The killing began right away. Not the killing of Vietnamese. The killing of Americans. Five died in the first few minutes. The hills were a concert of screams and explosions. Hiding behind a termite hill, Moore thought of another man who'd led the 7th Cavalry: George Armstrong Custer. Moore promised himself that he wouldn't let this battle --- Ia Drang --- repeat the sorry history of Little Bighorn.

We Were Soldiers Once...and Young is the story of how close Moore and his men came to being slaughtered like Custer's troops. The numbers are spine-chilling: In four days of fighting --- with the enemy sometimes as close as 75 feet to the American line --- 234 Americans died. In this remarkable minute-by-minute account, you get to meet these men. And more: You watch each soldier die. And you get to grieve for every single one.

The book's real subject isn't war. It's leadership. Consider the situation. Americans had been advisers in Vietnam, but they had never really engaged the enemy. Moore was career Army: West Point, Korea, advanced studies in fast-moving, guerilla warfare. In June of l965, he began training his battalion for combat in Vietnam. In August, the Army pulled all six of his newly-acquired second lieutenants out. In August, any soldiers who had 60 days or less to serve were separated from the 7th Cavalry. So when Moore and his unit sailed to Vietnam, they had already lost 100 of their most experienced men.

The difference between an under-trained unit that survives a fierce battle and one that becomes legendary in defeat is leadership. Listen to some of the ways Moore managed his troops. He told his men:

--- "Only first-place trophies will be displayed, accepted or presented in this battalion. Second place in our line of work is defeat of the unit on the battlefield, and death for the individual in combat."

--- "Decision-making will be decentralized: Push the power down. It pays off in wartime."

--- "Loyalty flows down as well."

--- "I check up on everything. I am available day or night to talk to any officer of this battalion."

Or this: Before the battle started, James Galloway (a United Press reporter who became co-author of Moore's book 25 years later) was watching Moore's soldiers shave as he boiled water for coffee one morning before the battle. Moore passed by. "We all shave in my outfit --- reporters included," he snapped. Galloway immediately repurposed his coffee water for shaving.

And, finally, this: "In the American Civil War, it was a matter of principle that a good officer rode his horse as little as possible. There were sound reasons for this. If you are riding and your soldiers are marching, how can you judge how tired they are, how thirsty, how heavy their packs weigh on their shoulders?"

Moore applied this philosophy conscientiously. He flew in to Ia Drang on the first helicopter. He led his men from the front. When he saw men from another company beginning to haul one of his dead soldiers out of a foxhole with a harness, he snapped, "No you won't do that. He's one of my troopers and you will show some respect. Get two more men and carry him to the landing zone." When it was over and it was time for Moore to turn over command, he requested a full battalion formation. One soldier recalls, "We stood in formation, with some units hardly having enough men to form up. Colonel Moore spoke to us and he cried. At that moment, he could have led us back into the Ia Drang."

But it still wasn't over for Moore. His wife attended as many funerals as she could. And when he got back to the U.S., in April 1966, he visited some of the families of his lost men. One family thought his visit would last a few minutes. He stayed five hours. And he made sure he went with the family to visit the grave, and there he asked to spend some time alone there, kneeling in prayer and memory.

This story --- the story of the relationship of a man to the men he leads and the families who sent those men to be in his care --- is why you want to read this book, and read it now. If you're an executive in charge of workers or if you're a parent trying to raise your children, you above all other readers will be able to read through the ugliness and the pain and understand why Moore's men fought and died for him.

Should you ever be in Washington, D.C., the names of the soldiers killed at Ia Drang --- and there are 305 of them, in total --- can be found on the third panel to the right of the apex, Panel-3 East, of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. But you don't have to visit the Memorial to learn from them; thanks to Hal Moore, their deepest legacy is in the wisdom he can, in their names, pass on to you.


Life is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is ...   July 31, 2000
 61 out of 66 found this review helpful

This outstanding account of the first major battle between American and North Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam War tells in gut-wrenching, eye-watering detail what close combat is all about. Authors Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway (Moore commanded the 1st Sqdn., 7th Cav., one of the two squadrons involved; Galloway was a journalist on the ground with Moore) have prepared a carefully researched, well documented account of U.S. and North Vietnamese actions at Ia Drang Valley in the fall of 1965. Importantly, they have drawn not just on American sources and their own experiences, but on official and personal accounts of their former enemies.

Ia Drang featured the new U.S. battlefield concept of airmobility and the North Vietnamese decided to give battle in a desperate attempt to find out the best way to deal with American helicopters and fire power. When Lt. Col. Moore and the 450 troopers of his 1/7th Cav. air assaulted into a small clearning in the Ia Drang Valley they were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese regulars. The fighting that ensued consumed Moore's squadron. The enemy increased his forces and applied even greater pressure on the Americans, and a sister unit, the 2/7th Cav., was chopped to ribbons. Enemy losses were extraordinarily high ... a price they were willing to pay to learn the lessons that would serve them on future battlefields.

The North Vietnamese did learn. They adjusted their tactics and modernized and increased the number of rocket propelled grenade launchers carried by infantry units. Additional heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons were laboriously brought down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to beef up defenses in future operations. By summer 1970, when a division of North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded airmobile troopers of the 101st Airborne Division at Fire Support Base Ripcord, they were a different enemy.

By 1970 the Vietnam War was a different war as well. In 1965 there was support for the war at home and Moore's men went into Ia Drang to win, and win they did. By 1970 U.S. forces were being withdrawn and the ground war was being turned over to an increasingly capable South Vietnamese military. At home, support for the war effort had waned terribly and political will was lacking. U.S. units increasingly became casualty-shy. Even so, the battle for FSB Ripcord (see Keith Nolan's "Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970") was as complex and deadly as that at Ia Drang. But in the end, the 1st Cavalry Division held their ground and the 101st did not. A clear sign that the war was, for all practical purposes, over.

Read Moore's and Galloway's book ... give copies to friends and relatives ... it's a classic that will stand the test of time. Then remember the words of A. E. Houseman after the bloody struggles of World War One: "Life is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is ... and we were young."


The night was clear and the moon was yellow   October 30, 2001
 51 out of 69 found this review helpful

I read this book in 1993, right after it first came out. It was the marine commandant's choice for Marines who wished to read in their field of concentration. Joe Galloway, a war correspondent and Col. Hal Moore, the commanding officer in this horrific battle in the Ia Drang valley in Vietnam, co-wrote this superb depiction of one of the first set piece battles of the Vietnamese war. That these men survived this battle at all is mute testimony to their irrepressible fierceness, to their dogged determination, and to the fearless efforts of their air and artillery support. They fought a courageous enemy who was bent on one purpose, the annihilation of their American foe. It's a brilliantly told tale of military heroism and perseverance. The recent death in the WTC bombing of one of the primary participants in the battle, Rick Rescorla, and the articles dedicated to his selfless display of bravery as he made certain that his charges were evacuated from the WTC, caused me to review this book once again.

Most Americans are sadly deficient when it comes to any knowledge of military history and its impact on the course of civilization. It seems too often that we are a nation of full stomachs and empty heads. However, the emotional trauma of the recent Taliban attacks on our soil has shaken us loose from our stupor and an interest in affairs military has been thusly ignited. As one who remembers WWII, and whose family is filled with men who went to every war this country has ever fought, my fervent wish is that our citizens will one day wake up to what actually happened in SE Asia in the mid to latter part of the 20th century. My second wish is that people will grow to understand that terrorists are not patriots, and that they are not leaders of their people. Cromwell, Bolivar, George Washington, all of whom refused the crown, they were leaders of their people. Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, they were and are killers of their people. America fought a cold war, rebuilt Western Europe and Japan, and liberated South Korea from the Communists like the aforementioned. Vietnam was a battle in that Cold War.

The Taliban, who have taken many lives to further a fanatical agenda, are merely the latest iteration of terrorists who seek to do what our constitution was written to prevent. This book is a great story about men who fought and died for principles that too many know too little about to understand. Perhaps now that the country is on high alert we'll gain back some ground form the empty heads that have presided over the media and academia in America. Buy this book and read it, you'll be very glad you did.


Hero of Ia Drang also Hero of World Trade Center   October 4, 2001
 43 out of 44 found this review helpful

This ran in Army Times. In addition to being one of the under-reported stories of 9-11, it seems like a remarkable footnote to a remarkable book.

`The bravest man I ever knew'

After a lifetime in which he cheated it many times, death caught up with Rick Rescorla halfway up the south tower of the World Trade Center.
But like a good soldier, he didn't sell his life cheaply. Death took him only after he had cheated it again, helping to save 2,700 lives by relying on the instincts and the preparation that had served him well in battles on two continents.

Rescorla was a retired Army Reserve colonel and the head of security for Morgan Stanley's Individual Investor Group at the World Trade Center. But many readers will be more familiar with him as Lt. Rick "Hard Core" Rescorla, one of the heroes of the 1965 battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam.

"Rick was the best combat leader I ever saw in Vietnam," said Pat Payne, the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment's reconnaissance platoon leader in Ia Drang.

Featured in book

Rescorla's role in that battle is recounted in detail in the book "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young," a searing account of the action by retired Lt. Gen. Harold "Hal" Moore and Joe Galloway. In 1965, Moore was a battalion commander in the center of the battle, and Galloway was a UPI reporter who covered the entire engagement.

Even those only vaguely familiar with the book have seen Rescorla's image - he is the gaunt soldier on the cover with the 2-day old beard and the bayonet fixed to his M16.

When Rescorla showed up for Basic Training at Benning in 1963, he'd already seen more adventure than most soldiers do in a lifetime. Born in Cornwall, England, he joined the British army's Paratroop Regiment as a teen-ager, then became a military intelligence warrant officer. He served in that position in Cyprus during the violence that wracked that island in the 1950s, then left the British Army for a London police job in Scotland Yard's famous "Flying Squad" of detectives.

He left England for another military job, this time as a commando in the Rhodesian Colonial security force in Africa. From there he came to seek his fortune in the United States.

After breezing through basic training, Rescorla was picked up for Officer Candidate School. Last year he was inducted into the OCS Hall of Fame.

He graduated as a second lieutenant in 1965, just in time to ship out to Vietnam with the 1st Air Cavalry Division. In November of that year, still a British citizen, he would draw on all his youthful experience in the battle of the Ia Drang.

Headed the `Hard Corps'

Ia Drang was the Army's first major battle in Vietnam, and one of its bloodiest. The battle claimed 305 American lives, soldiers who died in fierce combat with a North Vietnamese regiment that also took heavy losses. Rescorla commanded 1st Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, and was almost worshipped by his soldiers, who called themselves the "Hard Corps" after his nickname. But his courage and infectious optimism resonated beyond those under his immediate command.

Payne remembers Rescorla "leaping off [a] chopper and strutting into our small very beat-up group of survivors" during the night. After placing his men to fill the gaps in Payne's line and pausing to speak quietly to each soldier, he walked toward Payne.

"I was so amazed to see him walking around because we had all been crawling on our stomachs for eight hours," Payne said. Speaking in a low, confident voice, Rescorla complimented Payne on establishing good fields of fire.

"Then he looked me in the eye and said, `When the sun comes up we are going to kick some ass.' I will never forget his words or the look in his eye. He said it in a confident, matter-of-fact way. He was not boasting, it was resolve."

Rescorla earned a Silver Star for his actions at Ia Drang, and, in Moore's words, "went on to establish himself as a living legend in the 7th Cav in Vietnam."

But behind the swagger and the self-confidence, Rescorla hid a keen intellect, according to Dan Hill, a former captain who met Rescorla at basic and remained his best friend. This fine mind served Rescorla well when he left the Army in the late 1960s and put himself through college and law school, before going on to establish himself as a specialist in security for financial firms.

His will to live came to the fore again three years ago, when he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and given six months to live. Against the odds, he beat the disease into remission.

As Morgan Stanley's security chief, Rescorla brought his belief in the "seven Ps" - proper prior planning and preparation prevents poor performance - to bear, to the immense good fortune of his co-workers.

Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the south tower, with about 2,700 employees in 20 floors. But incredibly, only six, including Rescorla and two security folks who worked for him, still are missing. Everyone else made it out alive.

Obsessed with preparation

Those survivors owe their lives in no small part to Rescorla's quick thinking at a time of crisis, and his obsession with being prepared for every eventuality.

"He'd take every possible contingency that could happen, and he'd come up with a plan for it," Hill said. When the first plane hit the north tower, the Port Authority told workers in the south tower to stay put. But Rescorla disagreed and immediately executed an evacuation plan he had made the employees rehearse twice a year.

The plan worked, and when the second plane hit the south tower, almost all Morgan Stanley employees were on their way to safety. So was Rescorla, who made it to the ground floor, singing "God Bless America" to calm the nerves of the evacuees.

But he insisted on going back upstairs to check for anyone left behind. He was probably still climbing when the building collapsed.

His wife, Susan, and his two children likely will remember Rick Rescorla for his generosity of spirit and his dry English wit.

But middle-aged veterans of a hellish battle long ago in the sun and the elephant grass are more likely to remember Rick Rescorla as Bill Lund, another second lieutenant in that battle, does: "This was the bravest man I ever knew."