The XO was going fast. Ia Drang Valley, Battle of the (1965). She and her husband live in Annandale, Virginia. Moore and his battalion were evacuated the next day, Nov. 17. Simpson County, 2,000 survivors of ia drang valley Vietnamese with the help of artillery Steelton, I never even owned BB! He spent more than 14 hours in the air andcompleted a total of 22 flights, most under intense enemy fire. Of the 500 men present as part of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 155 lost their lives, and just 84 were immediately able to return to active duty. Photo extracted from U.S. Army motion picture footage from November 1965. Throughout the day, he changed helicopters after some were so badly damaged to stay in the air. Meyer and his wife, Carol, live in Arlington, Virginia. The location of the battle, far into the jungle from any roads, meant troops had to be airlifted in. He co-authored the book We Were Soldiers Once And Young with Hal Moore. By Staff. A wounded soldier of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, is attended to by fellow comrades during the fight for LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam. POLEY, Clinton, forty-eight, assistant machine gunner, 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, was discharged from Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, Colorado, early in 1966, and went home to Iowa and the family farm. It was much bigger than what we had seen before against a much more tenacious enemy, Wiest said of the battle. The Tragedy of LZ Albany: Teaching the lessons of a battle lost. "The next morning we were told the B-52s out of Guam were going to bomb the mountains and that we were to move to LZ Albany," Jim said. Temperatures reached 100 degrees, and by the afternoon there was a firestorm battle for survival. Moore, who says he graduated from West Point by the skin of my teeth, was the first Army officer of his class (1945) to achieve one-, two-, and three-star rank. They have a son, who is in college, and a daughter, still in high school. Galen Bungum, left, and Joe F. Mackey, two of the unhurt survivors of Lt. Henry Herrick's Lost Platoon. He retired a major in 1980, after twenty years service. Unlike Viet Cong guerrillas, the northerners were prepared to stand and fight. They resupplied ammunition, water, and supplies, while evacuating the wounded. The battlefield area covered 1,500 square miles of what appeared to be flat rolling terrain dominated by the Chu Pong . He and his wife, Kornelia, live in Columbus, Georgia, where for several years Scott taught military subjects to Junior ROTC in the high schools. 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. The conflict is divided into two engagements: the Battle at Landing Zone (LZ) X-Ray and. The remainder of the 2nd was left waiting in a communication blackout. FREEMAN, Ed (Too Tall to Fly), sixty-five, Bruce Crandalls wingman, retired a major in 1967 after twenty-one years Army service. They have two grown children and one still at home. At the end of a year only fifteen of the original contingent were still there, Gwin included. Army Specialist Four (SP4) Bill Beck was an assistant machine gunner assigned to the 1 st Battalion, 7 th Cavalry Regiment (1/7 Cav), 1 st Cavalry Division on November 14, 1965, when the unit airlifted into Landing Zone (LZ) X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam. PUJALS, Enrique, fifty, platoon leader, Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, woke up on an X-ray table first, then on a C-141 ambulance plane, and finally in Ward One at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. To use this feature, use a newer browser. A system error has occurred. The North Vietnamese forces had succeeded in engaging the U.S. forces in very tight quarters. "The fear factor, when you know someone is within yards of you and is trying to kill you desperately, the fear factor can shut you down. JEMISON, Robert, Jr., sixty-one, platoon sergeant, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, retired as a sergeant first class in 1976, after twenty-four years service. Russian missile barrage knocks out power and water to Ukrainian cities December 16, 2022. His widow, Emma Lee, lives in Austin, Texas. The bullet was still in there. I guess I was an oddball; everyone else that year was going into teaching to avoid the draft, and then there was me. Jeanette and his wife, Sandra, were married five days before he shipped out for Vietnam. The former arrives in Vietnam in November 1965, and, soon after, is tasked with leading his 400 men in an effort to take out the enemy troops who attacked one of the bases in the Ia Drang Valley. He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and owns and operates a real estate brokerage firm. 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. This is the tale of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in 1965. He lives in Vicksburg, Mississippi. P.O. They were unaware that two battalions of fresh PAVN soldiers had been camped out along the Ia Drang River on the other side of the landing zone. Found more than one record for entered Email, You need to confirm this account before you can sign in. The airstrike broke the North Vietnamese siege and enabled reinforcements to reach the LZ. KINNARD, Harry W. O., seventy-seven, former commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, retired from the Army as a lieutenant general in 1969. Lt. Don Cornett along with 154 Troopers from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment were killed in the Ia Drang Valley, Nov. 17, 1965, at a small clearing known as Landing Zone Albany. Many did a second tour and others left the service and returned home to their families. LZ Albany is essentially two clearings with a large copse of trees in the middle. Since August 1990, he has been the dean of students and basketball coach at St. Mary Rynken Catholic High School in Leonardtown, Maryland, his hometown. By the next morning, only eight were left standing . The communist threat to the central highlands subsided. His last project on active duty was researching and writing a history of the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment during the Korean War. ROZANSKI, Gordon P. (Rosie), fifty-four, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry S-4 in the Ia Drang, was wounded in both arms, both legs, and the stomach in the Bong Son campaign in early 1966. Enlisted men may scoff at officers back in the billets but when the fighting begins, the men automatically become dependent upon them. JEKEL, Alex (Pop), seventy, Huey pilot in X-Ray and Albany, retired in the late 1960s as a chief warrant officer-4. Moore commanded the 7th Infantry Division in Korea, was commanding general at Fort Ord, California, and then was the Armys deputy Chief of Staff for personnel. Don Cornett had a wife and a son, a mother and a father and two sisters. Now I felt terribly alone. Today he lives in Riverside, Rhode Island, is in the photo business, and is active in veterans affairs. To me that seems proper, and just, and so right.. He served as city manager of Dunsmuir, California, from 1977 to 1980, when he moved to Mesa, Arizona, where he is the citys manager of public works. Battalions would use helicopters to be transferred in and out as artillery support came in from above. Crandall continued to fly into and out of the landing zone throughout the day and into the evening. He and his wife, Martha, have four children. Clinton Poley was an assistant machine gunner, who said they landed in grass that was 5 feet high and didnt know where the other troops were. Since then he has taught industrial arts, electronics, and mathematics, has flown for the U.S. Forest Service, and for a time was a crop duster pilot. "The main point that I try to get across when I speak to Soldiers, and this is what saved me, is the training," he said. The instructor of that class, Colonel John F. Jeszensky (ret. His last known address was Miami, Florida. Rescorla kept the battered French Army bugle he captured on the field at Albany; in 1991 he turned it over to the Ia Drang Alumni for use in memorial ceremonies. The Ia Drang Scholarship Fund was founded in 1994 by LTG (Ret) Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway from earnings on their book We Were Soldiers Once-And Young. A miserly, ungrateful Veterans Administration ruled that Shadden was only thirty percent disabled. 'The torture stopped': 1969 brought temporary changes to infamous Hanoi Hilton, Patriotism or protest? Poley, a bachelor, lives alone on his farm outside Ackley, Iowa, and in a 1990 letter explained himself far better than we could: Some might ask why havent I forgotten about Vietnam after all these years. Rosemary Giles is a history content writer with Hive Media. WINTER, Pete, fifty-one, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was discharged in December 1965. Being the firstbig units there, we had to make our own camp, no showers for months, World War II C rations to eat, no toilets, just a hole dug in the ground, etc. He studied to be a tool-and-die machinist and worked at that job for several years until the strain of long hours standing on his bad leg severely affected his hip and back. A total of 305 soldiers died. 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 Nadals Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in Operation Masher-White Wing in January 1966. A native of Mendenhall, Mississippi, Kennedy was thirty-one years old at the time of his death. They saved some 70 soldiers. When someone shook me and tried to get me moving I was actually offended. The Troopers of 2/7 Cav relieved their sister unit, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, on Nov. 16, following 1/7 Cav's three day battle with the People's Army of Vietnam near the base of the Chu Pong Massif. MARUHNICH, John, sixty-two, mortar sergeant, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in LZ X-Ray, retired a sergeant first class in 1974 with twenty-four years service. The battalion commander had ordered his command helicopter to land and check out a North Vietnamese soldier killed by the door gunner. He was presented with the Medal of Honor on December 19, 1966, and three years later volunteered for a second tour of duty in Vietnam. In the first major engagement of the war between regular U.S. and North Vietnamese forces, elements of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fight a pitched battle with Communist main . The largely [North Vietnamese Army] units we ran into, they were interested in staying and fighting.. Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Harold Moore led the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, against numerically superior elements of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) led by General Chu Huy Man (Builder et al., 1999). It was his first real combat; first, he got a round to the side of his neck. 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. Major Bruce Crandall made over 20 flights into intense enemy fire during a battle in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, in November 1965, evacuating 70 wounded and delivering ammunition. He is president of the Army Relief Fund and a trustee of the Association of Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy. After a North Vietnamese strike against the Special Forces camp at Plei Me, American forces deployed in an effort to destroy the attackers. DUNCAN, Ken, fifty-three, executive officer of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, left the Army in August 1966, and returned to his hometown of Thomaston, Georgia, where he works with a textile-manufacturing company. Outnumbered when they arrive, the men are forced to fight for their lives while eliminating the 4,000-strong North Vietnamese force. Very difficult. He shares this message with the groups he speaks to, but being able to impart some wisdom and knowledge from his experiences to Soldiers is special to him, because for him it is an opportunity to maybe bring a Soldier home safely. Most of the planes touched down between midnight and six A.M., but George Nye was always there, rain or shine. For him, war is something that will always be a necessity as long as there is evil in the world, but it is something that is not to be glorified or desired. On his next flight, three soldiers on his helicopter were killed and three were wounded. UH-1 aircraft of the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion carry wounded 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry soldiers away during the fight for LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam. For the next agonizing 26 hours, that small band of Americans was trapped by a ring of hundreds of enemy fighters determined to kill them all. After the Ia Drang, Nye finished his tour with the 8th Engineers and the 1st Cav and volunteered for three more tours in combat with the 5th Special Forces Group. Shortly after the battalion set out, the North Vietnamese sprang a massive ambush. The "Lost Platoon," led by Lt. Henry T. Herrick, became separated from the rest of Lt. Col. Harold G. "Hal" Moore's battalion at the start of the battle of Ia Drang on Nov. 14, 1965. NADAL, Ramon A. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Cash retired from active duty as a colonel in September of 1992 and lives in the Washington, D.C., area. Their mission was to find and kill the enemy. He and his wife, Ann, live in Lilburn, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. from around the world. They have a son and two daughters. It was the first major battle of the Vietnam War, and Lawrence and . Luckily for him, not a single shot he received hit any vital organs. Fighting was so intense that a battalion commander, Lt. Col. Hal Moore, reported finding a dead American with his hands at the throat of a dead North Vietnamese soldier. It was his positive decision to do something that reinforced my own will to go on.". Although the fighting had ended, the Battle of Ia Drang didnt officially conclude until the next day, as it took two days to collect the bodies. Mindful of the effects of propaganda, each side declared victory. Lt. Col. Harold G. Moore, a no-nonsense West Pointer, was the commander of the . He remained with the medical platoon in Vietnam until July 1966. Major Bruce P. Crandall's UH-1D helicopter climbs skyward after discharging a load of infantrymen on a search and destroy mission. Sign up to receive a daily email of today's top military news stories from Stars and Stripes and top news outlets One of the survivors recalls how it was - the blood, the agony, and the fear. He is a master gunsmith and runs his own business repairing and selling weapons. He was 92 years old. MICELI, Carmen, forty-eight, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry at LZ X-Ray, completed a full tour in Vietnam and left the Army in September 1966. 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. Box 159 Lawrence and Cornett were roommates at Infantry Officer Basic School, roommates in jump school and on the ship together that brought them to Vietnam. Linda Carole Mustion has not added any memorials to this virtual cemetery. "Back then Stars and Stripes would carry the casualty reports and I had a red pen and started checking off the names of guys I knew who were listed as KIA. I couldnt grasp it., More from us: Val Kilmer Accidentally Landed Matthew Modine the Starring Role in Full Metal Jacket. Little did Beck and his companions know they were about to make history in America's first large scale battle of the Vietnam War. Privacy Policy His son is a staff sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division and a veteran of both the Panama invasion and the Persian Gulf War. Photo extracted from U.S. Army motion picture footage from November 1965. Florence County, I didn't do as I should have.". After several routine lifts into the area, https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/857/ELIAS-ALVAREZ-BUZO/, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK63b6Cn53unPuhknan6Y4fJwl-F5v14o, https://www.vvmf.org/The-Wall-That-Heals/, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK63b6Cn53unMMj-yZYEch0RuYy1YN1zl, https://vvmf.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/he-spent-14-hours-in-the-air-rescuing-wounded-in-the-ia-drang-valley/, https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/vietnam-stories/1965/ia-drang-valley-where-the-us-truly-went-to-war-1.376662, https://www.facebook.com/VietnamVeteransMemorialFund/videos/2239219906358006/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLyBazkpUFQ, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx1rzDNcFmE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKtWX9TDFYc, https://www.military.com/video/operations-and-strategy/vietnam-war/the-battle-of-la-drang/2071462322001, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIAEcZ29aG4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdDYNI7V0co, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7-U0FBiYUU, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/battle-la-drang-valley, https://whut.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/c27a31b7-14fc-4c5f-804e-168fbb24f5ed/plei-mei-and-the-ia-drang-valley-clip-the-vietnam-war/, VVMF Battle of the Ia Drang Valley Interviews , VVMF Daily Virtual Reading of the Names and Information about the In Person Reading of the Names . Lawrence, even in his paralyzed state, was able to give some direction to his company. MOORE, H. G. (Hal), now seventy, commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang and served six more months in Vietnam, commanding the 3rd Brigade. Lefebvre earned graduate degrees in secondary school administration and public administration. He married in 1981 and is the father of four daughters: an eight-year-old, a five-year-old, and infant twins. Freeman reconstituted the unit and led it back up Pork Chop. Jemison works part-time as a security guard in Columbus, Georgia, and he says: Each night I go back to Vietnam to fight that same battle, over and over.. God rest you, George. He left the Army in October 1966, and went home to his native Ohio, where he works as a carpenter. He didn't know that he was the one in charge at that time. Becoming a Find a Grave member is fast, easy and FREE. He is married and has a daughter in college and a son in the U.S. Marines. Search above to list available cemeteries. I was standing back there in the column and the column was stopped. The fighting continued for three hours. 4 Oscar E . Some of the survivors broke into tears of relief. The vision of VVMF is to ensure a society in which all who have served and sacrificed in our nation's Armed Forces are properly honored and receive the recognition they justly deserve. . Photo Credit: Wikipedia; Henry Toro Herrick was red-haired, five foot ten, twenty-four years old, and the son of an astronomy professor at UCLA. Each side realized it was fighting a war of attrition. It is based on the Battle for Landing Zone X-Ray, part of the Battle of Ia Drang, the first major battle of the Vietnam War. "They (the PAVN) were everywhere on our right flank, even in the trees. Before the Battle of la Drang was over, 305 Americans had been killed along with an estimated 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. Army vet Jimi Hendrix had the 'most electrifying moment' at Woodstock, Hamburger Hill: For war-weary Americans, 10-day battle defined futility of Vietnam War, Nixon struggles to achieve peace with honor and end unpopular Vietnam War, Marines shut down elite scout sniper platoons in favor of all-weather, info-gathering units, Navy gives leaders mental health playbook to help troubled sailors, Cadets at the service academies can now have children while attending school, Military, VA provide troops, vets more gun safety options to help reduce suicides, Pentagon tells service members to stop displaying giant US flags at major events, K-Town Now features the latest news from the Kaiserslautern Military Community. , 305 Americans had been killed along with an estimated 2,000 North Army... C ) 3 nonprofit organization Colonel in September of 1992 and lives in Austin, Texas Relief Fund a! Battle of the Army in October 1966, and a trustee of the planes touched down between midnight and A.M.... 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