from around the world. The bullet was still in there. He works for a consulting firm in McLean, Virginia. After a second career as a consultant to defense industries on the West Coast, he retired again and lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Libby. Hear Walters story. A total of 305 soldiers died. He accepted, I won, but he only recently began paying offone bottle at a time. Plumley says, Scott is so tight with a dollar youd think he came out of West Point.. In Hanoi, the North Vietnamese leadership was prepared for huge losses. Knowles has served in the New Mexico legislature since 1982. With a passion for historical learning and historical education, her writing interests include social history, and war history, especially researching obscure facts about the Second World War. CARRARA, Robert J., fifty-four, battalion surgeon of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in LZ X-Ray, served eleven months in Vietnam and was discharged in July 1966. We were taking an administrative break, guys were taking off their packs and lighting cigarettes and the enemy was less than 100 yards on our right flank and deploying and we couldn't see 'em or hear 'em," he said. But the battle's true toll would prove to be the hubris it bred in U.S. commanders. For the next four years he was executive vice president of the company that developed the Crested Butte, Colorado, ski area. A high school dropout, he went back to college, earned a B.A., and was working on an M.A. Hal Moore ensured that all of the men came home, and they therefore did . It was his first real combat; first, he got a round to the side of his neck. His dissertation is on the LZ Albany battle. WINTER, Pete, fifty-one, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was discharged in December 1965. "It looked as if our best bet was to make for the copse of trees in the clearing, so I pointed my men in that direction and said, 'we need to get over there.'". Im so proud to have been there and so proud of the guys who were there with me. In a 1967 article for the Saturday Evening Post, former ABC reporter Jack Smith, who was a private first class in Charlie Company during the battle, wrote about Cornett's last moments. The battle of Ia Drang was an engagement of the Vietnam War. Freeman won a battlefield commission in the Korean War. Memoirs and histories written after the event capture it . On February 26, 2007, President George W. Bush presented Crandall with the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Ia Drang Valley. In the first major engagement of the war between regular U.S. and North Vietnamese forces, elements of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fight a pitched battle with Communist main . We Were Soldiers (2002) is considered by many to be one of the best Vietnam War films ever made. I marked off 65 names and thats when it really hit me what had happened and it just overwhelmed me. This was the first and last battle between NVA forces and U.S forces of similar size. Today, Doc Shucart of Landing Zone Albany is the chief of neurosurgery at Tufts University Medical School. JEANETTE, Robert J., fifty, Ghost 4-6, weapons-platoon leader, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, lives in Monsey, New York, a suburb of New York City. In the spring of 1992, Frank Henry was posthumously inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame. After two days of intense North Vietnamese attacks and mounting casualties, Moore radioed the code word Broken Arrow, calling for all available aircraft to rescue an American unit about to be overrun. For Lawrence, telling the story of LZ Albany is not only a way to keep the memory of those who died alive, but also a way to educate others. (Black Bart), Charlie Battery aerial rocket artillery commander in the Ia Drang, returned to Vietnam for a second tour in 1968. This is the tale of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in 1965. He and his wife live in Sag Harbor, New York, where they operate a summer season shop that deals in contemporary original art. It took multiple hours for the men to load their weapons and fallen soldiers into helicopters, but by 3 P.M., all of the survivors or fallen American soldiers who were to leave the Ia Drang Valley, left. USA, Scranton, 208-263-9534. In four days and nights of fighting. Florence County, He had just turned thirty-six years old. Very difficult. 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. Dillon is a scratch golfer who does his best to get in eighteen holes every day, even if it means a drive downslope to find a course that isnt closed on account of snow in the Colorado winter. The American death toll was a shock to President Lyndon Johnson, who immediately dispatched Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to Saigon to find out what was going on. I think McNamara knew, deep down; I think Johnson knew, Wiest said. Translation on Find a Grave is an ongoing project. The single, bloodiest day in the Vietnam War. 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. The bullets missed his head by fractions of an inch, but the impact knocked him backward and he couldn't move from the waist down. More than anything else in the world I would like to be back in the Green Machine, he says. That is the theme of Lawrence's book and of his talks. He lives in Falls, Pennsylvania. His last known address was Miami, Florida. Contrary to popular belief, the Battle of Ia Drang started and ended after the famous landings at LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany. Her research focused on military, environmental, and Canadian history with a specific focus on the Second World War. The airstrike broke the North Vietnamese siege and enabled reinforcements to reach the LZ. Early Ia Drang Valley 1965 KIA group - 2/8 Calavary - LZ Cavalair Early Ia Drang Valley 1965 KIA group - 2/8 Calavary - LZ Cavalair. We were caught inside of what was essentially an L-shaped ambush.". He co-authored the book We Were Soldiers Once And Young with Hal Moore. Today he lives in Riverside, Rhode Island, is in the photo business, and is active in veterans affairs. He was chief of security at a hospital in Columbus, Georgia, until his death on April 18, 1992. 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. This allowed troops to be quickly brought in and out for battle. In the same way, the story of his experiences at LZ Albany is a story that could be told by the nearly 400 Troopers of 2/7 Cav who fought and died at LZ Albany, or the 1/7 Cav Troopers at LZ X-ray or the more than 2.6 million US personnel who served in Vietnam. He earned his masters degree in public administration in 1976 and retired in 1977 as a lieutenant colonel. This praise is largely due to the heavy emphasis director Randall Wallace put on ensuring what he created was as accurate to the real events of the Battle of Ia Drang as possible. 'Can't you see I'm dying?' MILLS, Jon, fifty-four, Bruce Crandalls copilot in the Ia Drang, retired a lieutenant colonel in 1980. Towles received a masters degree in history from Kent State in 1989, and is currently working on his doctorate. Lawrence, even in his paralyzed state, was able to give some direction to his company. Lt. Col. Hal Moores 1stBattalion, 7thCalvary wasordered to take on an air assaultin the Ia Drang Valley. Luckily for him, not a single shot he received hit any vital organs. Pronunciation of Ia Drang with 6 audio pronunciations. 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. Hes in a unique position to want to believe these optimistic reports and hes getting a lot of them.. A month before the Ia Drang operation, North Vietnamese regulars attacked a U.S. Special Forces base at Plei Me, hoping to lure the ineffectual South Vietnamese army out of its base at the provincial capital, Pleiku, and destroy it. (U.S. Army). He was medically evacuated the next morning. It was the longest day I ever experienced in any aircraft, Crandall recalled. Read More Landing Zone Xray Lead elements of the under strength 450 man 1st Bn, 7th Cavalry air assault into a small clearing in scrub jungle below the 2300 foot Chu Pong Massif. 2 Ia Drang also served as a test for the U.S. military of its new air mobility tactics. Privacy Policy 'The torture stopped': 1969 brought temporary changes to infamous Hanoi Hilton, Patriotism or protest? MICELI, Carmen, forty-eight, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry at LZ X-Ray, completed a full tour in Vietnam and left the Army in September 1966. They have a son and two daughters. Within an hour, they came under attack for the first time by North Vietnamese regulars, launching a four-day battle that killed hundreds of Americans and perhaps more than 1,000 Vietnamese and changed the course of the Vietnam War. He lives on a farm near Rainier, Washington, and has been writing down his memories of Vietnam duty for his children and grandchildren. He then formed a computer-software company. 5 cemeteries found within miles of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. Please ensure you have given Find a Grave permission to access your location in your browser settings. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account. That headquarters type turned up and he returned my old helmet, bullet hole and all. We saved so many more people because of that helicopter.. MCDONALD, George J., fifty-two, mortarman, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, left the Army in 1966 and went home to Pass Christian, Mississippi, where he is a commercial fisherman. The first major American direct fire conflict took place in November of 1965 in the Ia Drang Valley. The idea was that whole battalions could be dropped and complete their mission on the ground, calling in artillery barrages, helicopter support, and bombing sorties (including . As the fighting around Landing Zone X-Ray subsided, McDades 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was ordered to move cross-country to Landing Zone Albany, where it was to be picked up by helicopter and moved to a new location. A young United Press International reporter, Joseph Galloway, became the only civilian decorated for gallantry during the war, awarded a Bronze Star with V device for valor for carrying a wounded soldier off the battlefield under intense fire. "Back then Stars and Stripes would carry the casualty reports and I had a red pen and started checking off the names of guys I knew who were listed as KIA. RUDEL, Karen Metsker, twenty-eight, daughter of Captain Thomas Metsker, intelligence officer, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in Landing Zone X-Ray, killed in action November 14, 1965, lives in the Boston suburbs with her husband, Scott. By the third day of the battle, the Americans had gained the upper hand. I still have my leg, and I can walk on it. He retired from the battlefield only after all possible service had been rendered to the infantry battalion. 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. Moore lectures at military academies and at several colleges and universities. He told me his wife's name was [Sylvia]. The battle was later dramatized in the film We Were Soldiers. This is the tale of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in 1965. Lawrence and Cornett were roommates at Infantry Officer Basic School, roommates in jump school and on the ship together that brought them to Vietnam. During his two tours in Vietnam, Crandall flew lead ship on 756 separate missions. He lives in Golden, Colorado, where he owns a firm that deals worldwide in antiques. For the next ten years he was a football coach at Morgan State University in Baltimore, his alma mater. Crandall continued to fly into and out of the landing zone throughout the day and into the evening. AINSWORTH, Hank, fifty-four, who flew the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav command helicopter in the Ia Drang, retired a chief warrant officer 4 on May 30, 1977, after twenty-two years service. They have two sons, one an oil-industry consultant, the other an Air Force sergeant who served in the Persian Gulf War. Their mission was to find and kill the enemy. On November 18, 1965, the US forces were able to gather their dead. BROWN, Thomas W. (Tim), seventy-three, the 3rd Brigade commander in the Ia Drang, retired a brigadier general in 1973, after thirty-plus years of service and a second tour in Vietnam, with two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars from his three wars. While youre out killing 1,700 NVA, if youre doing it in a populated area, youre creating more insurgents, he said. However, theres one part of We Were Soldiers thats different from what really happened: the ending. Georgia, "The way it was presented, at least from my perspective, was we were making an administrative move to be airlifted out so we wouldn't be in the way of the bombers.". He retired in 1990. Photo extracted from U.S. Army motion picture footage from November 1965. He retired from the Army as a master sergeant and, in 1988, became the pastor of a church in Fort Mitchell, Alabama. Little did Beck and his companions know they were about to make history in America's first large scale battle of the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, this allows a reprieve for Moore and his men to secure the area. At the end of a year only fifteen of the original contingent were still there, Gwin included. Both were present at the Battle of Ia Drang, the first large-scale engagement of the Vietnam War. Theres a lot of pain but at least I lived. Jeanette says: When I was in the hospital in 1966, I was down in the doldrums, feeling sorry, and they tried to nudge me out of that. He has written a book about his experiences and has spoken more than 20 times to veterans organizations, junior high and high school students, and civic groups. Another 71 Americans had been killed in earlier, smaller skirmishes that led up to the Ia Drang battles. Please contact Find a Grave at [emailprotected] if you need help resetting your password. The other 58,000 names on that wall are men and women who also had a spouse, or children, they had mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. We were crawling around under intense machine-gun fire when Sergeant Major Plumley walked up, pulled his .45-caliber pistol, chambered a round, and said: Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves.You never forget a thing like that.. I couldn't grasp it.". LARSEN, Stanley R. (Swede), seventy-seven, commanding general, II Field Force Vietnam, retired a lieutenant general in 1972 and for seven years was president of a large company in San Francisco. The men, women, and children of this story are Americas neighbors, living quiet lives in every corner of the nation they served. He did not know at the time that his friend, Don Cornett, had died. A Chicago native, Doc Carrara returned home, changed his specialty to pathology. He is working on a book on Alpha Companys year in Vietnam. He holds two masters degrees, is employed in the defense industry, and lives in Alexandria, Virginia. In Washington, Ia Drang convinced Johnson that he was in for a long, bloody war. He works at Fort Benning, Georgia, evaluating Army Reserve training. The North Vietnamese regulars, young men who had been drafted into the military much as the young American men had been, had paid a much higher price to test the newcomers to an old fight: an estimated 3,561 of them had been killed, and thousands more wounded, in the 34-day Ia Drang campaign. He and his wife live in Alexandria, Virginia. USA, West Point, Diduryk is buried at the Fort Benning cemetery; his widow, Delores, lives in Jacksonville, Florida. The fighting continued for three hours. HASTINGS, Charlie W., fifty-three, forward air controller at LZ X-Ray, retired as a colonel from the U.S. Air Force on March 1, 1992, after thirty years service. He joined IBM as a salesman in Austin, Texas, and spent twenty years with them, rising to the post of Midwestern regional manager. 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. Its not so much what we went through as it is knowing what the other guys went through. His lieutenants bars were pinned on by General James Van Fleet and, at Freemans request, his first assignment was as commander of Bravo Company. When someone shook me and tried to get me moving I was actually offended. Second Lieutenant Walter Joe Marm, Jr., led an attack against a heavily fortified enemy force on November 14, 1965, personally knocking out several positions in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam. North Vietnamese forces had higher casualty rates, due to the U.S. airstrike and artillery support. I marked off 65 names and that's when it really hit me what had happened and it just overwhelmed me. Assigned to intelligence duty in Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Adams earned a bachelors degree from the University of Austria in Vienna, a masters degree in history at the University in Innsbruck, and a doctorate of psychology from Munich Universityall under an assumed name. It was the signal for all available American aircraft to converge and provide aid to the American unit. 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. They are stories that not only serve to maintain our connection with history, but also educate us and force us to confront the good and the bad and learn from it. Rescorla kept the battered French Army bugle he captured on the field at Albany; in 1991 he turned it over to the Ia Drang Alumni for use in memorial ceremonies. On his next flight, three soldiers on his helicopter were killed and three were wounded. Then after a moment I realized I was still alive and needed to do something.". He and his wife, Julie, divide their time between homes in Auburn, Alabama, and Crested Butte, Colorado. Have given Find a Grave at [ emailprotected ] if you need help resetting your password vice of. Usa, West Point, Diduryk is buried at the end of a year only of! Pain but at least I lived in public administration in 1976 and retired in 1977 a. Cemetery ; his widow, Delores, lives in Alexandria, Virginia the area and that 's when it hit. 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