Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Battle of Ia Drang Valley - CBS Special Report

I know a man that lives near me that was in the middle of all that ,

My dad fought the japs in WW2 in New Guinea with the Army Air Corps. I remember sitting at the breakfast table in November 1965, and dad was reading the newspaper and commenting about the Battle of Ia Drang and the Vietnam War in general. Dad would have been just 43 years old, and he still had some fight left in him. He was not real happy. I would turn 13 years old on the 17th of that month, and I distinctly remember him telling mom that what they needed to do was send the Marines in there and get this thing over with. Coming from an Army man, I was instantly duly impressed with the Marines. I didn't know anything about them, but seven years later I would enlist in the Marines in the combat arms, earning an 0341 MOS (mortarman) and the rank of Sergeant, and eventually earned a commission and the Wings of Gold of a Naval Aviator. I attribute my Marine Corps career to those words my dad spoke that morning back in 1965 after reading the newspaper account of the battle of Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam. God Bless my dad and all the other Veterans who have made the ultimate sacrifice for defense of the Constitution, our country, and the American Free Enterprise System.

There is a great book written about that battle. It's called "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young." The book is by LTG Moore (then the battalion commander) and Joe Galloway (the one reporter that accompanied the troops into the Ia Drang Valley).

Galloway was on the history channel telling of his part there. An nva soldier used Galloway’s asss as a rest for his machine gun thinking Galloway was dead.

The early days of the war was a wakeup call for all of us that followed with the realization we weren't fighting a rag tag bunch of farmers or an undisciplined military. A false sense of security prevailed that ultimately cost many lives.

My Dad's half brother here in the pic was one of the first advisers on the ground, I was a junior in HS in '65 & remember him saying on his first leave home " don't take anything for granted this is the real deal Woody" He did 5 tours before retiring always be my hero !

Fast forward to '69 when I flew my first CAS missions his words were more than accurate..