For those who are unaware, the Vietnamese 'rock apes' are a type of cryptohominid reported during and sometimes before the Vietnam war, most times by troops, platoons, and even a battlefield, apparently. Most descriptions give a 5-6 foot range in terms of height, with red hair, a gut and hairlessness on the underside of their hands and feet, face and kneecaps. Some sources claim that their heads are oblong in profile. They are said to travel in troops during dusk or nightfall, presumably living so deep in the jungles that they are relatively unknown. Those eyewitnesses, seemingly in the hundreds as everybody's grandpa has seemingly encountered them.
Most information comes from here and here. Note that these magazines are very likely not credible sources. I should also note that this article just explains my thoughts on these cryptids, their image, and I don't aim to explain the full story.
To start, although troops supposedly had an "epic battle" with the apes on what came to be known as "Monkey Mountain" after Americans were ordered to toss rocks at the apes to deter them. How did the 'battle' occur? The apes threw them back at the troops, appearing in large amounts. This is called the "Battle of Dong Den" by some, although searching this does not provide any other sources, but there is a Battle of Đồng Đăng (which took place in the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, not the Vietnam War of interest). During this event, multiple individual apes were slain, but no evidence of the remains and the bodies were not collected despite multiple American research expeditions being ordered during the war (all of which returned with nothing put some footprint casts that are large and humanlike, with no evidence of these in scientific literature; although they were of high importance to the Americans, the idea that they did not collect and save the bodies seems very out of character).
It is said that they move with children, which great apes do, and show no fear of humans, which was chalked up to their remoteness from civilization or their size being larger than the average person. Showing little fear is seen in most Bili apes, but uncharacteristic of the Bili chimpanzees is the rock ape's constant violence towards onlookers in most scenarios (Wikipedia). Some note that while they do sound like giant orangutans, Pongo hooijeri of Pleistocene Vietnam is extinct. The most common explanation, aside from them being a genuine new species, is that the American Vietnamese, being heavy weed smokers in wartime, hallucinated it. LSD was not in wide circulation at this point.
Much like the dancing plague, this theory states that soldiers under the influence of marijuana and in stressful heat conditions in the Vietnamese jungle conjured up these hallucinations of apes. Gigantopithecus had been published in 1935 and research on this pongine exploded in the '50s and '60s due to a cache of new dental evidence being discovered in Asia (Wikipedia) and, presumably, the image of a massive ape would have been popularized. Wartime cryptids are not a far cry from traditional cryptozoology, with some being utterly ridiculous. Maybe. Similarly, the idea that it is a surviving population of Gigantopithecus would typically be outrageous but this time, Gigantopithecus are actually known from Vietnam as late as the Middle Pleistocene (Paleobiology Database), so it should not be automatically written off but still. It's still likely wrong but that's not to say that this explanation fits surprisingly well. For once I'm proud of cryptozoologists for pulling out the Gigantopithecus explanation.
The Viet Cong also had stories of ape-men with 5'-long fangs scaling rockfaces with ease and locals had a name for rock apes: "batutut". There are also many pre-War cases of human-ape contact, with some descriptions, such as Maitre (1912)'s encounter, nearly matching to a T (video breakdown; Vietnam veterans in the replies seem to all agree on this ape existing, with one spookily saying "I hope they are never again disturbed"). Stumbling on troops of apes that throw rocks is also strikingly similar to discovering enemy troops and being fired upon, possibly by the artillery that was widespread during this war.
I really want to believe in the Vietnamese 'rock apes'. The sheer amount of eyewitness information on these cryptids makes them seem slightly plausible but a combination of misidentification, drug/heat/stress hallucinations, superstition, and possibly pop culture paleoanthropology seems to be the most acceptible answer. Could there be something deeper here, we'll never know. War and its accounts are too biased to tell for certain. This is probably the part of me that wants another extant hominid species, but boy do I sure hope so. Explanations that include gibbons might hold some validity since few rock apes were seen up close, so distance and the right environment might make them appear larger. Most details in the story seem flat-out fabricated, exaggerated or unintentionally misidentified by those on-site, but there are several that align scarily well. I will end by saying that some 'wildmen' stories are very aligned with the popular image of the rock ape, which should not be dismissed. But until further evidence is released, it is up to speculation.
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