Through the tumultuous years of the Vietnam conflict our servicemen were asked to do many things that compromised their well being. War has a way of separating sanity from logic, and our fighting men were faced with constant peril and the uncertainty of unsure leadership. Thinking that the war could be won simply by inflicting 10 times the fatalities against your enemy than what you suffered neither wins a war or wins over the hearts and minds of the civilians caught in the midst of the fighting. For them it was Communist threats of being picked up and executed somewhere out in the jungle at night  if they were friendly to American GI's or being caught and interrogated by the Americans if they were suspected of cooperating with the guerrillas.

Who or what?

With all this though there was something far more mysterious going on that haunted some soldiers who ventured into areas least visited by combat and out of the way of supply routes. There were strange accounts that got back to intelligence sources that sounded like something out of a science fiction movie or horror film. Science tells us that we must kneel on its altar and worship it as the answer to all inquiries but this simply is not the case. There are many unknowns in our world waiting to be solved or to haunt us with their enigmatic presence.

Mystery landscape

If US troops didn't already have enough to worry about with land mines, booby traps, snipers, underground tunnel forces, and an environment that breeded illness, still something came from the unknown and added another unwelcome surprise to their experience there! In the Central Highlands, a region in the southern border along the Cambodian territory on the western side is a dense mass of hills and mountains reaching up to 2,900 feet in elevation. Densely vegetated, and populated with hostile primitive tribes that had driven out the French as well as the Vietnamese, something lurked.

First sightings

At first, reports of upright walking primates that resembled Orangutans were spotted by Army troops and US Marines as they patrolled deep into the interior of this hostile area. According to accounts these "Rock Apes" as they were called or "Moi" as were referred to by local Vietnamese could be from 5 foot to 6 foot tall, were very powerful, and could even charge well armed US soldiers who encountered them. Most were covered by a thick furry coat that was a very dark red or maroon color. Although Vietnam has its own indigenous family of primates, Gibbons, and monkeys, the Rock Apes are all together something else.

First skirmishes

Some of the first encounters with US troops began in mutual surprise with the apes remaining well hidden and running off when confronted but then these sudden confrontations ended with the Rock Ape charging and running away or throwing rocks that sometimes injured the soldiers. At Da Nang a famous US Marine outpost known for heavy fighting at first inexplicable rock attacks occurred that soldiers thought were simply Vietcong using primitive methods of battle, but they soon found out quite differently! The Marines found that they were being frequently attacked by none other than rock throwing man apes who would sometimes charged while several of the group would flee before rifles could fire at them!

 
Much like their brethren

The behavior of the Rock Apes closely parallels that of mountain gorillas or Chimpanzees who when suddenly alarmed of threatened will throw rocks, raise a commotion to cover for their retreating groups or even attack united as a group! Silverbacks do much the same often using a bluff charge to scare off an invader or distract the threat while others escape which was often observed behavior of the Vietnamese Rock Apes. One thing was for sure. The Americans already had enough to worry about without having to battle strange man apes that were powerful and not too timid to throw heavy rocks! This behavior has also been noted in North America as that of Bigfoot or Sasquatch! 

More undiscovered species

Reports have been coming in for sometime from other Pacific Ring of Fire countries in the Southern Asia theater where Malaysia, Borneo, Indonesia, and some of the other remote islands where modern man rarely goes. It's in these heavily rain forested habitats up in the misty mountain sanctuaries that these bipedal species of manlike apes forage for food and exist as independent communities! Once the North Vietnamese began getting numerous reports they actually commissioned expeditions into the Central Highlands and other areas where the Rock Apes were making their presence known. At Da Nang, the US Marine fire base, that had seen bloody fighting, Marines were forced to defend themselves against the Vietnam Bigfoots who apparently did not want them there. North Vietnamese researchers brought back huge plaster casts of footprints of the Rock Apes.