We Are Soldiers Still
HarperCollins. A journey back to the valley of the Ia Drang, and the battlegrounds at LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany with Lt. Gen. Hall Moore, war correspondent Joe Galloway and other Ia Drang vets such as my friend, combat infantryman and author Larry Gwin.
My review copy arrived during the RNC, a busy time, and I just cracked it tonight. Galloway and Moore used elements from my reporting of my friend John Eade’s previously little-known story, a version of which appears at this link, “I Am Going To Die Well,” and it is a thrill and an honor to get a nod for that. My association with Eade and Gwin has been a tremendous privilege, and Galloway, though our contacts have been brief, was a friend who knew the deal and said the right things when I needed that five years ago on my return from Iraq. Not least about the importance of opening yourself to your emotions.
More when I have a chance to read this, but for now, one haunting passage that caught my eye:
It is only a couple of miles from X-Ray to Albany but we found a world of difference. The deep peace we found at X-Ray was not to be found at Albany. It was eerie and haunted by the spirits of the soldiers who died in that grass and jungle, separated from each other. Here lay wounded Americans, intermingled with wounded North Vietnamese, and only the enemy moved among them in the darkness collecting theirs and killing ours. That and the American artillery shells and napalm canisters that killed friendly and enemy alike. In the tropical heat we shuddered with cold chills and heard faint echoes of men screaming in pain and begging for mercy in thier last seconds on earth.
Gwin said, “What I saw at Albany set me back. The place is evil — dank with jungle rot and an inch of water over the landing zone. I passed foxholes, still there, their square forms filled with putrescent and stagnant water. Shell holes and bomb craters were clearly visible and some of the trees were still blackened by the napalm attacks.”
Gwin’s book, “Baptism,” is an excellent companion to the original Moore/Galloway collaboration, “We Were Soldiers Once … And Young.” It puts you in the skin of one soldier, walking through what will be familiar events and terrain if you have read “We Were Soldiers,” with considerably more about 7th Cav’s reconstitution in the field and very active year in Vietnam. Gwin is now writing his own sequel about returning to life in the world, a process that doesn’t end neatly at any point in one’s life.
I’ll go out on a limb, the Moore/Galloway book as yet unread, the new Gwin book still in the pipeline, and recommend them for the many combat veterans of today’s wars. There is value in knowing others have gone down this road, and learning from what they have to say about it.
Related, to varying degrees:
On Dying and Continuing to be Alive
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:20 pm on Friday, September 5, 2008
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