51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Realistic, Straight forward Account of Horrendous Battles, March 11, 2005
This review is from: We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam (Mass Market Paperback)
First, let's look at what this book is not: It is not beautifully written, it is not the story of one person's experience and it is not dedicated to character building. If you are looking for those things, then look elsewhere.
Now if you are looking for the smell, the horror, the courage and the sacrifice of the battlefield, then you will find it in this work. Moore and Galloway have written a book that will serve as a textbook for generations of people who want to know what war is really like in a very objective manner - the heroism, the great leadership, poor leadership, mistakes, and occasional cowardice. It pulls no punches and takes people and organizations to task where appropriate. It is truly an amazing work and one that should be read by anyone when a debate on going to war is raging.
The book is in three distinctive parts: The fight on Landing Zone X-Ray; The Fight on Landing Zone Albany; and the aftermath of the battles, for both the US involvement in Viet Nam and some of the families affected by it. Moore was the Battalion Commander at X-Ray and gives a very good view of the decisions he made and why he made them. He is able to walk us through the battle and describe the critical actions by both the North Vietnamese and the US forces that turned the tide of this battle and allowed Moore's force to win a victory. There are many first person accounts of different aspects of the battle given by the US soldiers that fought there and also by some of the key North Vietnam leaders.
The second part of the book was about the relief battalion's retrograde back from LZ X-Ray to LZ Albany. Moore was not here so all of the reporting was done thru interviews after the fact. He is pretty scathing in some of his assesments of the decisions being made - although if you do not have military experience you might not find the writing scathing enough for what happened. He describes the complecency by some of the leadership on the movement back, the failure to set out decent security and the indecisiveness in the early moments of the battle. He also points out the slow flow of information from Albany to the higher levels of the US Forces. Albany was fought to a draw with horrendous losses on both sides after a North Vietnamese battalion and the 2/7 Cav had a meeting engagement (which means they ran into eachother in the woods). One lead company was almost completely slaughtered, save a few people that had to do an E&E (Escape and Evasion) in order to get to safety. The book contains three accounts of men that did that.
The final part of the book looked at the political decisions made in the aftermath of the war using declassified top secret memos written by Sec McNamara to illustrate that he knew very early in the war that it could prove to be unwinnable, putting the odds at a US victory at no better than 1 in 2. Also, there are personal accounts from the widows and the children of some of the men that died in the battles. Since I am in Iraq right now with the Army, and I have a two year old daughter, I found these passages particularily moving.
My only gripe with this book, is that your understaning of it is assisted greatly if you have been in the military. Since I am, it is no problem, but for someone walking in with no experience, a lot of the terminology used and the prose itself will make following the story a little more difficult. It reads almost exactly like an After Action Review, which probably is the proper voice for this piece, but some readers will have problems with it - as evidenced by some of the earlier reviews.
The bottom line - very honest, interesting, work. It will help the reader understand battle, and perhaps understand it a little more than they would like to. Highly recommend.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Anatomy of a Battle--And How!, June 23, 2005
In WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...AND YOUNG, the team of Harold Moore and Joey Galloway, have given us a devastating and detailed account of battle
In November 1965, 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, were helicoptered into the Ia Drang valley to destroy whatever elements of the NVA they found.
From the time they landed until two days later, they came under constant attack. Colonel Moore formed a perimeter and fought a classic defensive battle, but it was a close run thing. They were probably saved by air and artillery coverage; even so, there are grim scenes of Americans being killed by misplaced napalm and artillery rounds.
The authors have no qualms about recounting the explicit gore of battle. One soldier tried to move another and "it seemed like his entire brain fell out..." And a few lines further, "Rodriguez is hit...His guts are on the ground." Everywhere, the screams and curses of dying men, and once, "Oh my God, forgive me."
One of the righteous complaints of the American soldier was that he was sent into combat with a toy for a main battle rifle, and Moore/Galloway present us with innumerable examples: "I got my hands on one that didn't work. The second one didn't either, nor the third." And "I fired a burst from my M-16 which promptly fell apart." One man..."got another man's M-16 and tried to fire it but it was inoperable. I took his .45 pistol..." and Old Ugly came through for him. The propensity of the M-16 to jam was notorious and "every third man was down in the bottom of the hole with a cleaning rod, cleaning the rifles." One sergeant sighted on an NVA: "He fired at me and I fired back. I got off one round and my M-16 jammed."
If the M-16 was a dirty joke, so was its puny 5.56mm cartridge. "I got him with my first round, saw him drop...and start to crawl forward...I sighted very carefully and saw him jolted by my second round, but he kept coming..." Another soldier: I fired twice. I hit him but he refused to go down, he kept coming and shooting." Many soldiers bought civilian ammunition at their own expense.
Moore's battalion was successful in its defense, and was relieved by Robert McDade's 2nd Battalion. They in turn were marched out to another area (Albany) because the B-52s wanted to bomb around Moore's old area.
On arrival at Albany 2nd Battalion found a gourmet Army meal waiting for them: hamburgers, mashed potatoes, and string beans. Under combat conditions, a meal for the gods.
Unfortunately, on the fifteen mile march, 2nd Battalion had become strung out along the trail, and had entered an area occupied by some two and a half fresh NVA battalions. They knew McDade was coming and set their ambush.
While the lead elements were still eating their hamburgers, the NVA followed the old Sun-Tzu/Mao dictum "When possible, attack the enemy while he is in motion." They attacked the column, fractured it, surround the invidual companies and started to decimate the encircled elements.
Here again, we are treated to page after page of desperate valor and butchery. If there is any major flaw in the book it is probably this kind of repetition. Also, there is such a large cast of characters that, unlike fiction, we can seldom identify with them. After a time the butchery becomes commonplace, and because the participants are unknown, they become only names, and numbers.
Men scattered and tried to make it to other units, while NVA death squads searched for the wounded, and executed them in the tall elephant grass. One soldier, wounded and not expecting to survive, booby-trapped his own body with a grenade, and waited. Artillery save him, but others were not as lucky.
By sunrise next day, one company of 112 men had forty-five dead and more than fifty wounded. Only a dozen could walk. At the end of Albany, only four trucks were needed to carry out the non-wounded, this from some four hundred men who marched in.
2nd Battalion claimed a body count of 403 NVA with an estimated 150 NVA wounded. If these figures are valid then the casualties were about equal, and Albany was a grim standoff.
After the fight, in camp, the survivors were given a victory dance. They had showered but due to some glitch, had not been given fresh clothing. When the local laides got a whiff of the blood, sweat, and feces smell of the uniforms, most of them opted for the powder room.
Ia Drang; who won? Both sides claimed victory. Moore's battalion inflicted losses of about 5-1 on the NVA. When the Americans talk about Ia Drang, they talk about Moore's battle; when the Vietnamese talk about Ia Drang, they talk about the ambush of McDade's battlaion. Perhaps the American army had some reservations about Albany too. McDade retired as a colonel in 1975, while Moore retired as a lieutenant-general.
This is a book that "tells it like it is."
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