The true story that inspired the great Mel Gibson film | We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang

we were soldiers once and young | We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam | Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway

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	• We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway Presidio Press, 2004 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Read It!

This is clearly the best military book I have every read. I couldn't put it down and found myself paging back and forth to the maps and the battles unfolded. This is one of the few books I will keep and read again...it is that good.

The true story that inspired the great Mel Gibson film

It is a true story of real courage and camaraderie. Mel Gibson made an excellent film out of this book. The two are equally good. I mentioned this book in my listmania "Vietnam War" on amazon.fr.

we were soldiers once and young

This is one of the finest most vivid true story accounts of the war in Vietnam these young men were the true heroes of there generation. if you saw the movie read the Book. a fascinating account of courage and heartbreak during fierce battle against NVA And VietCong forces in the Ia drang Valley.

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Viet Nam without the politics

The best review for this book is by the author in the prologue, and I quote.
"We knew what Vietnam had been like, and how we looked and acted and talked and smelled. No one in America did. Hollywood got it wrong every damned time, whetting twisted political knives on the bones of our dead brothers.
So once, just this once: This is how it all began, what it was really like, what it meant to us, and what we meant to each other. It was no movie. When it was over the dead did not get up and dust themselves off and walk away. The wounded did not wash away the red and go on with life, unhurt. Those who were, miraculously, unscratched were by no means untouched. Not one of us left Vietnam the same young man he was when he arrived. This story, then is is our testament, ..."

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This War--And This Book--Belong to Sherman, Not John Wayne

This isn't a book about John Wayne's war. It's about William Tecumseh Sherman's war, the man who said, "War is Hell..."

The actual quote from Sherman, a future president of LSU, was "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell..."

This book is about that hell, the hell of Vietnam where technology came fact to face with hand-to-hand combat. It was bloody, it was brutal...But it was also heroic. "Heroic" not in the sense of a John Wayne movie, but in the sense of heroism described in Walter Lord's epic book on the Alamo, "A Time To Stand:" "All men know fear. Perhaps, in the end, the hero is the one who, knowing that fear, marches on..."

There were lots of heroes in the Ia Drang Valley in November of 1965. This book is about those heroes--on both sides.

Written by General Hal Moore and journalist Joe Gallaway, who were there, this book addresses the heroism and humanity of that battle--- the first direct confrontation of American "helicopter soldiers" and North Vietnam regulars. Fought at the very start of the war, it remains the turning point of that war, politically, militarily and otherwise.

It is striking in General Moore's respect and admiration for his men as well as for the men his forces were trying to kill. He felt a deep sense of empathy for the familes of the men who died on both sides. He is indicative of what a military man should be--He doesn't like the killing, but he does it because it is job, his duty. Duty, Honor, Country. But he never loses sight of humanity, his humanity, the humanity of his troops and the humanity of the troops--the enemy--they are fighting.

Pages 335-336 (hardback edition)contain a moving descripton of his visit to the family and to the grave of one of his fallen troops. The soldier's widow describs him kneeling at the grave of his soldier. It may be the highlight of the book. His later reconciliation with Gen. Nguyen Huu An, his Ia Drang adversary, and their subsequent visits to the battlefield make this book even more meaninngful.

If you want to read about the glories of war, go somewhere else--read fiction, a novel or something. But if you want to read about the realities of war and the men who fight it, this is the book for you.

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Each year, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps selects one book that he believes is both relevant and timeless for reading by all Marines. The Commandant's choice for 1993 was We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.
In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter 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 chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War.
How these men persevered--sacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave up--makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. This devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles to present a picture of men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier. It reveals to us, as rarely before, man's most heroic and horrendous endeavor.

From the Hardcover edition.

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