The battlefield area covered 1,500 square miles of what appeared to be flat rolling terrain dominated by the Chu Pong . At various times in recent years he has been reported to be either employed or a patient in VA hospitals in Mississippi and Alabama. James Lawrence, a 77 year-old Vietnam veteran from Alabama, tells people about his best friend and the battle he died in whenever he gets the chance. On January 31, 1966, The New York Times profiled Moore as The Man Who Can Find the Viet Cong. He pressed for another assignment to troop command in Vietnam, only to be told that he had already had his turn. He was in a great deal of pain, so a rifleman named Wilson and I removed his gear as best we could, and I bandaged his wound. Col. Bruce Crandall, Commander ofCompany A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), led the first major division operation of airmobile troops into Landing Zone X-Ray. He became a legend in the unit for his behavior in combat, and his face became an American icon when a young reporter named Peter Arnett snapped his photo. He was the father of four children, aged twelve through twenty. "The fear factor, when you know someone is within yards of you and is trying to kill you desperately, the fear factor can shut you down. He lives in Falls, Pennsylvania. American officials declared the Battle of the la Drang Valley a victory. SMITH, Jack P., forty-seven, returned to Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry after his wounds healed, and completed his tour. This resulted in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, a forested area just east of the Chu Pong massif, from 23 October to 20 November. ROBINSON, Edward Charles, fifty-five, Huey pilot at LZ X-Ray, served a second combat tour in Vietnam. He lives in Olympia, Washington, and works for the state government. He went home to Murphysboro, Illinois. The Battle of Ia Drang Still Matters - War Is Boring. Too Tall Ed retired from that job on January 3, 1991. The outcome convinced the North Vietnamese that they could reduce the threat of U.S. firepower by engaging the Americans at close quarters where U.S. airstrikes would prove risky and then melt away into the jungle or across the border into sanctuaries in Cambodia. The conflict is divided into two engagements: the Battle at Landing Zone (LZ) X-Ray and. On March 2, 1969, thirty-two-year-old Buse Tully was killed in action. By Staff. The Troopers of 2/7 Cav relieved their sister unit, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, on Nov. 16, following 1/7 Cav's three day battle with the People's Army of Vietnam near the base of the Chu Pong Massif. They have five grown children: sons Steve, Dave, and Greg; and daughters Cecile and Julie. Resend Activation Email. For the next agonizing 26 hours, that small band of Americans was trapped by a ring of hundreds of enemy fighters determined to kill them all. 5 cemeteries found within kilometers of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. To use this feature, use a newer browser. The Ia Drang Valley is the place the U.S. really went to warfare. He is married and has a daughter in college and a son in the U.S. Marines. This article was originally published Nov. 11, 2015, as part of the Vietnam at 50 project. Photo extracted from U.S. Army motion picture footage from November 1965. Survivors described savage, close-range combat, sometimes hand-to-hand, over several hours. Charlie Company took the brunt of the assault. His awards include the Combat Infantrymans Badge with two stars; two Silver Stars; two Bronze Stars; four Purple Hearts; a Master Parachutist Badge with five combat-jump stars; a European Theater Service ribbon with eight campaign stars and four invasion arrows; a Korean Service ribbon with three campaign stars and one invasion arrow; a Vietnam Service ribbon with one silver and three bronze campaign stars; and the Presidential Unit Citation badge. Payne and his wife, Patty, live in Hinsdale, Illinois, and have three children. When the last of his old friends in the 1st Cavalry and the U.S. Marines rotated home, Galloway also left, vowing never to return. He retired in August 1990, and now lives in Peekskill, New York. He died. HOWARD, John, fifty-four, medical-services officer, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, retired a lieutenant colonel in 1983, after twenty-five years service. The North Vietnamese Army starts with the most flags but to combat this the 7th Cavalry Regiment has superior airpower meaning that the USA can quickly insert and extract players into and out of flags. At a surprise fiftieth-birthday party for Ernie, he was presented a plaque engraved with sergeants stripes and inscribed with a message from Colonel (ret.) Translation on Find a Grave is an ongoing project. Galloway served a total of fifteen years overseas with UPI, assigned to Tokyo, Saigon, Jakarta, New Delhi, Singapore, and Moscow. Hear three personal perspectives from men who survived. Crandall and Freeman successfully rescued some 70 wounded men. They have three children, daughters Abigail and Alison and a son, Thomas Alexander. His last known address was Miami, Florida. This battle took place from 11-14-1965, thru 11-18-1965. Jemison works part-time as a security guard in Columbus, Georgia, and he says: Each night I go back to Vietnam to fight that same battle, over and over.. Moore commanded the 7th Infantry Division in Korea, was commanding general at Fort Ord, California, and then was the Armys deputy Chief of Staff for personnel. "I always end my talk with telling my audience 'When people go to the wall [Vietnam Veterans Memorial], they see 58,000 names. The two-part battle took place between November 14 and November 18, 1965 west of Plei Me, in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Now I felt terribly alone. Lacking confidence in the South Vietnamese, Gen. William C. Westmoreland ordered the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, which had been in country about a month, to pursue the enemy, using newly minted airmobile tactics. I think McNamara knew, deep down; I think Johnson knew, Wiest said. Lt. Don Cornett, along with 154 troopers from 2/7 Cav, were killed in the Ia Drang Valley at a small clearing known as Landing Zone Albany. A Broken Arrow was declared over the radio by the Battalion Forward Air Controller, which meant that an American unit was in imminent danger of being overrun. They successfully hit many of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops, while also shooting some of the Americans with friendly fire. I have one very vivid memory of the second morning in X-Ray. Winkel retired a colonel in 1986, with over thirty-one years of Army service. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account. I believe it is so I can share our story.". The ending of We Were Soldiers comes once Hal Moore makes the decision to call in Broken Arrow, a request for all available combat aircraft to attack enemy positions. The central highlands had few roads and challenging terrain, making air mobility the only viable mode of transportation. I still have my leg, and I can walk on it. It was much bigger than what we had seen before against a much more tenacious enemy, Wiest said of the battle. The North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas absorbed even higher casualties from better-equipped American troops on the ground as well as helicopter gunships and B-52s raining bombs, bullets and napalm. Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Harold Moore led the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, against numerically superior elements of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) led by General Chu Huy Man (Builder et al., 1999). Due to a statute of limitations being lifted, Freeman was awarded the Medal of Honor on July 16, 2001. USA, West Point, The North Vietnamese attempt one final attack, but are soon overrun and ordered to evacuate the headquarters they took only a few days prior. In the fall of 1965 the Vietnam War was an event most Americans saw as a series of smaller battles leaving little to remember. He spent more than 14 hours in the air andcompleted a total of 22 flights, most under intense enemy fire. He was director of training development at Fort Benning when he retired as a colonel in 1983. During his two tours in Vietnam, Crandall flew lead ship on 756 separate missions. He and his wife live in Anniston, Alabama, where Martin is employed at the Army Depot. But Charlie was back in the air, flying F-4 Phantoms, less than a year later. I guess I was an oddball; everyone else that year was going into teaching to avoid the draft, and then there was me. Jeanette and his wife, Sandra, were married five days before he shipped out for Vietnam. Im 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 dont worry much about it, he says. For the last twenty-one years he has been in the tire business. We were caught inside of what was essentially an L-shaped ambush.". EIN: 52-1149668, Copyright 2023 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display. Together, we can make sure our heroes will get the reverence they deserve and the stories and sacrifices of our heroes will never be forgotten. November 14, 1965 marked a pivotal moment in U.S. involvement in Vietnam. It would remain the U.S. militarys single bloodiest day in Vietnam through the entire war. I marked off 65 names and that's when it really hit me what had happened and it just overwhelmed me. Easy. He told Moore to execute an airmobile assault into the Ia Drang valley north of the Chu Pong peak early the next morning and to conduct search and destroy operations through 15 November. Some of them had blood on their faces from scratches and from other guys' wounds. 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. RESCORLA, Cyril R. (Rick), fifty-three, platoon leader, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, completed a full tour with Bravo Company in Vietnam and did another year teaching at Officer Candidate School in the States. DIDURYK, Myron F., commander of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany, completed his tour in Vietnam with Bravo Company in 1966, and later returned to Vietnam and the 1st Air Cavalry Division as a major. Fighting was so intense that a battalion commander, Lt. Col. Hal Moore, reported finding a dead American with his hands at the throat of a dead North Vietnamese soldier. Assigned as the operations officer of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry, Diduryk was killed in action on April 24, 1970, in a Huey helicopter at an abandoned fire base near the Cambodian border. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency: Ia Drang Valley Incident. Although the fighting had ended, the Battle of Ia Drang didnt officially conclude until the next day, as it took two days to collect the bodies. Orange County, He retired from the Army as a staff sergeant in 1976, and now serves in the Alabama National Guard. Surprisingly, Adams, Beck's buddy who was shot in the head, was among the. He and his wife and young son live in Lawndale, California. ALLEY, J. L. (Bud), Jr., fifty, communications officer, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, completed a full tour with his battalion and left Vietnam and the Army in August 1966. 5 cemeteries found in will be saved to your photo volunteer list. He returned to serve two more tours in Vietnamone with the Special Forces, one with an intelligence agency. 1965, just after the start of the U.S. campaign that led to the Ia Drang Valley. Both later were awarded the Medal of Honor, our nations highest award for heroism in combat. The 430 troops of the 1st Battalion, 1stCavalry Division loaded into helicopters and were dropped into the Ia Drang valley. He is a master gunsmith and runs his own business repairing and selling weapons. He is a freelance commercial artist in Harrisburg and occasionally turns his hand to fine-art drawings of his war experiences. MEYER, Edward C. (Shy), sixty-three, 3rd Brigade executive officer in the Ia Drang, retired as Army Chief of Staff, a four-star general, in 1983 after thirty-two years service. Next, he was shot in the chest; as he moved around, he was shot again in the leg. Theres certainly politics involved in it, but I do think these guys, as mythological as it turned out to be, were true Cold War believers. To the Americans, the battle validated their new airmobile strategy using helicopters to move troops quickly into remote jungle areas often without roads and inflict heavy casualties by airpower and artillery. The plane hit several tombstones and flipped over. SHADDEN, James Haskell, fifty, mortarman, Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, survived half a dozen operations and one year in Army hospitals recovering from the wounds received at LZ Albany. Lt. Don Cornett along with 154 Troopers from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment were killed in the Ia Drang Valley, Nov. 17, 1965, at a small clearing known as Landing Zone Albany. In March 1991 he found a new purpose in life: meeting the chartered airliners touching down at Bangor International Airport, the first American landfall, bringing American soldiers home from the Persian Gulf. PAYNE, D. P. (Pat), fifty, recon-platoon leader, Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, served two tours in Vietnam and left the Army as a captain in June 1969. Adams and his wife have a three-year-old daughter. Gwin left the Army at the end of his ROTC commitment and went home to his native Boston, where he teaches and writes. "The emotions are so high, the noise is tremendous, the confusion is everywhere; they had overrun us by now. Edwards is the acting borough manager of Dublin, Pennsylvania; he and his wife, Nancy, live in nearby New Hope. The North Vietnamese forces had succeeded in engaging the U.S. forces in very tight quarters. NYE, George (China Joe), demolition-team leader, 8th Engineers, attached to the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in Landing Zone X-Ray, died of an apparent heart attack at age fifty-one on December 8, 1991, at his home in Bangor, Maine. Don Cornett had a wife and a son, a mother and a father and two sisters. (Photo Credit: US Army / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain) The real life Battle of Ia Drang took place between November 14-19, 1965. USA. He lives on a farm near Rainier, Washington, and has been writing down his memories of Vietnam duty for his children and grandchildren. They had this Learning to be a Teacher program; I tried it and loved it. Temperatures reached 100 degrees, and by the afternoon there was a firestorm battle for survival. MARUHNICH, John, sixty-two, mortar sergeant, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in LZ X-Ray, retired a sergeant first class in 1974 with twenty-four years service. Gen. Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. Another 71 Americans had been killed in earlier, smaller skirmishes that led up to the Ia Drang battles. Spec. He retired a lieutenant colonel in 1980 with twenty years service, and is now a plastics-plant manager. (Skip), fifty-three, commander of Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, is still on active duty. By the third day of the battle, the Americans had gained the upper hand. I felt a flash of panic. 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