The last time he talked to Herren, Lose said, Nobody out here understands what we went through.. How could I forget? A high school dropout, he went back to college, earned a B.A., and was working on an M.A. RACKSTRAW, Jim, forty-nine, recon-platoon leader, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry at X-Ray, served a second tour in Vietnam as a rifle-company commander in the 25th Infantry Division. Before the Battle of la Drang was over, 305 Americans had been killed along with an estimated 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. (Photo Credit: US Army / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain) The real life Battle of Ia Drang took place between November 14-19, 1965. He is brutally honest, even with his actions as a leader. He has written a book about his experiences and has spoken more than 20 times to veterans organizations, junior high and high school students, and civic groups. Spec. Among the survivors of the ambush was 1st Lt. Rick Rescorla, a platoon leader who died Sept. 11, 2001, rescuing people from the World Trade Centers south tower until it crashed around him. Shucart says, It was interesting; they just figured I was another grunt and I didnt tell them different. "I can't even begin to explain it," he said. MARUHNICH, John, sixty-two, mortar sergeant, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in LZ X-Ray, retired a sergeant first class in 1974 with twenty-four years service. This was the first and last battle between NVA forces and U.S forces of similar size. His last project on active duty was researching and writing a history of the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment during the Korean War. Easy. He is married and the father of two children. "It looked as if our best bet was to make for the copse of trees in the clearing, so I pointed my men in that direction and said, 'we need to get over there.'". DIDURYK, Myron F., commander of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany, completed his tour in Vietnam with Bravo Company in 1966, and later returned to Vietnam and the 1st Air Cavalry Division as a major. ROBINSON, Edward Charles, fifty-five, Huey pilot at LZ X-Ray, served a second combat tour in Vietnam. One of the most significant battles of the Vietnam War, the 14-16 November 1965 battle in the Ia Drang Valley in South Vietnam's central highlands between the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and the 33rd and 66th Regiments of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) marked a watershed change in the military strategies of both sides. Basil Plumley is a grandfather now, kind and soft-spoken, but do not be deceived: He is the lion in winter. If you yield to it, it will absolutely paralyze you. Freeman won a battlefield commission in the Korean War. HENRY, Frank, executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in LZ Albany, served a second tour in Vietnam as a battalion commander in the 1st Cavalry Division, later commanded a brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, and was promoted to chief of staff of the 101st Airborne in the summer of 1977. He lives on a farm near Rainier, Washington, and has been writing down his memories of Vietnam duty for his children and grandchildren. He and his wife, Theresa, live on a farm in northern Virginia with their sons Lee, fifteen, and Joshua, twelve. The location of the battle, far into the jungle from any roads, meant troops had to be airlifted in. CANTU, Vincent, fifty-one, mortarman, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, left the Ia Drang battlefield and immediately rotated home for discharge, two weeks late, in December 1965. He is president of the Army Relief Fund and a trustee of the Association of Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy. In four days and nights of fighting. As a student, she worked in a variety of research positions, including as an archivist. As one writer concluded, "The Ia Drang Valley is where the U.S. truly went to war," and it "set the tone for the" many years of relentless fighting that would follow. He was director of training development at Fort Benning when he retired as a colonel in 1983. Unknown to them at the time, they were surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. Charlie Company held their position, exemplifying extraordinary heroism and courage. Since retiring he serves on the boards of half a dozen major corporations and also works as a consultant to defense industries. Other donors to the fund are readers of the book from across America, Veterans, and supporters of the fund. Fred Gilreath of Surgoinsville holds a framed photo of his older brother Luther Gilreath who was killed 50 years ago on the second day of the Battle of Ia Drang, Nov. 15, 1965. The Battle that changed the war in vietnam Overview A Vietnamese military maxim states: He who controls the Central Highlands controls South Vietnam. Parish now runs the Bristow, Oklahoma, toll gate on the Turner Turnpike. The four day battle in the Ia Drang Valley began on the morning of November 14, 1965 when the 1st battalion of the 7th Cavalry, my sister battalion, landed in a clearing at the foot of Chu Pong Mountain. STOCKTON, John B., seventy, commander, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, retired a colonel in 1967. I couldn't grasp it.". I thought to myself. The communist threat to the central highlands subsided. He added a masters degree in Latin American studies to his M.A. He and his wife live in St. Charles, a suburb of Chicago. On the second day, North Vietnamese forces launched a heavy attack including hand-to-hand combat. FORREST, George, fifty-four, who commanded Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cav in the Ia Drang, retired a lieutenant colonel in 1980 after twenty-one years service. The men were still in an administrative maneuver, so when the word to halt came they plopped down where they were. MILLS, Jon, fifty-four, Bruce Crandalls copilot in the Ia Drang, retired a lieutenant colonel in 1980. He and his wife live in Anniston, Alabama, where Martin is employed at the Army Depot. Early Ia Drang Valley 1965 KIA group - 2/8 Calavary - LZ Cavalair Early Ia Drang Valley 1965 KIA group - 2/8 Calavary - LZ Cavalair. After three days of fighting, 240 Americans had been killed and another 300 wounded (more troops were brought in in support). Read More Landing Zone Xray Lead elements of the under strength 450 man 1st Bn, 7th Cavalry air assault into a small clearing in scrub jungle below the 2300 foot Chu Pong Massif. Dillon is a scratch golfer who does his best to get in eighteen holes every day, even if it means a drive downslope to find a course that isnt closed on account of snow in the Colorado winter. Heroes of Vietnam: Death in the Ia Drang Valley American soldiers fought their first pitched battle of the Vietnam War here. The . Please complete the captcha to let us know you are a real person. Mississippi, He earned his masters degree in public administration in 1976 and retired in 1977 as a lieutenant colonel. Word reached the battalion traveling to Columbus, who sent Bravo Company back to Albany to serve as reinforcements. He retired a colonel in 1983. At approximately noon,the North Vietnamese 33rd Regiment attacked. Your donation to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will help expand our mission to honor, educate and heal. The survivors of Landing Zone X-Ray have always had an aura of fame about them. Shortly after the battalion set out, the North Vietnamese sprang a massive ambush. 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. On February 26, 2007, President George W. Bush presented Crandall with the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Ia Drang Valley. For the next four years he was executive vice president of the company that developed the Crested Butte, Colorado, ski area. He won a National Magazine Award for his October 29, 1990, cover article on the Ia Drang battles. 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. That same month, the United States began bombing North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder. Orange County, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands as a symbol of America's honor and recognition of the men and women who served and sacrificed their lives in the Vietnam War. . MAPSON, Betty Jivens, forty-two, daughter of Sergeant Jerry Jivens, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, killed in action at X-Ray on November 15, 1965, is married, the mother of two, and works as a secretary at the Medical Center Hospital in Columbus, Georgia. For the next ten years he was a football coach at Morgan State University in Baltimore, his alma mater. He retired a first sergeant in June 1973, with twenty years service. He retired a colonel in 1982, with twenty-three years service. JOHNS, Barbara Geoghegan, fifty, widow of Lieutenant John Lance (Jack) Geoghegan of the 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, killed in action in X-Ray, married Lieutenant Colonel John Johns in 1969. He remained with the medical platoon in Vietnam until July 1966. After LZ Albany, Thorpe requested a transfer from his company command to the division public-information office and finished his tour as an escort officer for visiting press and VIPs. The battle was later dramatized in the film We Were Soldiers. Crandall and Freeman successfully rescued some 70 wounded men. The remainder of the 2nd was left waiting in a communication blackout. CRANDALL, Bruce, fifty-nine, who commanded the helicopters in the Ia Drang Valley, returned to Vietnam for a second tour in 1967. I think McNamara knew, deep down; I think Johnson knew, Wiest said. He went home to Salinas, California, where he lives with his wife and three sons. On November 14, 1965, Captain Ed Freeman made repeated flights into the Ia Drang Valley under intense fire to bring in supplies and evacuate the wounded. I pulled the muscles in that leg so badly yanking it free that I couldnt walk for three months, he said. He retired a lieutenant colonel in 1977, and lives with his wife in Arlington, Texas. 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. His friends completed the tree for him and dedicated it to Sergeant China Joe Nye. There is a problem with your email/password. They have five grown children: sons Steve, Dave, and Greg; and daughters Cecile and Julie. He is senior Army adviser to the 79th Army Reserve Command in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. When the last of his old friends in the 1st Cavalry and the U.S. Marines rotated home, Galloway also left, vowing never to return. A native of Mendenhall, Mississippi, Kennedy was thirty-one years old at the time of his death. With a passion for historical learning and historical education, her writing interests include social history, and war history, especially researching obscure facts about the Second World War. Rozanski returned to the Ia Drang five times on various intelligence missions and described the place as a cemetery. He was retired, disabled, as a major in the mid-1970s. Savage and the 22-year-old medic, Sp5. Returning home, he single-handedly raised his two young children while earning two masters degrees. YOUNG, James, fifty-one, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry in LZ Albany, made it home to the family farm outside Keysville, Missouri, on Christmas Eve, 1965, with an Army discharge in his pocket and a quarter-size hole in the side of his skull. Bun-gum operated a 161-acre dairy farm until 1988, when he sold his cows and took a job in town. Rescorla kept the battered French Army bugle he captured on the field at Albany; in 1991 he turned it over to the Ia Drang Alumni for use in memorial ceremonies. I think this battle pushes Johnson further into Westmorelands corner. I have it here with me today. He lives with his wife and family in Steelville. BRAVEBOY, Toby, rifleman, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav, recovered from his wounds and his week-long ordeal alone on the abandoned battlefield at Albany and returned safely to his family in Coward, South Carolina. His widow, Emma Lee, lives in Austin, Texas. KLUGE, Fred J., fifty-nine, platoon sergeant, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry in Albany, retired in 1973, as a first sergeant, after a total of twenty-two years service. I was standing back there in the column and the column was stopped. With the arrival on foot of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry commanded by Lt. Col. Robert McDade, on the morning of November 16, there were now three Cavalry battalions crammed into the clearing, including Lt. Col. Walter Tullys 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry. The idea was that whole battalions could be dropped and complete their mission on the ground, calling in artillery barrages, helicopter support, and bombing sorties (including . He is the perennial master of ceremonies at the Ia Drang dinners; he claims he is the only one of the brothers who can get through an entire sentence without using the f-word. MERCHANT, Dick, fifty-four, assistant operations officer, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, served a second tour in Vietnam in 1968 as Lieutenant Colonel Matt Dillons battalion executive officer. Book Sources: The Battle of Ia Drang Valley We were soldiers once -and young : Ia Drang, the battle that changed the war in Vietnam by Ha Moore; Joseph Galloway Call Number: Boca Raton General Collection DS557.8.I18 M66 1992 ISBN: 0679411585 Publication Date: 1992-10-20 Everyman in Vietnam by Michael Adas; Joseph J. Gilch However, theres one part of We Were Soldiers thats different from what really happened: the ending. He left the Army in October 1966, and went home to his native Ohio, where he works as a carpenter. Photo Credit: Wikipedia; Henry Toro Herrick was red-haired, five foot ten, twenty-four years old, and the son of an astronomy professor at UCLA. It wasn't until about two weeks later, as he read Stars and Stripes, that it hit him what he had survived. Many did a second tour and others left the service and returned home to their families. Omaha, They are stories that not only serve to maintain our connection with history, but also educate us and force us to confront the good and the bad and learn from it. He and his wife live in Sag Harbor, New York, where they operate a summer season shop that deals in contemporary original art. You've got to be in command and as I was on the way up, with my helmet strapped on, a North Vietnamese soldier in a tree put two bullet holes right through my helmet.". He was medically evacuated the next morning. Still on active duty, he is a major general, and is deputy to the Army inspector-general. He was discharged a sergeant, completed his college education, and is now an on-air national news correspondent for ABC Televisions Weekend News. Somebody grabbed him under his arms and dragged him toward the trees, but dropped him in the clearing where air support was dropping napalm. She also worked as a teaching assistant in the History Department. Edwards is the acting borough manager of Dublin, Pennsylvania; he and his wife, Nancy, live in nearby New Hope. Too Tall Ed retired from that job on January 3, 1991. In November, troops would take on North Vietnamese regulars for the first time in the Battle of Ia Drang Valley. Although it was left out of We Were Soldiers, Albany was no less bloody than X-Ray. (67 votes) Very easy. To me that seems proper, and just, and so right.. After he flew the men back to base, he knew the soldiers on the ground were running short of ammunition, so he decided to fly back in. KINNARD, Harry W. O., seventy-seven, former commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, retired from the Army as a lieutenant general in 1969. Later, after he was evacuated the doctors thought his spine was severed, but discovered later that he had a severely bruised spine from the force of the bullets whipping his head back. The two-part battle took place between November 14 and November 18, 1965 west of Plei Me, in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Westmorelands biggest problem with the strategy was that he thought it would work in two or three years when it would have taken 10 or 12.. Ernie had gone back to his native Chicago and drove a truck for the city. AINSWORTH, Hank, fifty-four, who flew the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav command helicopter in the Ia Drang, retired a chief warrant officer 4 on May 30, 1977, after twenty-two years service. When I was down, men were running past me, swishing the elephant grass and speaking Vietnamese and executing the wounded. He was chief of security at a hospital in Columbus, Georgia, until his death on April 18, 1992. On Nov. 14, 1965, soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, loaded onto helicopters and flew to a remote patch of ground in the Ia Drang Valley of South Vietnams central highlands. He and his wife have two college-age children. Fesmire is a colonel assigned as the Army attache to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. To replenish his battered forces, the North Vietnamese commander ordered the 2,000 soldiers of his reserve regiment, the 66th, forward from its staging area in Cambodia into the Ia Drang valley. In 1946, Ho Chi Minh had warned the French, who were trying to restore control over their former protectorate, that you can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.. After three days of fighting, 240 Americans had been killed along with an 2,000. 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