During the battle at Xray, a US Army Combat Camera crew flew in. These videos are what they filmed. You can get a sense of the terrain, the smoke of the battle and the associated activity. There is no sound.https://youtu.be/o_7r4aksQ7shttps://youtu.be/Kh4CyU8ihWY
On the third day of the Xray fight, reporters and TV crews arrived as the troopers were being returned to base camp. You can see all of the coverage in the network news video dated November 18 (it took a while for the film to make it back for broadcast in 1965). Peter Jennings is clearly stunned by what he just heard at the end of the clip. This segment is an extract capturing Hal Moore’s emotion and tribute to his troopers. The movie, We Were Soldiers, had a similar scene based on this clip.
In the early part of the Vietnam War (and maybe later), the Department of Defense put a movie camera in front of a TV tuned to each network news channel and filmed the broadcast. This was back in the days long before VCRs! Thankfully, they did this because this footage has been lost or destroyed by the networks. When looking for this footage in 1991, we were told it had been melted down for the silver content of the film and was not in the network archives. Be aware that the anchors confuse the fights at Lz Xray and Lz …
