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Topic: Message for Xlarge (Read 1966 times)
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MAD MAC
Full Member
Posts: 103
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Saxib
I tried to E-Mail you. But your E-Mail address in your registration doesn't work. Drop me a line sometime.
My old boss sent me this. I think you should read it. There's also a book that gives some detail into my units role in Somalia. It's called Falcon Brigade by Lawrence Casper. You'll find me there.
Mac - you have to go see this movie.
This is a good read. Go see the movie. It is excellent. Soldiers at their finest. The book is even better.
Honorable soldiers, eternal brothers
The story behind `We were soldiers ...'
Joseph L. Galloway
Joseph L. Galloway is a veteran UPI foreign correspondent and worked for
U.S. News and World Report. He lives in Falls Church, Va
March 10, 2002
If you have fed from a steady diet of Hollywood movies about Vietnam you
probably believe that everyone who wore a uniform in America's long, sad
involvement in war in Vietnam is some sort of a clone of Lt. William
Calley--or that all 3 million of them were drug-crazed killers and rapists
who rampaged across the pastoral landscape. Those movies got it wrong. "We
Were Soldiers" gets it right--ask any Vietnam veteran who has gone to see
the movie.
It is based on a book I wrote with a lifelong friend, retired Lt. Gen. Hal
Moore. It is a book written precisely because we believed that a false
impression of those soldiers had taken root in the country that sent them to
war and, in the end, turned its back on both the war and the warriors.
I did four tours in Vietnam as a war correspondent for United Press
International--1965-66, 1971, 1973 and 1975. In the first three of those
tours I spent most of my time in the field with the troops, and I came to
know and respect them and even love them, though most folks might find the
words "war" and "love" in the same sentence unsettling, if not odd.
In fact, I am far more comfortable in the company of those once-young
soldiers today than with any other group except my own family. They are my
comrades-in-arms, the best friends of my life, and if ever I were to
shout "help!" they would stampede to my aid in a heartbeat.
They come from all walks of life; they are black, white, Hispanic, Native
American, Asian; they are fiercely loyal, dead honest, entirely generous of
their time and money. They are my brothers, and they did none of the
things Oliver Stone or Francis Ford Coppola would have you believe all of
them did.
On the worst day of my life, in the middle of the worst battle of the
Vietnam War, in a place called Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley of
Vietnam, I was walking around snapping photographs when I caught a
movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a lanky GI who had jumped out
of a mortar pit and was running, zig-zagging under fire, toward me. He
dived under the little bush I was crouched behind.
"Joe! Joe Galloway! Don't you know me, man? It's Vince Cantu from Refugio,
Texas!"
Reunion under fire--Vince Cantu and I had graduated together from Refugio
High School, Class of '59, 55 boys and girls. We embraced warmly.
He shouted over the din of gunfire. "Joe, you got to get down and stay down!
It's dangerous out here. Men are dying all around."
Vince told me that he had only 10 days left on his tour of duty as a
draftee soldier in the 1st Battalion 7th U.S. Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division
(Airmobile). "If I live through this I will be home in Refugio for
Christmas," he said.
I asked Vince to please visit my mom and dad, but not tell them too much
about where we had met and under what circumstances. I still have an old
photograph from that Christmas visit--Vince wearing one of those black satin
Vietnam jackets, with his daughter on his knee, sitting with my mom and dad
in their living room. Vince Cantu and I are still best friends.
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"Say not I have found the path, say I have found a path."
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MAD MAC
Full Member
Posts: 103
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(I had to break it into three parts due to legth)
When I walked out and got on a Huey helicopter leaving Landing Zone X-Ray,
I left knowing that 80 young Americans had laid down their lives so that I
and others might survive. Another 124 had been terribly wounded and were on
their way to hospitals in Japan or the United States. I left with a sense
of my place among them and an obligation to tell their stories to any who
would listen. I knew that I had been among men of
honor and decency and courage, and anyone who believes otherwise needs to
look in his own heart and weigh himself.
Hal Moore and I began our research for the book, "We Were Soldiers Once . .
and Young," in 1982. It was a 10-year journey to find and ultimately to
bring back together as many of those who fought in LZ X-Ray and LZ
Albany, a battle one day after ours only 3 miles away in which 155 young
Americans died and another 130 were wounded.
We had good addresses for perhaps no more than a dozen veterans, but we
mailed out questionnaires. Late one night a week later my phone rang at home
in Los Angeles. On the other end was Sgt. George Nye, retired and living
very quietly by choice in his home state of Maine.
George began talking, and it was almost stream of consciousness. He had
held it inside him for so long and now someone wanted to know about it. He
described taking his small team of engineer demolitions men into X-Ray to
blow down some trees and clear a safer landing zone for the helicopters.
Then he was talking about Pfc. Jimmy D. Nakayama, one of those engineer
soldiers, and how a misplaced napalm strike engulfed Nakayama in roaring
flames. How he ran into the fire and screamed at another man to grab Jimmy's
feet and help carry him to the aid station. My blood ran cold, and the hair
stood up on the back of my neck. I had been that man on the other end of
Nakayama. I had grabbed his ankles and felt the boots crumble, the skin
peel, and those slick bones in my hands. Again I heard Nakayama's screams.
By then we were both weeping. I knew Nakayama had died a day or two later
in an Army hospital.
Nye told me that Jimmy's wife had given birth to a baby girl the day he
died--and that when Nye returned to base camp at An Khe he found a letter
on his desk. He had encouraged Nakayama to apply for a slot at officer
candidate school. The letter approved that application and contained orders
for Nakayama to return immediately to Ft. Benning, Ga., to enter that
course.
George Nye is gone now. But I want you to know what he did with the last
months of his life. He lived in Bangor, Maine. The year was 1991 and, in
the fall, plane after plane loaded with American soldiers heading home from
the Persian Gulf war stopped there to refuel.
It was their first sight of home. Nye and some other volunteers organized a
welcome at that desolate airport. They provided coffee, snacks and the warm
"Welcome home, soldier" that no one ever offered George and the millions of
other Vietnam veterans. George had gone out to the airport to decorate a
Christmas tree for those soldiers on the day he died.
Shakespeare understood--When we think of ourselves we think Shakespeare,
Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3:
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother."
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"Say not I have found the path, say I have found a path."
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MAD MAC
Full Member
Posts: 103
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Honor and decency and uncommon courage were common among these soldiers and
all the soldiers who served in Vietnam. I think of how they were, on patrol,
moving through jungle or rice paddies. Nervous, on edge, trying to watch
right, left, ahead, behind, all at once. A friend once described it as
something like looking at a tree full of owls. They were alert for sign,
sound or smell of the enemy. They also watched each other closely. At the
first sign of the oppressive heat or exhaustion getting to someone, the two
or three guys around would relieve him of some or all of the heavy burden
that the infantryman bears: 60 or 70 pounds of stuff. Rifle and magazines.
A claymore mine or two. A couple of radio batteries. Cans of C-rations.
Spare socks. Maybe a book. All that rides in the soldier's pack. His
brothers could make it easier for him to keep going. They took care of each
other, because in this situation each other was all they had.
When I would pitch up to spend a day or two or three with such an outfit I
was, at first, an object of some curiosity. Sooner or later a break would be
called and everyone would flop down in the shade, drink some water, break
out a C-ration or a cigarette. The GI next to me would ask, "What you doing
out here?" I would explain that I was a reporter. "You mean you are a
civilian? You don't have to be here?" Yes, I am, and no, I don't.
"Man, they must pay you loads of money to do this." I would explain that,
no, unfortunately I worked for UPI, the cheapest news agency in the world.
"Then you are just plain crazy, man."
Once I was pigeonholed, all was all right. The grunts understood "crazy"
like no one else I ever met. The welcome was warm, friendly and open. I was
probably the only civilian they would ever see in the field; I was a sign
that someone, anyone, outside the Big Green Machine cared how they lived and
how they died. It didn't take very long before I truly did come to care. In
my view, they were the best of their entire generation. When their number
came up in the draft they didn't run and hide in Canada. They didn't turn up
for their physical wearing pantyhose or full of this chemical or that drug
which they hoped would fail them. Like their fathers before them they
raised their right hand and took the oath to protect and defend the U.S.
Constitution.
They did their job It is not their fault that the war they were sent to
fight was not one that the political leadership in Washington had any
intention of winning. It is not their fault that 58,200 of them died, their
lives squandered because Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon could
not figure out some decent way to cut our losses and leave the Vietnamese
to sort the matter out among themselves.
First the book and now the movie have come to pass, and I am often asked:
Doesn't this close the loop for you? Doesn't this mean you can rest
easier? The answer is no, I can't. To my dying day I will remember and
honor those who died, some in my arms. I will remember and honor those who
lived and came home carrying memories and scars that only their brothers can
share and understand.
They were the best you had, America, and you turned your back on them.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
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