cover image We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam

We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam

Harold G. Moore, General Ha Moore. Random House, $30 (432pp) ISBN 978-0-679-41158-1

On Nov. 14, 1965, the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lt. Col. Moore and accompanied by UPI reporter Galloway, helicoptered into Vietnam's remote Ia Drang Valley and found itself surrounded by a numerically superior force of North Vietnamese regulars. Moore and Galloway here offer a detailed account, based on interviews with participants and on their own recollections, of what happened during the four-day battle. Much more than a conventional battle study, the book is a frank record of the emotional reactions of the GIs to the terror and horror of this violent and bloody encounter. Both sides claimed victory, the U.S. calling it a validation of the newly developed doctrine of airmobile warfare. Supplemented with maps, the memoir is a vivid re-creation of the first major ground battle of the Vietnam War. Photos. (Nov.)