We Were Soldiers

We Were Soldiers One… And Young is a thrilling novel the recounts the First and Second Battalions of 7th Cavalry Regimen during the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. The events in the book are told by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore the commander of the battalion and Joseph L. Galloway a war journalist. Moore is in charge of two battalions that are some of the first to incorporate helicopters into their tactics. They go into Vietnam under manned due to expiring enlistments; they had to fight a true holocaust of a battle. The beginning of an offensive is one of the most important factors that determines the rate of success or failure one will experience. While on an operation Moore and his battalion were intercepted by Colonel Brown, Brown had some …show more content…
On November 14th, 1965 Moore and his men would commence the assault at X-Ray. They set the touchdown time for 10:30 but with prep fire being delayed, they were forced to push that back. For their current position to the landing zone is an estimated 14 miles. When they got the green light they hastily mounted their helicopters and deployed. while on route to their destination, they could see the 105mm artillery preparatory fire on the LZ. They touched down at 10:48, because they were short on men they would not use the standard operating procedure to secure an LZ they would instead they would keep a large force in the middle while smaller units would scatter in different directions to check the perimeter and when or if one of them hit contact the rest of the other units would follow. One unit under command of Captain Herren that was one of the units searching the perimeter of the LZ found an NVA soldier, after a short interrogation the soldier revealed to them that there were 1,600 NVA soldiers on Chu Pong Mountain. This news shocked Moore for if this was accurate, they were severely out manned with only 200 American troops on the ground at the time. At 12:15 shots were heard near where the prisoner was captured, this kicked off the Battle of Ia Drang. As soon as Moore heard the shots he had his men move to the point …show more content…
Harold Moore does an upstanding job reciting the true atmosphere of war and the men who fought it. Moore gives background to all the significant people he was involved with and that were quintessential in the Battle of Ia Drang, this along with fascinating details makes allows the reader to truly grasp the often grueling and frightening aspects of modern day conflict. Another thing I enjoy about this book is the insight into the planning and the tactics that went into the war. Because Moore was in charge of a whole battalion a large part of his job was planning the movements of his troops, planning missions, organizing offensives and cooperating with other high ranking officers to coordinate with other units. The vivid and harsh descriptions of the jeopardy combat puts into perspective the truly traumatic enormous burdens of stress experienced from the eyes of a soldier, this is something that people who have never had experienced often hearing about but never in a lifetime truly understand: “fear, real fear, hit me. Fear like I had never know before” (Moore 133). All this makes the book extremely interesting to me, hearing these accounts makes me astonished at mans resilience and have given me a sense of awe and admirance to those who have fought and seen these wars. I will admit that I rarely read, the only reason I started reading this book because it is required. That being