Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young (la Drang-The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam)
By: Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
Today, on Veterans’ Day, after starting and stopping this book several years ago, it is finally completed and being reviewed. This is a harsh story for soldiers enlisted or drafted during Vietnam. It is harder for families that lost their sons (over 58,000) and daughters (8 women) in the war.
Moore, a graduate of West Point, was the lieutenant colonel in command of the 1st Battalion at la Drang in what is considered by some as “The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam”.
Joseph Galloway, the co-author, was a civilian journalist and correspondent that accompanied the Battalion at la Drang.
Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway recount the battle of the 7th Calvary Regiment at the Battle of la Drang in 1965. Moore was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for valor and Galloway was the only civilian ever awarded a Bronze Star for combat valor for carrying a wounded soldier back to safety during the la Drang battle in Vietnam.
Three things stand out to this reviewer of Moore’s and Galloway’s explanation of America’s war in Vietnam. One is the fellowship of soldiers that comes from a common threat to their lives. Two is Moore’s observation that there were not enough medics in Vietnam in 1965, and three, the mishandling of family notification of lost soldiers in the early years of the war. Two and three were presumably corrected in later years.
In 1966, as a former enlisted medic who asked to go to Vietnam and was thankfully discouraged, the idea that there were not enough medics is appalling. Moore and Galloway tell of families in 1965 being notified of the death of those who died in la Drang by taxi drivers who deliver a letter explaining their sons or daughters were killed in Vietnam. There was no additional or personal service given to families notified of their son’s or daughter’s deaths until later in the war.
The story of la Drang shows how all wars are crimes against humanity.
Use of napalm in Vietnam.
There are many inferences one may draw from “We Were Soldiers Once…” but Moore and Galloway write about one battle in the early years of Vietnam’s escalation that foretells that war’s futility. What about today’s battles in Ukraine and Palestine. What do those early battles foretell?
It is disturbing to look back on what happened in the early years of America’s Vietnam war. There are too many mistakes and battle tragedies to be clearly understood. Yesterday it was Vietnam. Today it is the Ukraine-Russian and Palestine-Israel wars. At their ends, one doubts there will be winners but is assured there will be losers.
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