We are Soldiers Still
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:37 pm
That's the name of a recent book by Lt. General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway. It's about a return trip to Vietnam..or rather several return trips to revisit the site of the first major battle of the Vietnam war for the US and the 1st Cav. The follow up to We Were Soldiers Once and Young.
It's a good read for a lot of reasons. The general and a party of men revisited the Ia Drang valley and the site of his major contact with the enemy. They met and grew to be friends with the commanders of the enemy they then fought. They even spent a night on the ground at the site of the battle .. not intentionally. And it also goes into detail of a follow up engagement of another Cav battalion two miles away shortly after the LZ X-ray event that turned into a serious disaster.
A couple of things come out of the book relative to the movie. One is that Moore's wife was instrumental in getting the telegrams sent by taxi to notify next of kin changed to real live miltary officers taking the bad news in person. Another thing was that , unlike the movie, when Moore and the others went to Vietnam, the on base housing ended after thirty days and every family, including his had to move off base. His family didn't continue on colonels row at Benning as the movie shows but moved to a small house in Columbus that crowded his large family.
Moore doesn't think much of our current president and the involvement he got us into in Iraq either as is shown in his last chapters...nor the general run of who is likely to be president either it seems.
Pick if up if you have the time to do any reading....I'm retired....so for me it's pretty much no problem.
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It's a good read for a lot of reasons. The general and a party of men revisited the Ia Drang valley and the site of his major contact with the enemy. They met and grew to be friends with the commanders of the enemy they then fought. They even spent a night on the ground at the site of the battle .. not intentionally. And it also goes into detail of a follow up engagement of another Cav battalion two miles away shortly after the LZ X-ray event that turned into a serious disaster.
A couple of things come out of the book relative to the movie. One is that Moore's wife was instrumental in getting the telegrams sent by taxi to notify next of kin changed to real live miltary officers taking the bad news in person. Another thing was that , unlike the movie, when Moore and the others went to Vietnam, the on base housing ended after thirty days and every family, including his had to move off base. His family didn't continue on colonels row at Benning as the movie shows but moved to a small house in Columbus that crowded his large family.
Moore doesn't think much of our current president and the involvement he got us into in Iraq either as is shown in his last chapters...nor the general run of who is likely to be president either it seems.
Pick if up if you have the time to do any reading....I'm retired....so for me it's pretty much no problem.
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