List Books » We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young: IA Drang - the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam
Authors: Joseph Galloway, General Ha Moore
ISBN-13: 9780679411581, ISBN-10: 0679411585
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Date Published: October 1992
Edition: 1st ed
Harold G. Moore was born in Kentucky and is a West Point graduate, a master parachutist, and an Army aviator. He commanded two infantry companies in the Korean War and was a battalion and brigade commander in Vietnam. He retired from the Army in 1977 with thirty-two years' service and then was executive vice president of a Colorado ski resort for four years before founding a computer software company. An avid outdoorsman, Moore and his wife, Julie, divide their time between homes in Auburn, Alabama, and Crested Butte, Colorado.
Joseph L. Galloway is a native Texan. At seventeen he was a reporter on a daily newspaper, at nineteen a bureau chief for United Press International. He spent fifteen years as a foreign and war correspondent based in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore, and the Soviet Union. Now a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report, he covered the Gulf War and coauthored Triumph Without Victory: The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf War. Galloway lives with his wife, Theresa, and sons, Lee and Joshua, on a farm in northern Virginia.
Each year, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps selects one book that he believes is both relevant and timeless for reading by all Marines. The Commandant's choice for 1993 was We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.
In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War.
How these men perseveredsacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave upmakes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. This devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles to present a picture of men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier. It reveals to us, as rarely before, man's most heroic and horrendous endeavor.
Between experiencing combat and reading about it lies a vast chasm. But this book makes you almost smell it.
Prologue | 1 | |
Going to War | ||
1. | Heat of Battle | 9 |
2. | The Roots of Conflict | 16 |
3. | Boots and Saddles | 44 |
4. | The Land and the Enemy | 58 |
X-Ray | ||
5. | Into the Valley | 73 |
6. | The Battle Begins | 86 |
7. | Closing with the Enemy | 101 |
8. | The Storm of Battle | 121 |
9. | Brave Aviators | 139 |
10. | Fix Bayonets! | 156 |
11. | Night Falls | 174 |
12. | A Dawn Attack | 188 |
13. | Friendly Fire | 205 |
14. | Rescuing the Lost Platoon | 221 |
15. | Night Fighters | 235 |
16. | Policing the Battlefield | 249 |
17. | It Ain't Over Till It's Over | 262 |
Albany | ||
18. | A Walk in the Sun | 277 |
19. | Hell in a Very Small Place | 296 |
20. | Death in the Tall Grass | 321 |
21. | Escape and Evade | 344 |
22. | Night without End | 356 |
23. | The Sergeant and the Ghost | 375 |
Aftermath | ||
24. | Mentioned in Dispatches | 391 |
25. | "The Secretary of the Army Regrets..." | 413 |
26. | Reflections and Perceptions | 434 |
Epilogue | 444 | |
Appendix | Where Have All the Young Men Gone? | 447 |
Acknowledgments | 471 | |
Interviews and Statements | 476 | |
Chapter Notes | 480 | |
Selected Bibliography | 513 | |
Index | 519 |