Battle of Hamburger Hill "chewed up like a hamburger" in grim reference to the Battle of Pork Chop Hill during the Korean War. The battle on Hamburger Hill occurred in May 1969, during Operation Apache Snow, the second part of a three-phased campaign intended to destroy PAVN Base Areas in the remote A Sầu Valley. This campaign was a series of operations intended to do damage to the PAVN forces in the A Sầu Valley, which had been an infiltration route into South Vietnam prior to 1966, when the PAVN seized the Special Forces camp in the valley during the Battle of A Shau
Battle of Hamburger Hill its highest peak are a series of ridges and fingers, one of the largest extending southeast to a height of , another reaching south to a peak. The entire mountain is a rugged wilderness blanketed in double- and triple-canopy jungle, dense thickets of bamboo, and waist-high elephant grass. Local Degar tribesmen called it Ap Bia "the mountain of the crouching beast". Official histories of the engagement refer to it as Hill 937 after the elevation displayed on U.S. Army maps, but the American soldiers who fought there dubbed it "Hamburger Hill", suggesting that those who fought on the hill were