was attacked by an unknown number of Viet Cong fighters. The ensuing firefight was sporadic and relatively short. 1st Lieutenant James Egan, the artillery observer, crawled forward to try and get a fix on the main body of the enemy force, planning to radio for artillery strikes. Egan was 22 years old from Mountainside, New Jersey, and a 1964 graduate of Notre Dame University. After he crawled forward, none of the other Marines ever saw him again. The Viet Cong broke off contact as more fog rolled in. The Americans searched for Egan for hours, finding no trace of him before darkness enveloped the ridgetop.
Early the next morning, visibility remained so poor that the Force Recon Marines had trouble locating a route down the steep-sided hill. They traveled along the ridgeline, sometimes backtracking, for more than two hours before finally finding a place to climb down. Making matters more precarious, the brush and grass on the hillside was eight feet high in most places, and so the column of men became spread out during the descent. Suddenly, approximately 50 Viet Cong fighters attacked the Marines from the rear with automatic weapons and grenades. The Recon Marines were in an indefensible position, so they tried to break contact by running down the hill while the rearmost men fired back on their pursuers. As 1st Lieutenant Richard F. Parker, Jr., wryly wrote in his after-action report, “the entire descent was made under conditions of heavy attack, and not a controlled movement.”
Sometime during that downhill-running firefight, the Marines’ point man, Lance Corporal Edwin Grissett, also disappeared. Grissett was 22 years old from San Juan, Texas, a town just north of the Rio Grande and the Mexico border. Several men said they remembered seeing him running and in good condition during the descent. No one saw him leave the point. The rest of the Marines became scattered, but reached the valley floor, where Parker set up those who remained in ambush position. This time, they also managed to call in artillery strikes, which ended the fighting. The Marines searched for Grissett, but found no trace of him. When helicopters arrived later that day to extract the Force Recon team, 12 Marines had reached the rally point. Egan and Grissett were the only casualties. Searchers returned to the scene in the following days to look for the two men. They were never found.
Years later, reports from released American POWs established that Grissett had in fact been taken prisoner by the Viet Cong. He spent nearly three years in a remote jungle prison camp, and while he was missing in action, the Marine Corps promoted him to Sergeant. In 1976, the Vietnamese government confirmed Grissett had been among those POWs who died in captivity. They recorded the date of his death as December 2, 1968. According to one prisoner who said he witnessed Grissett’s final days, he likely died of malnutrition. In 1989, the Vietnamese returned Grissett’s remains, which were positively identified by U.S. forensic researchers. He is buried in Dubberly, Louisiana.
The remains of artillery officer Egan have never been recovered. He was promoted to the rank of Major, and is still listed as missing in action. Unsubstantiated rumors suggested he too was captured by the Viet Cong, but no one ever confirmed it. Because there are no leads as to the whereabouts of his remains, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency records his status as “non-recoverable.”
Egan and Grissett are memorialized on Panel 4E, Lines 81 and 82, respectively, of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Operation DOUBLE EAGLE ended inconclusively on February 17, 1966.1
1“Sgt Edwin Russell Grissett, Jr,” Personnel Profile, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (accessed 1/14/22); “Casualty Status Summary; Case of Captain James T. Egan Jr.,” 089846/ U.S. Marine Corps. 1970. Manuscript/Mixed Material, Library of Congress (accessed 1/14/22); Lawrence A. Clayton, “Missing in Action,” Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2007 (accessed 1/14/22); Jack Shulimson, An Expanding War: 1966, U.S. Marines in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Marine Corps History and Museums Division, 1982); “Wall of Faces,” Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (accessed 1/14/22); Richard Donham Coffelt Database of Vietnam Casualties (accessed 1/14/22).