The enemy columnmen of the newly arriving 8th Battalion of the 66th Regimentstopped 120 yards short of the ambush and took a break. The Battle of Ia Drang In November 1965, then Lt. Col. Moore commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), on an air assault mission to secure the Ia. The dust-offs started coming within 30 minutes. It was a 34-mile roundtrip. We Were Soldiers Once.And Young: Ia Drang The Battle That Changed the W - GOOD. Here, lightly edited, are their responses. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. "It was bad. Seven hundred miles north in Hanoi, President Ho Chi Minh and his lieutenants likewise carefully studied the results of the Ia Drang campaign. JG. Even in the eyes of the wars chief architect. Joe Galloway is presented a branding iron by Maj. Gen. Michael Bills, commanding general, 1st Cavalry Division, during a screening of We Were Soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, June 11, 2015. Photograph taken by Joe Galloway during the Battle of Ia Drang, November 15, 1965. All they need is some counselling and some understanding. In Vietnam in the early 1970s, the only real limitation was finding a ride. Pete Souza, former White House photographer for Presidents Reagan and Obama: This is truly an incredibly intimate picture. Van Emst/Opelika-Auburn News via AP) we were soldiers once and young ia drang valley 1965. we were soldiers once and young ia drang. . Galloway was immortalized in the movie; We Were Soldiers (2002) when he and Lt Col Harold Moore's battalion of airmobile Infantry soldiers from the 1 st Cavalry Division fought with multiple North Vietnamese . discharging a load of infantrymen on a search and destroy mission. I was devastated when he died. Joe Galloway, at a Medal of Honor ceremony from Ia Drang battle helicopter pilot Bruce Crandall at the White House in 2007. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. During the time I spent with him and his platoon they didnt come into direct contact with the enemy, but there was always a common undercurrent that ran through them, a palpable anxiety and fear about what could come their way in a split second. In 1998, Galloway became the only American civilian to receive the Bronze Star Medal with "V" for heroism during the Vietnam War. They were about to make history, conducting the first nighttime heli-borne infantry assault into a very hot landing zone. Still images rarely give straightforward answers but they do offer illuminating clues for those who take the time to delve into them. but you dont. (recommend up to 74 battalions by end-66: total to approx. That said, it was often a world of anonymous photographers spending time with anonymous soldiers. Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap studied the battles and correctly identified the helicopter as the biggest innovation, biggest threat and biggest change in warfare that the Americans brought to the battlefield. . Back in Saigon, General Westmoreland and MACV G-3, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations General William DePuy, were studying the statistics of the Ia Drang battles. Now the North Vietnamese Army had arrived off the Ho Chi Minh Trail and had made itself felt. The book was later adapted. The Ia Drang River Campaign of early November is an example. We settled down in Tokyo, my next assignment. He served four tours in Vietnam and became one of the most influential war reporters in U.S. history. jgalloway, krwashington writes: like i say russell, if you had anything worth taking i would sue you for libel and slander and take it all. Young guerrillas wear grenades at their belts, preparing to fight the encroaching Viet Minh forces in the Red River Delta, northern Vietnam, 1954. Joe Galloway was awarded the Bronze Star with V device for his service in the battle. The weather closed in again. He disregarded the guidance from authorities to stay in place and ordered an immediate evacuation - getting most of his people out of the tower. After the unprecedented Ia Drang fight, President Lyndon Johnson rushed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to Saigon to make sense of its implications. War Zone C Ambush of the 173rd Airborne, 1965. The PAVN commander directing the fight at X-ray, Lt. Col. Nguyen Hu An, revealed to us in Hanoi in 1991 that they had figured out one other way to neutralize the American artillery and air power. For his extraordinary heroism and gallantry in action around Landing Zone X-Ray, Moore received the Distinguished Service Cross. How those photographs made history is underscored throughout the new documentary series The Vietnam War, from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. high above the jungle on its way to the Ia Drang Valley. *, Successful Editor Turns Author, Surprising Nearly Everyone, The SAG Awards, Often an Oscar Preview, Threw Some Curve Balls Into the Oscars Race, The War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe Forever, All the Knowledge in the World: The History of the Encyclopedia. Please update your browser at http://update.microsoft.com, Howard SochurekThe LIFE Picture Collection. Your browser is out of date. Then they resumed the march. Second Lieutenant Walter Marm (later Colonel) received the Medal of Honor on February 15, 1967 for his actions during the 3-day battle at LZ X-Ray. Carons career in photography was very short 1966 to 1970 but his exceptional talent, intelligence, commitment and ubiquity leave us with an unmatched visual legacy. It was Larry Burrows who had to teach me how to load my first Leica M3; I got it as a perk having just had this image run as a vertical double truck in a 5-page spread in LIFE in the fall of 65. The child was found wandering the previous night between the North Vietnamese and the American firing lines. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. A short time later, Capa was killed by a land mine while out on a mission with the U.S. troops. Nixon left the plane. Purdie was being restrained from turning back to aid his CO. A few frames later, Larry Burrows took another photograph: Purdie is still being held back, but in front of him is another wounded man and Purdies arms are outstretched. - This film is about the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam. ++After some time pass, some helicopters landed and I put him aboard one of them. I feel its symbolic, but Im conflicted about it, knowing what I know. art 128 Assault (twice), art 121 LARCENY AND WRONGFUL APPROPRIATION, Hal G. Moore committed crime in Vietnam art 128, Bruce Crandall committed two acts of assault with a deadly weapon, Bruce Crandall assaulted a. choppers the engineers they got burned," he said with eyes distant. Some had feared that the helicopters were too flimsy and fragile to fly into the hottest of landing zones. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. It was forever a search for a picture, and you never knew, sometimes for weeks, whether you had that picture or not. "He was the kindest, most gentle and loving man," Grace Galloway said. Robert Pledge, co-founder of Contact Press Images: Who is the enemy here? we were soldiers once and young ia drang the battle. It seems to me that journalists are even more reluctant than soldiers to seek treatment for PTSD. Joe Galloway, legendary war correspondent and the only the only civilian to receive the Bronze Star Medal with V for heroism in Vietnam, has died at 79 pic.twitter.com/58rLxyc6dj XVIII Airborne Corps (@18airbornecorps) August 18, 2021 Employers shy away from hiring people who have been diagnosed with PTSD. It was the first time that Americans saw and learned that we were using napalm. Feb 2, 2019 - Explore Larry Hellie's board "Vietnam Ia Drang Valley", followed by 186 people on Pinterest. Did anyone, a mentor or a family member, give you any advice about adjusting to a war zone? He co-authored the book We Were Soldiers Once And Young with Hal Moore. Joe Lee Galloway, a civilian Reporter When I first went to war.. Nov. 14-18, 1965< this would be LZ X-Ray's battle, Robert Saucedo should have been leaving the war. Despite his wounds, Cole continued to attend the injured in Vietnams central highlands in January, 1966. And a UH-1 "Huey" helicopter is flying in toward the area. Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once and Young (1992) by Lieutenant General (Ret.) In 1971 Huet died in a helicopter shot down over Laos. Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, it dramatizes the Battle of Ia Drang on November 14, 1965. General Giap knew all along that his country and his army would prevail against the Americans just as they had outlasted and worn down their French enemy. ++"We treated him for burns. Word spread quickly that a battalion of Americans had been massacred in the Ia Drang Valley, but reporters were told there was no ambush. A man who made sense of the Battle of Ia Drang for a generation is gone. I was very young. Col. Hal Moore, a 43-year-old West Point graduate out of Bardstown, Ky., was given orders to airlift his 450-man 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, into the valley on a search-and-destroy mission. The scene is as wretched as the other. He and five of his brothers, four of my Moms brothers were all in uniform in WWII. From that point forward, Giap would decide where and when the battles would be fought, and when they would end. you were, are and will remain the looniest twit to ever grace a shrinks office, if you had anything worth taking, I would sue you. All of this was merely prelude, setting the stage for the savage mid-November battles at LZs X-ray and Albany. I could see his finger tightening on the trigger. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Joe Galloway takes a hard look at the assessments of Ia Drang by the war's architects in Washington, Saigon and Hanoi: McNamara, Westmoreland, Ho and Giap, https://www.historynet.com/ia-drang-where-battlefield-losses-convinced-ho-giap-and-mcnamara-the-u-s-could-never-win/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, How Operation Homecoming Was Sprung into Action to Repatriate American POWs. The last photo in the photo essay shows the medic and a child walking away together, holding hands, and the childs head is burned from napalm. hasta la vista foe another decade or so In a steady, highly effective, and most outstanding manner, Lt. Colonel, Moore as Chief, support Aircraft and Aerial delivery branch, Air Mobility Division, monitored the Armys, Research and Development program for airborne matters represented the Army General Staff in the. The other is to stick with our stated objectives and with the war, and provide what it takes in men and materiel. They are the increased infiltration from the North and the increased willingness of the Communist forces to stand and fight, even in large-scale engagements. Joe Lee Galloway got a Draft Deferment,during the Vietnam War. The Americans trapped in the kill zone were on their own. His cheerful attitude,tireless applications and devotion to duty were directly responsible for the successful. A siege by a massive North Vietnamese force was about to take place. I almost did not make the photo the man with the flag and Nixon on top of the aircraft stairs. As a 24-year-old UPI correspondent, Galloway was at the first major battle of the Vietnam War. Larry Burrows The Life Picture Collection. The ARVN II Corps commander knew if he lost the relief force, Pleiku would be left defenseless. National Archives - The Battle of Ia Drang Valley - National Security Council. ============== (Photo Credit: Zayne / Paramount Pictures / MovieStillsDB) 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.Both were present at the Battle of Ia Drang, the first large-scale engagement of . And, while by any standards the American performance there was heroic and tactical airmobility was proven, the cost of such victories was clearly unsustainable, even then. So while we would talk with the troops about what was happening that day, there were many moments where in the course of making photographs, I would just keep moving along. It was a great moment for Americans! The turban drive shaft, have S shaped BEARINGS, that prevent the shaft going into reverse. ======================= For the Americans, Ia Drang proved the concept of airmobile infantry warfare. I have had some journalists coming home from recent wars seek me out basically to ask me if I thought they were going crazy. I had given all of my food away so I didnt eat for two days. Hal Moore, portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie, was a bonafide legendary commander with unending love for . In short, the battle at LZ X-Ray, 14-16 November 1965, constituted the major turning point in my life. In this interview, Zacharias spoke with Galloway about his war reporting days and his own PTSD. A class of prime youth shredded in seconds. She managed to get accredited by the Associated Press, covered numerous battles, was seriously wounded by shrapnel that would remain in her body, parachuted into combat (small and thin, she was weighed down so as not to be blown away), was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese (which she used as an opportunity to produce a cover story for LIFE Magazine), and remained obsessed by the war until her death in 2006. Joe Lee Galloway Notable Awards. We treated them for burns.". Kinnard, and by Colonel Moore. Prior to Nov. 14, 1965, the U.S. Army had never met its North Vietnamese counterpart in a major battle. Fenella Ferrato, daughter of photographer Philip Jones Griffiths: Philip Jones Griffiths was born in a small town in the North of Wales in 1936, before the start of the Second World War. Within an hour of landing and the second airlift of troops just arriving, the battle at X-ray was joined. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. The answer from LBJs White House was that absolutely no hot pursuit across the borders would be authorized. 153 new photos; 616 job history records for people in our database; 192 education records for people in our database; 915 contact addresses, emails and URLs (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) The 1st Cavalrys big Chinook helicopters lifted batteries of 105mm howitzers, leap-frogging along within range of the dirt road that led to Plei Me. Fear, tension and uncertainty are visible in the contained defiance of the mother and the awkward posture of the young warrior clutching his automatic rifle. According to a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, nearly one-third of war journalists will suffer from PTSD during their careers. You have remained good friends with several journalists from your days in war zones. The Marine Corps chief of information took notes and called me later to tell me that the. I saw the medic shouldering wounded and then I saw the kid on his back in the grass. Russell Burrows, son of photographer Larry Burrows: The fraction of a second captured in most photographs is just that: a snapshot of a moment in time. Later I realized that I had shot a photo, in the heat of battle, of my childhood friend from the little town of Refugio, Texas. Despite these numbers, senior American officials in Saigon declared the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley a great victory. In mid-April of 1975, a small group of American journalists were invited to fly into the small provincial capital of Xuan Loc, South Vietnam, 35 miles north of Saigon, by commander Le Minh Dao. Joseph "Joe" Galloway kept a relationship with the division in the decades after the war. The first units arriving in Vietnam in 1965 had trained together for many months before they were ordered to war. Gilles Carons atypical vertical image of a face-to-face encounter exposes deep cultural divide and distrust. 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