We Were Soldiers Once...And Young: The Epic Battle of Ia Drang that Changed the Course of the Vietnam War

Ron Light: Well written detailed. Not a bill for those with severe PTSD from service Vietnam but interesting for those who had combat limited exposure. See what your brothers went through!

Canada on Jul 12, 2023

Curtis Aikens: An excellent written perspective from both sides of the Ia Drang battle written with deep respect to all participants. Special care made to identify EACH individual on the US side, and the key actors opposing with documented information and referenced interviews for all.

Canada on Jun 13, 2023

David Katcoff: This book gives you a good, grunt-eyed perspective into the decisive early battle in Ia Drang in 1965, including the horrific ambush which resulted in the largest loss of American life in a single battle during the war.
You can vicariously hump along with the troops and share their fear, their heroism and their frustration of a war that has been aptly characterized as a quagmire.
America's finest were sent into Vietnam's jungles by politicians who were too afraid to take the necessary steps to totally protect them and secure victory. For example, the just-over-the border Cambodian bases which were used by the Communists to resupply were off-limits to allied attack at that time. And President Johnson's commitment of forces was clearly inadequate for the task then at hand. This was a "limited" war, really a half-hearted effort to tiptoe around escalation into WWIII, and the poor soldiers paid dearly for our restraint. I'm sure Vladimir Putin has noted such timidity, and that has probably helped inspire his brazen aggression against Ukraine.
My only real complaint about the book is its rather turgid mention of all the names and details about each individual combatant and...

United States on Jun 03, 2023

Michael J. Endrizzi: Great book. He covered the battle, but also the before, after, political, personal, emotional impact of the battle from both sides.

The one sentence that left an impact on me was "We won, they lost 104, we lost 102". Defining Victory by body count. And then General Westmoorland also used it as a metric for Victory. This metric has not worked out well for America since WWII. In this battle every effort was made to recover dead and wounded while the enemy just sent in waves of cannon fodder with no regard for life. We spent millions on this battle while the enemy spent $1000. In the end we would up with a bodycount of loyal Americans and shattered lives. When will our politicians learn? Since WWII America has thrown itself into bottomless wars based on bodycount in places we do not belong. If the politicians would instead count money, resources, distance from home, gas, beer, Thanksgiving dinners, transportation costs, fortitude, etc. chances we would not wade into worlds that do not welcome or want our form of democracy.

Mr. Moore, thank you and all our soldiers for their service. Hopefully there will be no next time.

Wish our politicians had the integrity of...

Germany on Nov 07, 2021

Paul R. McGuire: We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
Ia Drang – the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam
by Lt. Gen. Harold G Moore
and Joseph L. Galloway

First of all, Mel Gibson owes a lot of people, including General Moore, a huge apology for his movie version of the book. However, if you have seen the movie, the photo journalist played by Barry Pepper is Joseph Galloway who, like Moore, was there for the first half of the battle. As Gibson saw it, the only people whose lives much mattered were officers. When an officer gets pooped, the scene switches back to Ft. Benning and the sorrow of the officer wives. To be sure, they suffered as much as anyone and deserve our empathy, but in Gibson’s world, enlisted men died anonymously, and their memories aren’t worth spit. I was afraid the book would be the same, but Moore and Galloway sound a lot like Ernie Pyle in that every man mentioned, enlisted and officer, gets a brief sketch that involves at least his age and hometown. There is a chapter that traces the subsequent histories of a few families of the dead, enlisted and officer as well. The first part of the book is several pages listing all the dead from both halves of the...

United States on Aug 24, 2018

Joe Mcnally: In November 1965 I was twelve-years-old and had recently absconded from a training college for Catholic priests. I was always outdoors and was probably wandering around in the early Scottish winter happily unaware that 6,000 miles south east of me Lt.Col. Hal Moore and his soldiers were jumping from helicopters in a clearing in the Ia Drang valley, Vietnam. A number of his men would have been just seven years older than I was.

Hal Moore knew that the Landing Zone X-Ray where the helicopters put him and his men down was just east of the Chu Pong hills; the troops could see that long massif clearly from their camp. What they couldn't see was the massive presence in those hills of North Vietnamese troops, who initially outnumbered them 10-1. Moore's men were given no time to settle and over the next forty-eight hours Hell bubbled up and broke through the earth's core at LZ X-Ray.

What followed - in the battle and in the years and decades after it - is logged and listed in this book; sometimes in such detail that I found myself shifting my limbs to remind myself what it feels like to still have all of them attached. And the lists . . .Joe Galloway, who was there, the...

United Kingdom on Aug 09, 2016

Jürgen Schnurr: Die Schlacht in Ia Drang
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Im November 1965 fand die erste Schlacht von amerikanischen Luftlandetruppen mit nordvietnamesischen Truppen in Ia Drang statt. Das Buch schildert die Vorgeschichte, den Verlauf der Schlacht, die unmittelbaren Folgen und das Leben einiger beteiligten Personen bzw. von Hinterbliebenen bis Anfang der 90iger Jahre.

Die erste Hälfte des Buchs wurde unter dem Titel "We were Soldiers Once" verfilmt. Es ist ein guter Film, aber er reicht bei weitem nicht an die Qualität des Buchs heran. Der Film hört auf, bevor die eigentliche Tragödie für die amerikanischen Luftlandetruppen beginnt. Für den unsäglichen deutschen Filmtitel "Wir waren Helden" würde ich deutschen Verleih am liebsten auf den Mond schießen.

Das von Hal Moore (einem der Autoren) geführte 5. Battalion des 7. Kavellierregiments (Luftladetruppe) wurde bei einer Luftlandeoperation im Aufmarschgebiet nordvietnamesischer Truppen abgesetzt. Das 5. Battalion wurde in heftige Kämpfe verwicklet. Es erlitt zwar Verluste, konnte sich aber dank Artillerie- und Luftunterstüzung halten, bis Unterstützung eintraf.

Nachdem das erschöpfte 5. Battalion...

Germany on Feb 21, 2014

Richard C. Geschke: "It was early March of 1970, and the weather was damp with a trace of snow on the ground. Since I had no means of transportation, I walked around the bend of Wurzburger Strasse in the early morning mist of a drab Monday morning. I walked onto Graves Kaserne, which housed the entire First Battalion, Seventh Infantry unit; I was heading to meet Lieutenant Colonel Dillon, the battalion commander. All incoming officers must report formally to the commander, and they have to endure the traditional "Welcome-to-the-greatest-unit-in-the-army" soliloquy." These words come directly from my book I co-authored with my army buddy Bob Toto titled "In Our Duffel Bags, Surviving the Vietnam Era."
The significance of the above paragraph is that Colonel Dillon was the S-3 officer for LTC Moore's 1st of the 7th Cav. At the time of the Battle of the Ia Drang it was November, 1965. Fast forward four and a half years later; Lieutenant Colonel Gregory P. (Matt) Dillon had command of the 1st of the 7th Infantry which was part of the 3rd Infantry Division located in the Zone of West Germany. Since writing our war memoirs I've since been reading a lot of material on the Vietnam War, after forgetting...

United States on Jul 07, 2012