We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young
Ia Drang—The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam
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Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller: A “powerful and epic story . . . the best account of infantry combat I have ever read” (Col. David Hackworth, author of About Face).
In November 1965, some 450 men of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Harold Moore, were dropped into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was brutally slaughtered. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War. They were the first major engagements between the US Army and the People’s Army of Vietnam.
How these Americans persevered—sacrificing themselves for their comrades and never giving up—creates a vivid portrait of war at its most devastating and inspiring. Lt. Gen. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway—the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting—interviewed hundreds of men who fought in the battle, including the North Vietnamese commanders. Their poignant account rises above the ordeal it chronicles to depict men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have once found unimaginable. It reveals to us, as rarely before, man’s most heroic and horrendous endeavor.
Customer Reviews
We Were soldiers Once … and Young
For decades I had been looking for a book describing these battles in the Ia Drang Valley: I finally found the book!
If this narrative doesn’t satisfy any reader, nothing will!
Death and Destruction
Originally, I saw the movie, "We Were Soldiers." While certainly more dramatic, it could not come close to what the First Calvary did at the battle of the Ia Drang Valley. This book is an account of what really happened. Those who have seen the movie will noticed where things were dramatized for the screen, various incidents reordered for the needs of dramatization.
The movie only covered LZ X-ray. Yet their were other landing zones, such as the one at Albany where the sister battalion of Hal Moore's first battalion was almost decimated. It shows the true courage of the men that gave all they could for their comrades.
For anyone interested in military history, this book is a must.
We were soldiers…
A great read. You come to know and love these guys for what they did for our country.
Hal Moore and Joe Galloway did a masterful job.