We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young

by Harold G. Moore

  STOCKTON, John B., seventy, commander, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, retired a colonel in 1967. His last known address was Miami, Florida.

  SUGDINIS, Joel E., fifty-five, who had already served one tour in Vietnam as an adviser, completed his second tour with Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry. He retired a major in 1980, after twenty years’ service. He lives in Pleasant Valley, Connecticut, and works in real estate sales and development.

  TADEMY, Dudley, 3rd Brigade fire-support coordinator in the Ia Drang, served a second tour in Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry and retired a colonel in January 1987, after thirty years’ service. He works for a consulting firm in McLean, Virginia.

  TANNER, Ray, forty-nine, radio operator, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, returned home to South Carolina in April 1966 and went to work for a utility company in Charleston.

  THORPE, Henry, fifty-eight, commander, Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, left the Army as a captain in September 1967, after eight years’ service, and went home to his native North Carolina. 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. Today he is an orchestra leader and serves in the state militia.

  TIFFT, Richard P., Pathfinder team leader in LZ X-Ray, later served as commander of the Golden Knights, the Army’s parachute team. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1985; on November 26, 1987, he was killed in the crash of a private plane in Bakersfield, California. He was forty-five.

  TOWLES, Robert, forty-seven, rifleman, Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, spent five months in Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania, recovering from twenty-eight shrapnel wounds he received at LZ Albany. He left the Army in October 1966, and went home to his native Ohio, where he works as a carpenter. Towles received a master’s degree in history from Kent State in 1989, and is currently working on his doctorate. His dissertation is on the LZ Albany battle. He is married and has two children.

  TULLY, Robert (Bob), sixty-eight, commander, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, served a second tour in Vietnam in 1968 as a brigade commander in the Americal Division. Tully retired a colonel in 1976. He and his wife, Pat, live in Avon Park, Florida.

  TULLY, Walter Busill (Buse) Jr., commander, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, returned to Vietnam on a second tour as a major in the Americal Division. On March 2, 1969, thirty-two-year-old Buse Tully was killed in action.

  VIERA, Arthur, Jr., forty-eight, an M-79 grenadier with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, survived the terrible wounds he suffered in X-Ray. Today he lives in Riverside, Rhode Island, is in the photo business, and is active in veterans’ affairs.

  WALLACE, Bruce M. Jr., sixty-one, Air Force A-IE Skyraider pilot over the Ia Drang, served two more tours in Vietnam and retired a colonel in 1976. He is now an attorney in San Diego, California.

  WALLENIUS, Jon, forty-nine, mortar observer, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany, got out of the Army in August 1966. He teaches physical and earth sciences at Venice High School, Los Angeles, California. He and his wife and young son live in Lawndale, California. In his spare time Wal-lenius draws, paints, and does etchings and prints, sometimes of Vietnam War scenes. 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.

  WASHBURN, Richard B., fifty-seven, platoon leader, 2/20th Aerial Rocket Artillery in the Ia Drang, returned to Vietnam for a second combat tour. He retired a lieutenant colonel in 1977, and lives with his wife in Arlington, Texas.

  WHITESIDE, Jerry E., fifty-five, fire-support coordinator in LZ X-Ray, served a second tour in Vietnam as an adviser. He retired a colonel in 1982, with twenty-three years’ service. He earned a doctorate in education and is personnel director for the Cooperative Extension Service at the University of Georgia in Athens.

  WINKEL, Paul Patton, Jr., sixty, Orange 1 flight leader, Bravo Company, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion in the Ia Drang, served a second combat tour in Vietnam. Returning home, he single-handedly raised his two young children while earning two master’s degrees. Winkel retired a colonel in 1986, with over thirty-one years of Army service. He is a consultant to industries seeking defense business. He plays volleyball two nights a week to keep trim and has devoted much of his spare time over the past two years to a detailed study of the part played in the Ia Drang battles by his fellow aviators of the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, our beloved Huey “slick” drivers. His personalized license plate proclaims: LZ X-Ray. Winkel and his wife live in Springfield, Virginia.

  WINTER, Pete, fifty-one, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was discharged in December 1965. Married and the father of three children, Winter works for the Long Island Railroad and lives in Howard Beach, Queens, New York.

  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. He checked in with the nearest Veterans Administration hospital; they sent him home, telling him they would call him back for an operation to place a plate over the hole. They never did. Young went to work for the railroad in Steelville, Missouri. “I’m not supposed to chop wood or do anything that might cause a lick on that side of my head, but it healed up pretty well so I don’t worry much about it,” he says. Five years ago he attended a reunion of Alpha Company veterans of LZ Albany. “That headquarters type turned up and he returned my old helmet, bullet hole and all. I have it here with me today.” He lives with his wife and family in Steelville.

  Acknowledgments

  The authors owe so large a debt to so many friends who have provided so much help during the last ten years of research that there can be no easy beginning or ending to this list of thank-you’s.

  First and foremost, to our wives, Julie Moore and Theresa Galloway, whose patience and endurance were tested to the extreme by our obsession with and pursuit of a long-ago and faraway story that kept circling back to interfere with all the things they had planned. They answered a thousand ringing telephones and played hostess to a hundred surprise guests. They typed and took notes and delivered messages and kept things running while we traveled to Vietnam and crisscrossed America and camped out in each other’s homes. Julie and Theresa, this one’s for you.

  Our children came in for their share of alternately being neglected and dragooned into service, and put up with it all more or less cheerfully. So our gratitude to Steve Moore, Greg Moore, David Moore, Cecile Moore Jacobs, and Julie Moore Thompson; and to Lee Galloway and Joshua Galloway.

  This project could never have been undertaken, or completed, without the encouragement, support, cooperation, and love of our comrades in arms who stood beside us in the Ia Drang Valley and stand with us today. Our questionnaires, telephone calls, interviews, and meetings took many of them back to a time and place they had tried hard to forget. They shared everything they had: their memories; their boxes of old treasures; the half-remembered hometowns of friends they hadn’t seen in twenty-five years. Every man we found helped us find one or two other veterans of the valley. They read our notes and transcripts, and then our draft chapters, and lost almost as much sleep over them as we did. And in the end they thanked us for having helped restore a sense of pride and accomplishment in what they had endured. No one has ever had better or more constant friends. The glory of this book is theirs; the mistakes and omissions are ours.

  To the strong and remarkable people who loved some of the men who died in the Ia Drang—Barbara Geoghegan Johns, Catherine Metsker McCray, Karen Metsker Rudel, Betty Jivens Mapson, and Edward D. Monsewicz—the authors are forever indebted. Theirs is a dimension always present but too seldom explored in the telling of the
history of a battle, a campaign, or a war. Each readily agreed to write his or her story of a life and a death, in the belief that these words would comfort others who have endured the same pain, if only by assuring them that they are not alone. To the list of medals for valor, bravery, and sacrifice that are awarded to soldiers on America’s battlefields, the authors propose adding one for courage, to be bestowed on those citizens who have lost a son, a husband, a father, a brother—or, in these days, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother—in the service of a nation that too easily forgets the true cost of war.

  We are most grateful to Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard (U.S. Army, ret.), former Army chief of military history. In May 1984, General Kinnard provided us with complete access to the Army historians and their files on the Vietnam War. That access, and the enthusiastic assistance of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., put our hands on a treasure trove of documents, letters, photographs, military reports, and interview records on the Ia Drang battles that were amassed in the late 1960s by then-Major John Cash for his section of the book Seven Firefights in Vietnam. Colonel Cash, an Ia Drang veteran who remained on active duty until 1992, did everything in his power to assist in this project.

  We have been equally blessed in our other associations. The editors at U.S. News & World Report—Michael Ruby, Merrill McLoughlin, and John Walcott—gambled on a long shot when they first sent us back to Vietnam to pursue an old story. Then they had the courage to put that story of a forgotten twenty-five-year-old battle on the cover of a weekly newsmagazine. They and every staff member at U.S. News involved in putting together that October 29, 1990, Ia Drang cover came to share our obsession. Harold Evans, president and publisher of Random House, read the story and knew there was a book hidden in it. Harry gave us the gift of Robert Loomis as the editor of this book. At the right times, Bob was patient, encouraging, helpful, and demanding—and at all times a true gentleman. Our agent, Robert Barnett of the law firm of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., is of the same school. Graphic artist Matt Zang created the area maps and battle maps that contribute so much to understanding two difficult battles. A special thanks to our copy editor, Jolanta Benal, and production editor, Carsten Fries, who helped us make this a better book.

  A monumental research chore was made easier by the willing assistance of David C. Humphrey and Regina Greenwell, archivists at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; Lieutenant Colonel J. D. Coleman (U.S. Army, ret.), historian and author; Colonel Clinton L. Williams, another Ia Drang scholar; Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cook (ret.) late of the Army Staff; Colonel Paul Patton Winkel (U.S. Army, ret.) of Springfield, Virginia; U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mike Worden, fighter pilot, scholar, and historian, who delved into Air Force archives on our behalf and took time away from his own doctoral research to read our manuscript; Michael (M-60) Kelley, Vietnam War artist, historian, and veterans’ networker; Lieutenant Colonel Richard S. Johnson (U.S. Army, ret.), author of How to Find Anyone Who Is or Has Been in the Military; David W. Schill, who is building the definitive computer data base on Vietnam War casualties; and Douglas Pike, curator of the Indochina Archives at the University of California-Berkeley.

  Others who lent invaluable assistance and encouragement include Robert S. McNamara; General William C. Westmoreland (ret.); General H. Norman Schwarzkopf (ret.); Lieutenant General Harry W. O. Kinnard (ret.); Lieutenant General Stanley R. Larsen (ret.); Will Bundy; and General Gordon R. Sullivan, Army Chief of Staff.

  On two research trips to Hanoi we were taken in hand by photographer Tim Page, an old friend, an old Indochina hand, and a Zen master at the art of not only surviving but enjoying modern-day Vietnam. Our gracious official host in Vietnam was Nguyen Cong Quang, director of the Foreign Press Service in Hanoi, who worked hard to break down the walls for us. Mr. Quang believed that old enemies could become friends, and he was right. He also provided us the best and brightest of guide-interpreters: Duong Quang Thang and Tran Le Tien. They arranged our interviews with Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap, Senior General Chu Huy Man, Lieutenant General Nguyen Huu An, and Major General Hoang Phuong. Special thanks go to General Phuong, chief of the Hanoi Institute of Military History, who is so dedicated a professional historian that he left a hospital bed for our first meeting. Our base of operations for the Vietnam trips was Bangkok, and we would be remiss if we did not thank Nguyen Quang Dy, first secretary of the Embassy of Vietnam, for his help with visas and travel arrangements; Raymond Eaton, chairman of the Export Development Trading Corporation, for sharing his considerable knowledge of wind directions in Vietnam; Alan Dawson, another expert on the political meteorology of Indochina; and Jack Corman, genial host and message center for exhausted passersby.

  We could not have done it without all of them, and to all of them we are deeply grateful.

  HAL MOORE

  JOE GALLOWAY

  February 4, 1992

  Interviews and Statements

  The first draft of all history is written in the memories of the participants in and witnesses to any event. We have sought, through the interviews for this book, to tap that resource on the Ia Drang battles before it is forever lost. Joe Galloway began the process on the battlefield itself, for the stories he wrote then. And although I was not aware of it at the time, my work on this book began only a few days later, when I sat down to write my after-action report.

  The authors remained in close personal touch during the years after 1965; in March of 1983, we began our research. That month, our written questions were mailed to a scattering of Ia Drang veterans, and the first replies came back. In May 1983 I conducted my first taped interviews, with Bob Edwards and Ray Lefebvre.

  We agreed from the beginning that we would make every effort to return to Vietnam to revisit the battlefield and interview the North Vietnamese commanders who had fought against us. That goal was realized, in part, during two trips to Hanoi—in August-September of 1990, and again in October-November of 1991. We were granted interviews with Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap and Major General Hoang Phuong, chief of the Institute of Military History, on the first trip; and with Senior General Chu Huy Man and Lieutenant General Nguyen Huu An and again with General Phuong on the 1991 visit.

  We talked for more than two hours with General Giap; for four hours each with General Man and General An; for six hours with General Phuong. All were tape-recorded. The discussions in every case were cordial and professional, and General Phuong was remarkably generous in sharing with us his 1965 Ia Drang diaries and sketch maps.

  The men who fought in X-Ray and Albany have told their stories in hundreds of statements, written and taped, and in hundreds of hours of personal and telephone interviews. Many of those who were interviewed or provided written accounts are not mentioned by name in the text because the events described are the summation and essence of the research to which they contributed time and substance. We are no less grateful to them for their invaluable help. The names of all who contributed to this research are listed below.

  American Military and Ex-Military

  Dick Ackerman, Russell Adams, Warren E. Adams, Hank Ains-worth, J. L. (Bud) Alley, Jr., Roger K. Bean, Bill Beck, Larry Bennett, William Bercaw, Charlie Black, Clarence W. Blount, Toby Braveboy, David Bray, Ervin L. Brown, Thomas W. Brown, Galen Bungum, Vincent Cantu, Robert S. Carrara, John A. Cash, James P. Castleberry, John F. Clark, J. D. Coleman, Kenneth A. Cone, Bruce Crandall, Ronald W. Crooks, Dennis Deal, Myron F. Diduryk, Gregory P. Dillon, Kenneth Duncan, John H. Dutram, Robert E. Edwards, Jim Epperson, John A. Fesmire, George Forrest, Ed Freeman, Larry M. Gilreath, James T. Godfrey, Ewing P. Goff, Melvin Gregory, S. Lawrence Gwin, James F. Hackett, Bobby J. Hadaway, James Hall, Harold Hamilton, Ernest B. Hamm, Steven Hansen, Dallas Harper, Charlie W Hastings, Robert Hazen, John A. Hemphill, John D. Herren, Sam Hollman, Jr., John Howard, Otis Hull, Hans Hundsberger, Joseph H. Ibach, Jimmie Jakes, Alex S. Jekel, Robert Jemison, George W. Jennings, Thomas L. Keeton, George H. Kelling, Glenn F. Kennedy, Douglas Kinnard, Harry
W. O. Kinnard, Fred J. Kluge, Richard T. Knowles, Ted C. Kolbusz, Leland Komich, Stanley R. Larsen, David A. Lavender, L. R. (Ray) Lefebvre, Andrew Le Valli, James L. Litton, Riccardo Lombardo, Nick Lorris, Charles R. Lose, William Lund, Henri Mallet, Walter J. Marm, John C. Martin, George McCulley, Robert A. McDade, George J. McDonald, Jr., Robert McMahon, Richard Merchant, E. C. Meyer, Carmen Miceli, Troy Miller, Jon Mills, Frank Moreno, Ramon A. (Tony) Nadal, Lorenzo Nathan, Jr., Arthur J. Newton, Walter A. Niemeyer, George J. Nye, Larry Owen, Ernest E. Paolone, William F. Parish, D. P. (Pat) Payne, Basil L. Plumley, Clinton S. Poley, John S. Pritchard, Enrique V. Pujals, Robert L. Read, Cyril R. (Rick) Rescorla, Dan Robinson, Edward C. Robinson, George Rogers, William N. Roland, Stanley Rothstein, Gordon P. Rozanski, C. Ernie Savage, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, James Scott, Pat Selleck, John R. Setelin, James H. Shadden, William Shu-cart, Benjamin E. Silver, Ron Sleeis, Donald J. Slovak, Jack P. Smith, James W. Spires, Robert Stinnett, John Stoner, Joel E. Sugdinis, Dudley Tademy, Ray E. Tanner, Henry Thorpe, Robert L. Towles, Walter B. (Buse) Tully, Robert B. Tully, Arthur Viera, Jr., Bruce M. Wallace, Jon Wallenius, Richard B. Wash-burn, William C. Westmoreland, Paul Patton Winkel, Jr., Peter J. Winter, Herman L. Wirth, James Young, Jerald D. Zallen, Jack Zent

  Family Members

  Mrs. Sara Elliott, Mrs. Barbara Geoghegan Johns, Mrs. Betty Jivens Mapson, Mrs. Catherine Metsker McCray, Edward Dennis Monsewicz, Mrs. Karen Metsker Rudel, Mrs. Delores Diduryk, Mrs. Frank Henry, Miss Camille Geoghegan

  Former Government Officials

  Robert S. McNamara, Will Bundy, Harry McPherson, Walt Whitman Rostow, Leonard Unger, Barry Zorthian

  Other Americans

  Wayne F. Hyde, Julia C. Moore, Kornelia Scott, Malcolm McConnell, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, Robert Poos