We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (57 page)

Even more devastating to the morale and effectiveness of every American unit in combat was the six-month limit on battalion and brigade command.

This was ticket-punching: A career officer had to have troop-command time for promotion. The six-month rule meant that twice as many officers got that important punch. It also meant that at just about the time when a commander learned the terrain and the troops and the tricks and got good at the job--if he was going to get good--he was gone. The soldiers paid the price.

In late June 1966, my turn was up as commander of the 3rd Brigade. When my replacement, a colonel straight out of the Pentagon, showed up to take over, my brigade was in the field, fighting near Dong Tre. It would have been criminal, in those circumstances, to relinquish command to a man who was still pissing Stateside water, and I flatly refused to do so.

The change of command was delayed ten days, until the fight was over. A month later, on August 8, 1966, my replacement sent Alpha Company, 1 st Battalion, 7th Cavalry back into the Ia Drang Valley by itself, and twenty-five men were killed in one terrible day.

I had hoped that my next assignment would be to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, where I could pass along what I had learned in Vietnam to the young officers who were headed for combat. It was not to be. In fact, only one of the hundreds of officers who had gone through airmobile training and a year in the field with the 1 st Cavalry Division was assigned to the Infantry School. I was sent instead to Washington, D. C., where I was told my next job would be on the Latin American desk at the U.S. State Department. Great job for someone whose only foreign languages were French and Norwegian.

In short order, those orders were changed to a one-year assignment to the office of Secretary of Defense Mcnamara's International Security Affairs Directorate, under John Mcnaughton. As half of a two-man Vietnam section, I was primarily charged with putting together "trip books" for the Vietnam visits of Mcnamara and key Defense and State Department officials, and with fielding

"Congressionals," constituent questions and complaints about Vietnam policy passed along by senators and representatives.

For the next year I watched Bob Mcnamara and John Mcnaughton, both brilliant men, go through hell as they struggled unsuccessfully to get a handle on the war and the pacification process in Vietnam. At the end of that year neither of them was any closer to finding or creating such a handle. An office wit summed up what was happening in Vietnam sadly and succinctly: "Although we have redoubled our efforts, we have lost sight of our objective."

What, then, had we learned with our sacrifices in the Ia Drang Valley?

We had learned something about fighting the North Vietnamese regulars--and something important about ourselves. We could stand against the finest light infantry troops in the world and hold our ground. General Westmoreland thought he had found the answer to the question of how to win this war: He would trade one American life for ten or eleven or twelve North Vietnamese lives, day after day, until Ho Chi Minh cried uncle. Westmoreland would learn, too late, that he was wrong; that the American people didn't see a kill ratio of 10-1 or even 20-1 as any kind of bargain. But we had validated both the principle and the practice of airmobile warfare. A million American soldiers would ride to battle in Huey helicopters in the next eight years, and the familiar "whup, whup, whup" of their rotors would be the enduring soundtrack of this war.

Finally--even though it took ten years, cost the lives of 58,000 young Americans and inflicted humiliating defeat on a nation that had never before lost a war--some of us learned that Clausewitz had it right 150 years earlier when he wrote these words:

"No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it."

EPILOGUE We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother.

--Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3

It's easy to forget the numbers, but how can we forget the faces, the voices, the cries of young men dying before their time? Between October 23 and November 26, 1965, a total of 305 young American soldiers were killed in combat in the Pleiku campaign. Their names march down the lines inscribed on Panel 3-East of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, each one a national treasure, each one a national tragedy. Some tell a story by their very juxtaposition: Lieutenant John Lance Geoghegan's name is frozen in the black granite beside that of PFC Willie F. Godboldt, the man he died trying to save. What would they have become, all of them, if they had been allowed to serve their country by their lives, instead of by their deaths? N Yes, there is an organization, the Ia Drang Alumni, our own Band of Brothers, and we have a dinner before Veteran's Day in Washington every November and a lunch wherever the 1 st Cavalry Division Association holds its re Epilogue 445

union each summer, for we find pleasure and healing in the company of the friends and comrades of our youth.

We begin by calling the roll, first reading the names of all those who fell and those who have joined them since. Then, one by one, we stand to call out our own names, ranks, military occupations, companies and battalions, and where we fought in the valley. There are no dues--those were paid in blood long ago--and no officers. Two ex-sergeants, Bill Kreischer of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry and John Setelin of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, run the organization out of their hip pockets as a labor of love.

Each year one or another stands before us and tells what he remembers of the men on his right and on his left and what they saw and did in the valley. Only now do we begin to understand why old soldiers have always gathered to murmur among themselves of days gone by. Those were the days, my friend.

And what of the others, our old and former enemies of the 320th 33rd, and 66th People's Army regiments? For them there was no expiration of enlistment, no rotation home at the end of one year. They fought on for ten more years. Death or victory was their term of enlistment, and for most death came first.

Ho Chi Minh's old soldiers and sergeants of these regiments and others of the People's Army do their best to take care of each other, unofficially, of course. On a given evening once a week, or once a month, the men of a particular unit gather at one of the Hanoi coffeehouses that cater to old soldiers, there to talk among themselves, share news and gossip about their friends and families, and, occasionally, to tell a war story of their days in the Ia Drang. Since 1975, the Vietnamese army has worked to recover the remains of almost one million men and women who fell in battle during the American war.

They have been reinterred in war cemeteries that dot the rice paddies, each marked by a low wall and a tall obelisk.

446 Epilogue In the small, closed world of the military, great victories, great defeats, and great sacrifices are never forgotten. They are remembered with battle streamers attached to unit flags. Among the scores of streamers that billow and whirl around the flags of all the battalions of the 1st Cavalry Division there is one deep-blue Presidential Unit Citation streamer that says simply: pleiku province.

Schoolchildren no longer memorize the names and dates of great battles, and perhaps that is good; perhaps that is the first step on the road to a world where wars are no longer necessary. Perhaps. But we remember those days and our comrades, and long after we are gone that long blue streamer will still caress proud flags.

APPENDIX Where Have All the Young Men Gone?

The men, women, and children of this story are America's neighbors, living quiet lives in every corner of the nation they served. They are representative of the more than three million Americans who served the United States of America in its long and bitter war in Vietnam, representative of those who loved one of the more than 58,000 Americans who died in that war. The following is a partial accounting, prepared in 1992 and updated for the paperback edition, of where some of them are and what they have done with their lives:

adams, Russell, fifty-one, machine gunner, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, helps run the family dairy farm on five hundred acres outside Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania. He is partly paralyzed as a result of his terrible wound. Adams and his wife have a three-year-old daughter.

adams, Warren, sixty-two, first sergeant. Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, retired in 1968 as the best-educated command sergeant major in the Army. Assigned to intelligence duty in Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Adams earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Austria in Vienna, a master's degree in history at the University in Innsbruck, and a doctorate of psychology from Munich University--all under an assumed name. He owns a property-management firm in Tampa, Florida.

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. He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and owns and operates a real estate brokerage firm.

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. He worked as a sales executive in the corrugated-box industry and went to school nights to earn his MBA. Alley is general manager of a box factory in Dayton, Tennessee. He and his wife have two college-age children.

barker, Robert L., fifty-five, artillery-battery commander in LZ Falcon, served a second tour in Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division in 1969-1970 and later served a third combat tour. He retired a lieutenant colonel in 1980 with twenty years' service, and is now a plastics-plant manager. He lives in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

bartholomew, Roger J. (Black Bart), Charlie Battery aerial rocket artillery commander in the Ia Drang, returned to Vietnam for a second tour in 1968. On November 27,1968, Lieutenant Colonel Bartholomew was killed in action. He had just turned thirty-six years old.

bean, Roger, fifty-two, Huey pilot who was wounded in LZ X-Ray, was wounded again in early 1966 in the Bong Son campaign. Still on active duty, he is a major general, and is deputy to the Army inspector general.

beck, Bill, forty-nine, assistant machine gunner, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, left the Army in 1966 and went home to his native Steelton, Pennsylvania. He is a free-lance commercial artist in Harrisburg and occasionally turns his hand to fine-art drawings of his war experiences. He and Russell Adams are still best friends.

braveboy, Toby, rifleman, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav, recovered from his wounds and his week-long ordeal alone on the abandoned battlefield at Albany and returned safely to his family in Coward, South Carolina. After leaving the Army, Braveboy worked as a roofer. He was killed in an automobile accident less than ten years later.

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. He and his wife, Louise, live in San Antonio, Texas, and Brown plays a round of golf most days.

bungum, Galen, forty-nine, rifleman in Lieutenant Henry Herrick's Lost Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, left the Army in April 1966 and went home to Hayfield, Minnesota. Bungum operated a 161-acre dairy farm until 1988, when he sold his cows and took a job in town. He still grows soybeans and corn on the farm in his spare time.

cantu, Vincent, fifty-one, mortarman, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, left the Ia Drang battlefield and immediately rotated home for discharge, two weeks late, in December 1965. When he got back to Refugio, Texas, he called on Joe Galloway's parents but mercifully concealed the true circumstances of their meeting on the battlefield in X-Ray. Vince Cantu never went back to his music. Today he is a city bus driver in Houston, Texas. He is married and has a daughter in college and a son in the U.S. Marines. He says he "did a lot of praying" during the Persian Gulf War, when his son, his brother, and his old friend Galloway were all on the battlefield.

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. A Chicago native, Doc Carrara returned home, changed his specialty to pathology. He retired in 1990. He and his wife live in St. Charles, a suburb of Chicago. They have four children and three grandchildren. Carrara says, "I don't dwell on Vietnam, but now and then I hear something or smell something and flash back to those days. 1 have one very vivid memory of the second morning in X-Ray. 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."

cash, John, fifty-six, assistant operations officer in 3rd Brigade Headquarters, later commanded a rifle company in the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry for more than six months in 1966. Cash served a second tour in Vietnam as an adviser to the Royal Thai Army forces. He added a masters degree in Latin American studies to his M.A. in history. He served in both Brazil and El Salvador, was a history instructor at West Point and served in the Center of Military History for a number of years. His last project on active duty was researching and writing a history of the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment during the Korean War. Cash retired from active duty as a colonel in September of 1992 and lives in the Washington, D. C., area.

crandall, Bruce, fifty-nine, who commanded the helicopters in the Ia Drang Valley, returned to Vietnam for a second tour in 1967. In January 1968, over the Bong Son plain, Crandall's Huey was blown out of the sky by an air strike while flying a nap-of-the-earth search for a downed helicopter. Crandall's back was broken; he spent five months in an Army hospital recovering. Crandall won the first Helicopter Heroism Award of the Aviation/Space Writers Association, for two daring nighttime landings under fire to rescue twelve badly wounded troopers from Captain Tony Nadal's Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in Operation Masher-White Wing in January 1966. During his two tours in Vietnam, Crandall flew lead ship on 756 separate missions. He earned his master's degree in public administration in 1976 and retired in 1977 as a lieutenant colonel. He served as city manager of Dunsmuir, California, from 1977 to 1980, when he moved to Mesa, Arizona, where he is the city's manager of public works. He and his wife, Arlene, have three sons--a banker in Sao Paulo, Brazil; a lawyer in Connecticut; and a divinity student in college.