Each side realized it was fighting a war of attrition. When someone shook me and tried to get me moving I was actually offended. 3 /5. Lawrence dropped to the ground to take cover in the tall elephant grass and began to return fire like any other rifleman. We . Photo extracted from U.S. Army motion picture footage from November 1965. Next, he was shot in the chest; as he moved around, he was shot again in the leg. 5 cemeteries found within miles of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. MORENO, Frank, copilot in Ed Too Tall Freemans Huey in X-Ray, retired a chief warrant officer-4 after more than twenty years service. I couldnt grasp it., More from us: Val Kilmer Accidentally Landed Matthew Modine the Starring Role in Full Metal Jacket. MCDONALD, George J., fifty-two, mortarman, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, left the Army in 1966 and went home to Pass Christian, Mississippi, where he is a commercial fisherman. U.S. intelligence knew that North Vietnamese regulars probably a single regiment were in the area. (Photo Credit: US Army / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain) The real life Battle of Ia Drang took place between November 14-19, 1965. The battle of Ia Drang was an engagement of the Vietnam War. To use this feature, use a newer browser. A wounded soldier of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, is attended to by fellow comrades during the fight for LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam. He is married and has two children. George found solace in hiking the Maine woods, shooting nothing more deadly than a 35mm camera. The communist threat to the central highlands subsided. He and his wife, Kathie, live on a seventy-acre ranch near Aspen, Colorado, where he owns and operates an outfitting company for fishing and boating trips. The ending of We Were Soldiers comes once Hal Moore makes the decision to call in Broken Arrow, a request for all available combat aircraft to attack enemy positions. The vision of VVMF is to ensure a society in which all who have served and sacrificed in our nation's Armed Forces are properly honored and receive the recognition they justly deserve. The single, bloodiest day in the Vietnam War. Since then he has taught industrial arts, electronics, and mathematics, has flown for the U.S. Forest Service, and for a time was a crop duster pilot. After the Ia Drang campaign, Hastings was badly burned when the O-1E Bird Dog spotter plane he was piloting was shot down over the Mang Yang Pass and crash-landed in the old French Group Mobile 100 cemetery beside Route 19 on Christmas Eve 1965. In November, troops would take on North Vietnamese regulars for the first time in the Battle of Ia Drang Valley. BUNGUM, Galen, forty-nine, rifleman in Lieutenant Henry Herricks Lost Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, left the Army in April 1966 and went home to Hayfield, Minnesota. While Beck survived the ultimately victorious 2-1/2-day fight at Ia Drang, 305 other American soldiers did not. Read More Recalling the aftermath of the fight, he said, Back then Stars and Stripes would carry the casualty reports and I had a red pen and started checking off the names of guys I knew who were listed as KIA. However, Americans killed an estimated 1,800 North Vietnamese, through rifles, artillery, helicopters, and jets. Then he somehow managed to crawl away, saying that he was going to organize the troops. He served another Indochina tour in 1975, planning and helping run the final American air evacuation of Vietnam from a base in Thailand. He and his wife have two college-age children. I guess I was an oddball; everyone else that year was going into teaching to avoid the draft, and then there was me. Jeanette and his wife, Sandra, were married five days before he shipped out for Vietnam. He now manages the quartermaster laundry at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and lives in Clarksville, Tennessee. Battalions would use helicopters to be transferred in and out as artillery support came in from above. He and his wife, Julie, divide their time between homes in Auburn, Alabama, and Crested Butte, Colorado. It occurred in the Ia Drang valley, near Vietnam's border with Cambodia, on November 14-18, 1965. They have a son, who is in college, and a daughter, still in high school. Companies C and D took the brunt of the Communist attack, and most of the men were quickly hit. Privacy Policy Within an hour, they came under attack for the first time by North Vietnamese regulars, launching a four-day battle that killed hundreds of Americans and perhaps more than 1,000 Vietnamese and changed the course of the Vietnam War. He completed 22 flights: Rescuing Wounded in Ia Drang Valley from 2015: https://vvmf.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/he-spent-14-hours-in-the-air-rescuing-wounded-in-the-ia-drang-valley/, Stars and Stripes Article: https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/vietnam-stories/1965/ia-drang-valley-where-the-us-truly-went-to-war-1.376662, Larry Gwin | VVMF: https://youtu.be/_PDBgEu4cx4, Jon Wallenius | VVMF: https://youtu.be/Qb9a1L4rc2g, Bruce Crandall | VVMF: https://youtu.be/SSNTph4QQ2g, Joe Galloway | VVMF: https://youtu.be/N6XXcDATAgE, Faces Never Forgotten with Joe Galloway: https://www.facebook.com/VietnamVeteransMemorialFund/videos/2239219906358006/, National Geographic Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLyBazkpUFQ, 1965 CBS Special News Report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx1rzDNcFmE, AARP Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKtWX9TDFYc, Military.com In Depth Look: https://www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/vietnam-war/the-battle-of-la-drang/2071462322001, Medal of Honor Recipient Bruce Crandall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIAEcZ29aG4, Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdDYNI7V0co, Medal of Honor Recipient Walter Marm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7-U0FBiYUU, Docs Teach (National Archives): https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/battle-la-drang-valley, PBS Clip (Plei Me and la Drang): https://whut.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/c27a31b7-14fc-4c5f-804e-168fbb24f5ed/plei-mei-and-the-ia-drang-valley-clip-the-vietnam-war/, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund | 3033 Wilson Blvd, Suite 300 | Arlington VA 22201 | 202.393.0090 Major Bruce Crandall made over 20 flights into intense enemy fire during a battle in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, in November 1965, evacuating 70 wounded and delivering ammunition. They have two sons, one an oil-industry consultant, the other an Air Force sergeant who served in the Persian Gulf War. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account. If you yield to it, it will absolutely paralyze you. Fifty years ago today, one of the Vietnam war's most ferocious battles broke out in the Ia Drang Valley. When he got back to Refugio, Texas, he called on Joe Galloways parents but mercifully concealed the true circumstances of their meeting on the battlefield in X-Ray. WINTER, Pete, fifty-one, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was discharged in December 1965. And it all began early one fall day. In his spare time he camps, climbs, skis, and fishes for trout in the Rockies. He was evacuated, badly wounded, on January 5, 1970, after serving four years, eight months, and ten days in Vietnam. EDWARDS, Robert, fifty-four, commander of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, served a second tour in Vietnam as an adviser. After retiring from the Army, Freeman became the northwest area director of aircraft services for the U.S. Department of the Interior. (U.S. Army). He went home to Anderson County, South Carolina, where he is a deputy sheriff. The former arrives in Vietnam in November 1965, and, soon after, is tasked with leading his 400 men in an effort to take out the enemy troops who attacked one of the bases in the Ia Drang Valley. SELLECK, Pat, fifty-one, radio operator, recon platoon, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry at X-Ray, was discharged from the Army on November 29, 1965, and returned to his old job at the telephone company. Gwin left the Army at the end of his ROTC commitment and went home to his native Boston, where he teaches and writes. On his chest he wore the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and five Purple Hearts. He was paralyzed. MCDADE, Robert, seventy, who commanded the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, retired a colonel in 1975. He assumed that like the French, the Americans would tire of seeing their young men coming home in body bags. After years of advising the South Vietnamese against the communist North, and months of chasing black-clad guerrillas, a large. Hear Bruces story. Payne and his wife, Patty, live in Hinsdale, Illinois, and have three children. UH-1 aircraft of the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion carry wounded 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry soldiers away during the fight for LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam. KEETON, James, fifty-nine, battalion aid station medic, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, served a second tour in Vietnam with an adviser group. I was standing back there in the column and the column was stopped. Crandall and Freeman successfully rescued some 70 wounded men. Lt. Col. Harold G. Moore, a no-nonsense West Pointer, was the commander of the . STINNETT, Robert L., fifty-eight, Bravo Company, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion in LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany, returned to Vietnam for a second combat tour. ALLEY, J. L. (Bud), Jr., fifty, communications officer, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, completed a full tour with his battalion and left Vietnam and the Army in August 1966. He is married and the father of two daughters. BARTHOLOMEW, Roger J. In the end, 79 Americans had been killed, and 121 men were wounded. He and his wife, Louise, live in San Antonio, Texas, and Brown plays a round of golf most days. Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Harold Moore led the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, against numerically superior elements of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) led by General Chu Huy Man (Builder et al., 1999). This account has been disabled. "Back then Stars and Stripes would carry the casualty reports and I had a red pen and started checking off the names of guys I knew who were listed as KIA. Assigned to intelligence duty in Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Adams earned a bachelors degree from the University of Austria in Vienna, a masters degree in history at the University in Innsbruck, and a doctorate of psychology from Munich Universityall under an assumed name. His friend, James Lawrence, speaks with organizations and Soldiers about the lessons learned from the Army engineer recognized for exemplary work in obsolescence management, Norway adds top-tier military experience to State Partnership Program, Army's Environmental Restoration Program revitalizes contaminated lands, Army Lt. Col. Adams: A pioneer worthy of commemoration, US and UAE soldiers train together at Joint Readiness Training Center, Unified network operations underpins Army's digital transformation, SMA plans to reward Soldiers who meet rising standards. It wasn't until about two weeks later, as he read Stars and Stripes, that it hit him what he had survived. In 2016, he joined a panel of Ia Drang survivors at the Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fort Benning, Ga., to share their experiences with both young and seasoned officers and noncommissioned officers. Young went to work for the railroad in Steelville, Missouri. At various times in recent years he has been reported to be either employed or a patient in VA hospitals in Mississippi and Alabama. "The way it was presented, at least from my perspective, was we were making an administrative move to be airlifted out so we wouldn't be in the way of the bombers.". We Were Soldiers is based on the novel, We Were Soldiers Once and Young: Ia Drang The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam, by renowned war correspondent Joe Galloway and Lt. Gen. Hal Moore. It was the signal for all available American aircraft to converge and provide aid to the American unit. Col. Bruce Crandall, Commander ofCompany A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), led the first major division operation of airmobile troops into Landing Zone X-Ray. This article was originally published Nov. 11, 2015, as part of the Vietnam at 50 project. They were platoon leaders together in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. The enemy was so close he could hear them talking and he could see them right in front of him. In the prologue, Galloway wrote: "This, then, is our testament and our tribute to 234 Americans who died beside us in Landing Zone X-Ray and Landing Zone Albany in the Valley of Death, 1965." He teaches physical and earth sciences at Venice High School, Los Angeles, California. Five Purple Hearts companies C and D took the brunt of the Vietnam War column stopped. Has been reported to be either employed or a patient in VA hospitals in Mississippi and.... 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