The Battle of Dong Den: Unraveling the Vietnam Rock Ape Bigfoot Myth

The Battle of Dong Den: Unraveling the Rock Ape Myth

Cryptid tales, common in the realms of cryptozoology, often suffer from grotesque embellishments as they pass through oral traditions. Humans, in their narrative transmission, tend to augment stories, turning mundane occurrences into sensationalized legends. This tendency highlights the importance of approaching reports of cryptids and unknown animals with skepticism, relying instead on logic, first-hand accounts, and scientific methodologies to uncover the truth behind the myths.

During the Vietnam War, multiple accounts surfaced of soldiers encountering creatures known as "Rock Apes." These beings were purportedly 5 to 6 feet tall, possessed large fangs, and were black and white in color. Described as fearless and aggressive, these creatures allegedly attacked troops, contributing to their legend.

The origins of the "Rock Ape" moniker can be traced to a specific event known as "The Battle of Dong Den." Taking place in early 1966 in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, this battle unfolded at Hill 868, a strategic outpost for the U.S. Marine Corps. During this engagement, Marines reported unusual movements in the surrounding foliage, initially suspected to be enemy soldiers. However, subsequent observations revealed the presence of apes, leading to a surreal encounter where Marines found themselves in a one-sided conflict with these creatures.

At Hill 868, early 1966, in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, a part of I Corps, the U.S. Marine stomping grounds during the Vietnam War. Seabees had blown the top off Dong Den Mountain to create a Divisional Outpost/Landing Zone and Radio Relay site for the Third Marines. The site was a great vantage point for the Marines, overlooking Elephant Valley to the North and Red Beach and the Da Nang Air Base to the east and southeast. It was also the site of the controversial ‘Battle of Dong Den.’ The following has been reported as the radio conversation between the Marines on the mountain and their Captain.

The Marines on the hill called the Captain to report there was movement in the foliage, a possible large formation of enemy soldiers, the Viet Cong.

The Captain ordered the Marines to “stay in place,” the fire-base artillery would back them up if necessary.

The radio crackled back, “Never mind. We have a large number of apes all around us.”

The Captain reiterated to “stay in place” and not to reveal their position by discharging their weapons.

Hill 868: “These apes are getting close.”

The Captain: “How close?”

Hill 868: “If he gets the handset he can tell you himself.”

The Captain: “Well, throw rocks at them to chase them away.”

A pause, then Hill 868 called back: “Damn! They’re throwing rocks back at us and they throw harder than we do! Request permission to fire!”

There was a loud thump, possibly a sizable rock impacting the radioman, followed by a scream mixed with curses, growls and multiple descriptive adjectives in the background.

The Captain: “No shooting! Do not give away your position!”

Hill 868: “We’re fixing bayonets…”

The radio cracked. Screams of pain were heard as was anger from the Marines and apes alike.

Hill 868: “We’re goin’ hand-to-hand!”

Before the Captain could respond, the hill exploded into a one-sided firefight, all the sounds coming from American weapons. Unable to get a response, the Captain dispatched a squad of Marines to reconnoiter the area and the situation. The squad found Marines, and what the Vietnamese call “Batutut” meaning “jungle people” or “Nguoi Rung” meaning “people of the forest” or what American soldiers called “Rock Apes” strewn across Hill 868. They called the Captain to report several dead Rock Apes, a bunch of angry Marines, the rest unconscious. Four seriously wounded Marines were transported for medical care via med-evacs. 

Rock Apes: Tales of Encounter and Conflict

The most prominent accounts of Rock Apes were published in Kregg P.J. Jorgenson’s book Very Crazy, G.I. - Strange but True Stories of the Vietnam War. One such story from this book tells the account of a unit of six men from the 101st Airborne Division.

This particular unit was taking a rest when the trees about 15 yards uphill from them suddenly began to shake violently. Naturally, given their environment, the soldiers assumed the shaking was caused by the enemy, and that they needed to immediately prepare to be under attack. However, as the soldiers watched the trees, they saw “that an oblong head with a face covered in reddish hair, possessing a huge mouth, and dark, deep-set eyes had emerged from the brush,”

When this bizarre creature fully emerged, the soldiers were able to get a better look, and they saw that it was about 5 feet tall and very muscular, and covered in matted reddish hair. The creature stood on two legs and examined the soldiers just as they examined it. As the soldiers argued over whether or not the creature might be an orangutan, it retreated back into the jungle.

In 1968, Mike Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Marines, were in the jungle in the area of Monkey Mountain, just outside of Da Nang. Marines reported that when they were in the mountains, apes would get above them and throw rocks at them, ambushing the ambush teams.

In 1969, Delta Company, First of the 502nd infantry, 101st Airborne Division, was on Nui Mo Tau Ridge, about ten miles south of Hue City. They were eating lunch when about eight apes  came walking up a trail and surprised them. They looked very much like NVA soldiers in khaki uniforms as they came around a bend in the trail about 10 meters from the unsuspecting GI's.

 

Imagine the bizarre scene of about 8 GI's firing madly at seven or eight apes. The alpha male Rock Ape was very dark in color; almost black while the rest were light brown. He was in the trees and repeatedly rushed the GIs and then retreated (rushing and retreating is a characteristic of the primate we will discuss in a moment). He did this several times, apparently covering the retreat of the troop.

 

The shooting all stopped at the same instant, and we just stood there in shock for a while.

Apparently the fire continued after they realized what had arrived, not to harm the animals but to scare them away.

The Marines took their position, and Steve Canyon and a buddy set up a simulated ambush position. Then they noticed they were not alone. Gazing at them was a Rock Ape, grave and not at all afraid. The Ape began to cry a strange guttural sound like the bark of a dog.

 

The noise would give away their location and ruin the experiment. Steve Canyon's buddy picked up a rock, "No! Don't do it! They throw back!" His buddy ignored him and threw it anyway.

 

The rock glanced off the Ape, who promptly found one of his own, and threw it back with a curious motion of the wrist on the follow-through. Steve Canyon said it was funny. The Rock Apes throw like girls, only with velocity.

 

"They'd make great fast-pitch softball players," said the VP in the back. He has a daughter who plays the sport, and I could see he was thinking about applications for the resource.

 

"Yeah, so all of a sudden there isn't one Ape, there is about twenty of them, all barking and throwing stones at us."

 

"Why didn't you shoot them?" I asked. Steve looked out the windshield. "I dunno. Didn't seem right. But those Apes started to come at us and we ran as fast as we could and we didn't stop until we were out of the jungle." 

It is said that withdrawal of American forces over the next two years did not end the matter. The Rock Apes continued to hold their ground.

 

In 1974, the apes caused so much trouble for the North Vietnamese that a major expedition to Tay Nguyen, in the area they had liberated in Kon Tum Province. There are no reports of success or victory.

 

It has been said, "You don't want to get into it with the Rock Apes. They can throw heat."

They used to conduct periodic attacks on troops in Laos and Cambodia. And that was the beginning of the tale of the Rock Apes, the Strange Jungle People. 'Rock Ape ' is the common name of a tail-less monkey known as the Barbary Macaques, found wild in Morocco and Algeria. It is not the same creature known to have pelted and surprised troops in Southeast Asia.

 

Steve Canyon said they were light brown to reddish brown in color, and about half the height of an American. They sat on their haunches and were active at night, though some reports indicate they trooped in the day as well, and were sometimes mistaken for patrols of North Vietnamese Regulars. They were normally light red in color, though "In the dark," said Steve Canyon, "they were gray."

 

There was evidence of them everywhere. Sometimes excrement would be found on a bunker roof in the morning, mysterious commentary in the night.

However, as investigations deepened and scientific scrutiny intensified, the truth behind the Rock Ape myth began to unravel. Photographs purported to show Rock Apes were later identified (by Jason Brazeal: a Deep Learning Engineer and Cultural Anthropology student) as the Red-Shanked Douc Langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), a known primate species native to the region.

These images are as good as a first hand account. In them we have the very soldiers who referred to these creatures as “Rock Apes” along with the creatures themselves for identification. It’s a shame that no “cryptozoologist” actually used the scientific process for the purpose of identifying what these creatures actually are. Instead “Cryptozoologists” are more interested in perpetuating the legend, the tales, the fantastic and otherworldly accounts of something in order to sensationalize it. That’s why I became disillusioned with it. I found out that they don’t really want answers. They don’t really want to find out what the actual explanation is for their cryptids, in fact they hate it when you tell them the truth. Do that and the Bigfoot believers will start hurling all sorts of things at you.

I discovered this when I spoke to Jeff Meldrum, Bill Munns and Loren Coleman in regards to having debunked the Patterson - Gimlin film. Which should be a very happy thing. It should be exciting and happy to have the answers, right? But what if the answers don’t align with what these people have been preaching for all these years? What if those answers make their books stop selling or their Docs stop paying.. Nope, they don’t actually want the truth.

I, on the other hand find the truth behind the legend to be even more interesting than the embellished legends themselves. The truth behind it is fascinating to see how something unusual but mundane could produce legends of people smuggling “Rock Apes” out of Vietnam and freezing them in a block of ice and taking them around as an exhibit “The Minnesota Iceman” (I’ll write an article about that soon), or how giant Bigfoot creatures attacked troops. How there’s huge man-like footprints in the jungle and how Vietnam also has huge 9 foot tall Bigfoot creatures.

Funny, how a 3 foot tall Langur who is protecting it’s habitat and pissed off because it’s territory was being invaded attacked and threw rocks at troops and then that morphed into tales about Hominids frozen in blocks of ice and 9 foot tall Sasquatch encounters. What was 3 became 9 and what was a monkey but jokingly referred too as an ape by troops became Sasquatch. Hilarious and fascinating at the same time. 

The only sad part for me is seeing these beautiful, endangered animals killed or harmed because of human ignorance and human territorial disputes. The humans were acting the same as the apes. The apes were just defending their territory, their jungle from invaders and the troops who didn’t belong there. Sad, really. But mediocrity and stupidity are common. That’s why they’re cheap.

The Battle of Dong Den, once a cornerstone in the Rock Ape legend, now serves as a cautionary tale of how perceptions can be distorted by the fog of war. Through critical analysis and scientific inquiry, we can demystify cryptid narratives and uncover the natural explanations that lie beneath the surface.

We have accounts with the majority of them representing embellished accounts of Red-Shanked Douc Langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), along with images of these same creatures being referred too as “Rock Apes” by the very soldiers who they faced off against and who they gave so much trouble too and there is the fact that Red-Shanked Douc Langur (Pygathrix nemaeus) still lives on that mountain, in that region to this very day. They’re unfortunately an endangered species but they completely align with the truth behind the Bigfoot Sasquatch Vietnam Rock Ape Legends and the truth behind the legends while seemingly underwhelming is still a very interesting one. Isn’t it fascinating how humans can create such outlandish theories and embellish their legends to such heights? I think so.  

And I conclude with the intention that this one goes out to all the Bigfoot believers, Sasquatch chasers and budding cryptozoologists. 

There’s a lesson to be learned in all of this and it is that the source of the legends and rumors does probably have some truth in it. I concur that when people say there’s too many eyewitnesses and blah, blah but there’s a reason why eyewitness testimony only goes so far in court and there’s a truth to these stories. There is indeed a catalyst in most counts but that catalyst is very unlikely to be the end point of the embellished myth. So when you’re looking for that 9 foot tall Bigfoot, you might need to be looking for that 3 foot tall Langur instead.