|
We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young:
Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam By
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway
HarperPerennial edition, 1993, original hardcover Random
House, 1992
Review/Copyright by Virgil Huston
(printed with permission of Virgil Houston)
Every once in a while, a book comes
along that really has an impact on me, and this is one
such book. Interestingly, I didn't know the book existed
until 2002, 10 years after it was published. I had heard
of Ia Drang, though, from a good friend who was there and
told me about the battles a couple of times when he had
had a few too many beers. It is the only time I ever heard
him mention it. And just after I finished reading the
book, I ran into another Ia Drang veteran who just two
months ago learned that a buddy of his had not died back
in 1965. Both had been severely wounded and both thought
the other dead. This man told me that the "longest" period
of his life was being put on a helicopter taking severe
fire after being wounded. I didn't say medevac helicopter
because they refused to fly into LZ X-Ray to pick up the
wounded since it was a "hot" LZ. The helicopters of the
7th Cavalry, designed to carry troops, flew mission after
mission into incredible danger to bring in ammunition and
water and take out wounded and dead. Some of those pilots
and crews didn't make it, either, but they saved countless
lives while the medevac crews sat on their asses back in
safety.
The authors are Hal Moore, the
commander of the battalion that fought at LZ X-Ray
(Landing Zone X-Ray) and Joe Galloway, a journalist who
was there. Joe was one of the few "good guys" when it came
to journalism in Vietnam.
The mention of Ia Drang causes a
grim gut reaction among people who know what happened
there. What makes it worse is that very few people have
ever heard of it and fewer care. It is one of those now
forgotten battlefields with its warriors also forgotten.
If you will recall the movie Good Morning Vietnam, you
might remember toward the end a bunch of happy-looking
soldiers sitting in the back of troop carrier trucks and
Robin Williams asks them where they are going. One of them
says, smiling, "the Ia Drang valley." That was an insider
anti-joke. Those smiling boys ran into hell in the Ia
Drang. This book is about the first major American contact
with the enemy in what became the Ia Drang campaign.
This book concentrates on firsthand
accounts of two battles, but starts and finishes with
historical and political musings, as well as the effects
of war on the families back home.
The first part is devoted to the
history of the development of air assault doctrine, which
was a completely new concept in warfighting, with a lot of
promise for a place like Vietnam. Essentially, this
doctrine eliminates land lines of communication by
inserting men and supplies into an area, keeping them
supplied and extracting them by helicopter.
One of the things that makes this
such a powerful book is that every effort was made to let
us know who these men actually were, including the lives
they had led as civilians and introducing us to their
families. Some of them were "three war men," those who had
seen combat in World War II and Korea and now were going
into another one in Vietnam. Others were draftees, some
with only days left in the Army when they landed at LZ
X-Ray on November 14, 1965, or arrived in the vicinity of
LZ Albany on November 17.
Hal Moore's battalion, the 1st of the
7th Cavalry (Custer's old unit) had a simple mission -
find the enemy and fight him - see how well this air
assault doctrine works. They did not know what they would
find; accurate intelligence on enemy strength was
nonexistent. The battalion was understrength and had some
431 men and officers in the line companies.
They landed in the middle of a
regular Army North Vietnamese Division, well trained and
fresh from their unimpeded journey from the north down the
Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia. LZ X-Ray was ten miles from
the Cambodian border, and the US was not allowed to breach
that "sovereign" territory, despite its use as a safe
haven for the enemy.
What followed was three days of
horrendous fighting. Moore had time to set up a reasonable
defensive perimeter as the fighting got started, even
though they were in an intensive firefight before the
entire battalion had been landed. The exception was one
platoon with a gung-ho platoon leader that chased a North
Vietnamese soldier to capture him and found themselves cut
off and up against at least a battalion-sized force. The
platoon leader, Lt. Herrick, was one of the many KIA in
that platoon, and Sergeant Ernie Savage, after two other
men had taken Herrick's place and been killed, took over
and held the platoon together.
Meanwhile, the rest of the battalion
was also in the fight of their lives, including an attempt
to break through to the cut-off platoon. They had
virtually nonstop artillery fire support from a location a
few miles back, which probably saved them against these
overwhelming odds. They also had air support from the Army
and Air Force, including one unfortunate incident when
napalm was dropped on US troopers.
In the end, the 1st of the 7th Cav
prevailed and the enemy withdrew. One machine gunner had
literally killed hundreds of enemy soldiers
single-handedly. Enemy and American bodies were
everywhere. The Vietnamese had systematically searched out
and killed all the US wounded they could find during the
nights. This Vietnamese killing of wounded was even worse
at LZ Albany.
As Moore's battalion was cleaning up
the mess at LZ X-Ray, McDade's 2nd of the 7th Cav and
another battalion, the 2nd of the 5th Cav, arrived to
relieve the men who had not slept for 3 days. On the
morning of November 17th, these two battalions marched
toward rear LZs for pickup, with McDade's battalion
diverting, under orders, to LZ Albany. It was supposed to
be a "walk in the sun."
McDade was an inexperienced battalion
commander, having just recently been given his command.
His companies were strung out when they reached the
outskirts of LZ Albany, a clearing in the forest. Two
North Vietnamese were captured, and McDade called his
company commanders to the front to confer. Only one of
those commanders made it back to his company, and he did
so only by reflex as the enemy attack broke out.
This spread-out battalion was cut to
pieces, and only a small perimeter near Albany was able to
mount an effective defense. The book outlines in detail
the horrors of this battle until reinforcements finally
arrived the next morning.
This book contains unbelievable gore,
incredible heroism, and selfless sacrifice by men of every
rank in the face of some of the most overwhelming odds
ever faced by a small unit. Much of it is in the
survivors' own words as they remember it. This stuff makes
most of the fictionalized accounts of combat by those who
have never experienced it look positively silly. This book
also brings home the point indirectly that soldiers are
able to separate politics from soldiering. Soldiers care
about each other and staying alive and, believe it or not
for most, doing their jobs.
The last part of the book deals with
some politics and the effect these battles had on the
families at home. On the political front, Moore comments
on the suicidal policy of not allowing the US to mount any
kind of effective counterattack on the North Vietnamese
sanctuary in Cambodia. When Nixon finally bombed this
country, it was too little too late, and American leftist
war protesters once again made it clear that the lives of
American soldiers were meaningless to them. The men who
fought and died in the Ia Drang would beg to differ, but
their story has been one that many would like to pretend
didn't happen.
Some of the most touching parts of
the book are the descriptions of the impact these battles
had on those at home, particularly the families living at
or around Ft. Benning. For example, the terror that the
wives had of yellow taxis, which were used to deliver the
"Secretary of the Army regrets" telegrams in the early
days of the war. Another example follows the wife and
daughter of Lt. Geoghegan, whose daughter had been born
just before he left for Vietnam. Lt. Geoghegan was killed
while trying to save one of his wounded men. By a twist of
fate, their names are together on the wall of the Vietnam
memorial (the man's name was Godboldt).
This book is not for the weak of
heart. It will make you cry. It will sometimes make you
cheer. It is an important book. The story of these heroes
in today's age of antiheroes, overpaid baseball players,
and criminals allowed to continue to play college and
professional sports, is inspiring. Even though Vietnam has
been forgotten and is rapidly fading into memory, while
WWII remains the number one best seller (I don't mind
that, it deserves it, but American treatment of Vietnam
and Korea has been disgraceful), there is an entire living
generation of Americans (and some Brits and Aussies and
others, including the North and South Vietnamese) who will
never forget it until the day they die.
A Note on the movie, We Were
Soldiers, starring Mel Gibson: The movie wasn't bad, but
please don't substitute the film for the book. The movie
simply fails to capture the essence of the book. It also
leaves out the battle at LZ Albany entirely. What really
made the book powerful, and the movie failed at, was
making these men real. Only when people are real to us can
we truly appreciate what they did. That said, this is the
only Vietnam movie that I have had a survivor of Ia Drang
recommend as being an accurate portrayal of Vietnam. My
friend made my wife promise to watch it, and she hates war
movies. Perhaps he just wants people to know what he and
his buddies went through before it is completely
forgotten, or maybe he knows that most people just don't
read books. I don't know; it is his business.
Virgil Huston
|
