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. Many did a second tour and others left the service and returned home to their families. On Nov. 14, 1965, soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, loaded onto helicopters and flew to a remote patch of ground in the Ia Drang Valley of South Vietnams central highlands. The Battle of Ia Drang was the first major engagement during the Vietnam War, between members of the U.S. Army and the Peoples Army of North Vietnam. Death in the Ia Drang Valley, November 13-18, 1965 By Private 1st Class Jack P. Smith The 1st Battalion had been fighting continuously for three or four days, and I had never seen such filthy troops. He became a legend in the unit for his behavior in combat, and his face became an American icon when a young reporter named Peter Arnett snapped his photo. Most of the planes touched down between midnight and six A.M., but George Nye was always there, rain or shine. After a second career as a consultant to defense industries on the West Coast, he retired again and lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Libby. I ripped off his shirt and there it was: a groove to the right of his spine. Westmoreland, a veteran of World War II in Europe, declared Ia Drang a victory because the North Vietnamese were driven from the field after suffering major casualties. Today he lives in Riverside, Rhode Island, is in the photo business, and is active in veterans affairs. YOUNG, James, fifty-one, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry in LZ Albany, made it home to the family farm outside Keysville, Missouri, on Christmas Eve, 1965, with an Army discharge in his pocket and a quarter-size hole in the side of his skull. NADAL, Ramon A. Many did a second tour and others left the service and returned home to their families. At the end of a year only fifteen of the original contingent were still there, Gwin included. Both later were awarded the Medal of Honor, our nations highest award for heroism in combat. He retired a colonel in 1981, and is vice president of human resources for a large corporation in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is a consultant to industries seeking defense business. GEOGHEGAN, Camille, twenty-seven, daughter of Lieutenant John Lance (Jack) Geoghegan, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, killed in action November 15, 1965, is a human resources specialist at a company in McLean, Virginia. He and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Roswell, New Mexico, where they run an antiques shop. PARKER, Neal G., a Naval Academy graduate who transferred to the U.S. Army and was a Huey pilot in Bravo Company 229th in the Ia Drang, retired a colonel after thirty years service. (Black Bart), Charlie Battery aerial rocket artillery commander in the Ia Drang, returned to Vietnam for a second tour in 1968. He wanted to ensure the memories of those who died live on, in particular that of his best friend, Lt. Don Cornett. He died less than 100 yards from where his best friend lay wounded. I still have my leg, and I can walk on it. On November 14, 1965, Captain Ed Freeman made repeated flights into the Ia Drang Valley under intense fire to bring in supplies and evacuate the wounded. He is senior Army adviser to the 79th Army Reserve Command in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. "The way it was presented, at least from my perspective, was we were making an administrative move to be airlifted out so we wouldn't be in the way of the bombers.". After leaving the Army, Braveboy worked as a roofer. After years of advising the South Vietnamese against the communist North, and months of chasing black-clad guerrillas, a large. Lt. Don Cornett, along with 154 troopers from 2/7 Cav, were killed in the Ia Drang Valley at a small clearing known as Landing Zone Albany. His hands were burned in the escape from the wreckage, and it was doubted that he would ever fly again. They have two grown children. He is a colonel and the provost marshal of the U.S. Army Forces Command (Forscom) in Atlanta, Georgia. Diduryk is buried at the Fort Benning cemetery; his widow, Delores, lives in Jacksonville, Florida. (U.S. Army). He retired from the battlefield only after all possible service had been rendered to the infantry battalion. He wanted the Gulf veterans to have the welcome-home that none of the Vietnam veterans got. . He won a National Magazine Award for his October 29, 1990, cover article on the Ia Drang battles. Ia Drang Valley, Battle of the (1965). BEAN, Roger, fifty-two, Huey pilot who was wounded in LZ X-Ray, was wounded again in early 1966 in the Bong Son campaign. Lawrence and Cornett were roommates at Infantry Officer Basic School, roommates in jump school and on the ship together that brought them to Vietnam. Lawrence, even in his paralyzed state, was able to give some direction to his company. Lawrence's story is one that he has told so often to so many people that it is fluid and impactful without being rehearsed. Before the Battle of la Drang was over, 305 Americans had been killed along with an estimated 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. Feb 25, 2017. He retired in August 1990, and now lives in Peekskill, New York. 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. Later, after he was evacuated the doctors thought his spine was severed, but discovered later that he had a severely bruised spine from the force of the bullets whipping his head back. 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 American death toll was a shock to President Lyndon Johnson, who immediately dispatched Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to Saigon to find out what was going on. For information, the 1st Air Cavalry arrived in the fall of 1965, about the same time I did as a member of the 1stInfantry Division. 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. Savage and the 22-year-old medic, Sp5. The battle was part of a campaign for control of the strategic central highlands, which divided South Vietnam north to south. They have two grown children and one still at home. LAVENDER, David A. 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. 'Can't you see I'm dying?' Throughout the day, he changed helicopters after some were so badly damaged to stay in the air. He left active duty in 1967, but continued in the Army Reserves until his retirement in 1990 as a colonel. In January 1991, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf summoned the reporter to his headquarters in Saudi Arabia and said: Im sending you to the commander out here who is most like General Hal Moore, and the division which has the most challenging and dangerous mission in my battle plan. Galloway rode with then-Major General Barry McCaffrey and the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) on a hair-raising tank charge through the western Iraq desert to the Euphrates River valley. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1985; on November 26, 1987, he was killed in the crash of a private plane in Bakersfield, California. He is brutally honest, even with his actions as a leader. He returned to serve two more tours in Vietnamone with the Special Forces, one with an intelligence agency. As the fighting around Landing Zone X-Ray subsided, McDades 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was ordered to move cross-country to Landing Zone Albany, where it was to be picked up by helicopter and moved to a new location. "I always end my talk with telling my audience 'When people go to the wall [Vietnam Veterans Memorial], they see 58,000 names. We were taking an administrative break, guys were taking off their packs and lighting cigarettes and the enemy was less than 100 yards on our right flank and deploying and we couldn't see 'em or hear 'em," he said. 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. Now a senior writer for U.S. News, Galloway recently had one last combat tour. Today he is a city bus driver in Houston, Texas. For Lawrence, telling the story of LZ Albany is not only a way to keep the memory of those who died alive, but also a way to educate others. He joined IBM as a salesman in Austin, Texas, and spent twenty years with them, rising to the post of Midwestern regional manager. They never did. Read More Landing Zone Xray Lead elements of the under strength 450 man 1st Bn, 7th Cavalry air assault into a small clearing in scrub jungle below the 2300 foot Chu Pong Massif. TIFFT, Richard P., Pathfinder team leader in LZ X-Ray, later served as commander of the Golden Knights, the Armys parachute team. On his chest he wore the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and five Purple Hearts. Despite their efforts, the North Vietnamese retake the position soon after. RESCORLA, Cyril R. (Rick), fifty-three, platoon leader, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, completed a full tour with Bravo Company in Vietnam and did another year teaching at Officer Candidate School in the States. The 430 troops of the 1st Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division loaded into helicopters and were dropped into the Ia Drang valley. Don Cornett had a wife and a son, a mother and a father and two sisters. He died . The battalion commander had ordered his command helicopter to land and check out a North Vietnamese soldier killed by the door gunner. He knew he had to get out of the clearing, so he started pulling himself along the ground using only his arms, when someone grabbed him and dragged him the rest of the way into the trees. This is the tale of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in 1965. NYE, George (China Joe), demolition-team leader, 8th Engineers, attached to the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in Landing Zone X-Ray, died of an apparent heart attack at age fifty-one on December 8, 1991, at his home in Bangor, Maine. Knowles has served in the New Mexico legislature since 1982. Rozanski returned to the Ia Drang five times on various intelligence missions and described the place as a cemetery. He was retired, disabled, as a major in the mid-1970s. Some of the survivors broke into tears of relief. Bob Edwards saying that these were the stripes Paolone earned at LZ X-Ray but never got. George found solace in hiking the Maine woods, shooting nothing more deadly than a 35mm camera. We lived in tents. Each side realized it was fighting a war of attrition. Memoirs and histories written after the event capture it . Edwards is the acting borough manager of Dublin, Pennsylvania; he and his wife, Nancy, live in nearby New Hope. A Broken Arrow was declared over the radio by the Battalion Forward Air Controller, which meant that an American unit was in imminent danger of being overrun. He has written a book about his experiences and has spoken more than 20 times to veterans organizations, junior high and high school students, and civic groups. For a number of years he was a country-and-western band leader and disc jockey. Please try again later. , Florida original contingent were still there, Gwin included direction to his company Reserve... 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