The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Lt. Col. Harold G.(Hal) Moore - Sep. 6th, 2003

Army Magazine ^ | November 2002 | Col. Cole C. Kingseed, U.S. Army retired

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

God Bless America
...................................................................................... ...........................................

.

U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues

Where Duty, Honor and Country
are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.

.

.

Our Mission:

The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans.

In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support.

The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer.

If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions.

We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.

To read previous Foxhole threads or
to add the Foxhole to your sidebar,
click on the books below.

.

.

.

Lt. Col. Harold G.(Hal) Moore
(1922 - *)

.

Beyond the Ia Drang Valley

"The will to win, the will to survive, they endure. They are more important than the events that occasion them." -- Vince Lombardi

In his novel of the Battle of Thermopylae, author Steven Pressfield describes a scene in which Dienekes, a Spartan officer, prepares his men for a battle against a numerically superior army of Persians. Watching Dienekes rally and tend to his men, the narrator identifies the essential role of an officer in combat: to prevent those under his command, at all stages of battle -- before, during and after -- from becoming so overcome by terror or anger that emotion usurps dominion of the mind. "To fire their valor when it flagged and rein in their fury when it threatened to take them out of hand" -- that was Dienekes’ job.


COLONEL MOORE AND ENEMY CASUALTY

Two and a half millennia later, a modern Spartan displayed similar attributes of self-restraint and self-composure when Lt. Col. Harold G. (Hal) Moore led the men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry into the Ia Drang Valley in the Republic of Vietnam in November 1965. Like Dienekes before him, Moore bequeathed a legacy of raw courage and inspirational leadership in war’s darkest crucible. By his own admission, Moore is not a hero, but to his men and to a generation of future officers whom he addressed at the U.S. Military Academy, he is the penultimate battle captain. When actor Mel Gibson and his entourage visited West Point in the spring of 2002 to launch the premier of his movie "We Were Soldiers," the greatest applause was reserved not for Gibson, but for Moore, who quietly slipped away unnoticed during the film’s battle scenes. Not surprisingly, in a recent survey conducted following one of his visits, the majority of cadets identified Moore as the most inspirational officer in their cadet experience.

To a Long Gray Line accustomed to visits by the Army’s most distinguished leaders, why does Moore stand out? The true essence of his popularity within the Corps of Cadets is not limited to his command of American troops in the first pitched battle in the Vietnam War between the U.S. Army and the North Vietnamese Army. Scores of commanders have conducted similar battles and achieved like success. What differentiates Moore from his fellow warriors is his message concerning preparation for battlefield leadership and his own philosophy on the conduct of a leader in battle.

Hal Moore’s road to his status as a cadet icon began in the hills of Kentucky in a small town called Bardstown. Born on February 13, 1922, Moore matriculated to West Point by a circuitous path. Unable to secure an appointment before his graduation from high school, Moore left home in February 1940 and traveled to Washington, D.C., where he hoped his chances to secure a congressional appointment would be enhanced. He completed high school at night and attended George Washington University in the evenings for two years. When Congress doubled the size of the Corps of Cadets in 1942 to meet wartime commitments, Moore finally obtained his appointment from a Georgia congressman. The entire process reinforced Moore’s belief that the first person you must learn to lead is yourself. Set lofty goals and persist until you achieve them.


Lt. Col. Moore and Sgt-Maj. Plumley

Never the best student in the mathematical sciences, Moore struggled, taking refuge in religious activities that further honed his character. His greatest joy in Beast Barracks was firing Expert on the M-1 rifle with the top score in the company. His academic pursuits proved more difficult. In his own words, his first semester at West Point was "an academic trip from hell." Moments of quiet meditation in the Catholic chapel and long hours of study finally paid dividends. As cited in West Point’s yearbook, Hal Moore graduated in 1945 under the curtailed curriculum "untouched by the machinations of the T.D. [Tactical Department] and Academic Departments."

Not surprising to anyone who knew him well, Moore selected Infantry as his branch and joined the 187th Airborne Regiment in Sendai, Japan. The summer of 1948 found 1st Lt. Moore at Fort Bragg, N.C., where he jump-tested experimental parachutes and other airborne gear. By his own calculation, he made upwards of 150 test jumps over the course of the next three years. On his first test jump, however, the parachute hung on the tail of a C-46 and Moore was dragged behind the plane, at 110 miles per hour, 1,500 feet above the drop zone before he could cut it off and use his reserve. The ability to take a few seconds to think under such hazardous conditions would become a hallmark of Moore’s character for the remainder of his military career. The years at Bragg also marked Moore as a quiet professional unfazed by challenges.

In June 1952, Moore, now a husband and father of two children, deployed to Korea. Over the course of the next 14 months, he commanded a rifle company and heavy mortar company in the 17th Infantry, 7th Infantry Division, seeing action in the battles of attrition on Pork Chop Hill, T-Bone, Alligator Jaws and Charlie Outpost. By now Moore was a battle-tested commander. When the armistice was signed in July 1953, he reported to the U.S. Military Academy to teach infantry tactics to aspiring officers. The post-Korean War army also brought Moore to the Pentagon, where he served with distinction in the Air Mobility Division in the office of the Chief of Research and Development, in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans.



Following graduation from the Naval War College in June 1964, Lt. Col. Moore received a by-name request from Brig. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard, commanding general, 11th Air Assault Division (Test), to serve as a battalion commander. Redesignated the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in July 1965, the division deployed to South Vietnam’s Central Highlands in response to Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war. It was in that capacity that Moore’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry fought the first major pitched battle with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley in November 1965.

Moore’s conduct of the battle is well chronicled in his and Joe Galloway’s We Were Soldiers Once. . . and Young and needs little elaboration here. Suffice it to say that the success of Moore’s soldiers in repelling the attack of a well-disciplined enemy force five times their own size was the result of Moore’s battlefield leadership and the indomitable spirit of his men. Moore was first off the lead helicopter and the last soldier to leave the battlefield three days later. Putting everything he had learned at West Point and 20 years of leadership in battle into the action, Moore inflicted over 600 dead on the enemy at a cost of 79 killed and 121 wounded. True to his word, he brought out every one of his troopers. In fact throughout his 32-year career, Hal Moore never abandoned an American soldier on the battlefield.

Following the Ia Drang Battle, Moore was promoted to command the 1st Cavalry Division’s 3rd Brigade that saw action on the Bong Son Plain in January 1966. Subsequent tours of duty included service with the International Security Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense; commanding general of the 7th Infantry Division in Korea, and then commanding general of Fort Ord, Calif. Moore ended his career as deputy chief of staff for personnel. When he retired in 1977, he became an executive vice president of the company that developed the ski area at Crested Butte, Colo. Four years later he formed a computer software company. Now in retirement, Moore spends his time with his wife Julie and their family in their homes in Crested Butte, Colo., and Auburn, Ala.


INFANTRY ADVANCING AT LZ X-RAY

Moore’s achievements in a career spanning three decades are legendary. First in his West Point class to be promoted to one, two and three stars, Moore received accelerated promotions on six occasions. Recipient of the Purple Heart and seven awards for battlefield valor, including the Distinguished Service Cross, Moore never lost a man as prisoner or missing in action, which brings us back to West Point and why the Corps of Cadets holds Moore in such high esteem.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Hi Spooky. Hope to see you later. I gotta run, too.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Hi Snippy. So you guys are getting ready for Thanksgiving, wow! :-)

[archy]

Redesignated the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in July 1965, the division deployed to South Vietnam’s Central Highlands in response to Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war. It was in that capacity that Moore’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry fought the first major pitched battle with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley in November 1965.

Radio callsign gunfighter, as I recall....

archy-/-

[Light Speed]

CAS Bump...Skyraiders!

VC Sappers hit flight line at Bein Hoa

Skyraider in the Idrang

[stand watie]

good afternoon, feather.

free the south,sw

[Darksheare]

Group response since I'm still not up and online.
Machine itself is fine, just isn't setup for net travel yet.
(Win98 REALLY does not like being forced to work on a system running a processor faster than 700MHz..)
Haven't stuck the new OS on it yet, waiting for the 'parental unit' who already did so with one machine to show up and supervise the disaster in the making, er... Windows upgrade I mean!
Sorry I haven't been in, had to borrow a machine until I can get the machine setup fully.
Ugh..
Windows.
But I still won't go Linux!
(Linux and I DO NOT mix. Same with Macs!)

[armymarinemom]

Honor Among Soldiers
By Joseph L. Galloway


  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---that all three million of them were drug-crazed killers and rapists who rampaged across the pastoral landscape.

   Those movies got it wrong, until now. There is one more Hollywood film now playing called We Were Soldiers and it gets it right. Ask any Vietnam veteran who has gone to see the movie. In fact, ask any American who has gone to see it. It is based on a book I wrote with my lifelong friend Lt. Gen. (ret) Hal Moore; a book written precisely because we believed that a false impression of those soldiers had taken root in the country which 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 at war 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 some photographs when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a tall, lanky GI who jumped out of a mortar pit and ran, zig-zagging under fire, toward me. He dove under the little bush I was crouched behind. “Joe! Joe Galloway! Don’t you know me, man? It’s Vince Cantu from Refugio, Texas!” Vince Cantu and I had graduated together from Refugio High School, Class of ’59, 55 boys and girls. We embraced warmly. Then 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 ten 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.” 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.    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 both 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-to-be, We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, in 1982. It was a ten-year journey to find and ultimately to bring back together as many of those who fought in LZ Xray and LZ Albany, a separate battle one day after ours only three miles away in which another 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 a questionnaire to them to begin the process.

  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 XRay 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 the roaring flames. How he ran out 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 headed home from the Persian Gulf War stopped there to refuel. It was their first sight of home. George and some other local 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.

   When we think of ourselves we think Shakespeare, Henry IV, 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.”

   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. But they also watched each other closely. At the first sign of the oppressive heat and 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. They would 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. “Man, they must pay you loads of money to do this.” And 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. They were, in my view, 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 Constitution of the United States. 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 Lyndon Johnson and, later, Richard Nixon could not figure out some decent way to cut our losses and leave the Vietnamese to sort the matter out among themselves.

   As I have grown older, and so have they, and first the book and now the movie have come to pass 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.

Joe Galloway

George Nye's work is still being done in Bangor Maine. Before George died he had the privedlge of greeting Hal Moores son upon his arrival from Gulf War I.
Those of us who carry on the work of greeting troops hope in our hearts that America's heros will never be forgotten again.

[Soaring Feather]

Same with Macs!

Say what Darksheare!! :-(

Good to hear from you! Hope you will be up and running soon.

[Soaring Feather]

Howdy! How be ya??

[SAMWolf]

Afternoon E.G.C. Our "heat wave" is supposed to break finally and we'll be back in the 70's where we belong.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks armymarinemom. Col. Moore was quite a man.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks Archy. You know that because you were there?

[SAMWolf]

Hi Light Speed. Great shots of the SkyRaider. That last one from the Movie, right?

[SAMWolf]

Hi Darksheare.

Keep at it and thanks for the tip on 98 and faster machines.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for posting this article,armymarinemom. It was a absolutely fantastic read.

They were the best you had, America, and you turned your back on them.

Never Again!

[snippy_about_it]

Hey it's never too early I guess. SAM and I just returned from the store and they had halloween decorations up already!

[snippy_about_it]

Sorry to hear you are still having trouble. Stay in touch. I'll send you email when I get back to Ohio. :)

[Do the Dew]

You have Freep mail.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

NEVER FORGET

...See Lt. Col. HAL G. MOORE's Battle of IA DRANG-1965 Smile of Victory taken at Landing Zone Falcon immediately after his Extraction from Landing Zone X-Ray in the...


'Ronnie Guyer Photo Collection'

http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_collection.htm



Signed:."ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer
~Radioman/Orderly/Driver to Lt. Col. HAL G. MOORE prior to IA DRANG Campaign
~IA DRANG Personnel Clerk, Landing Zone Falcon.


NEVER FORGET

[manna]

Present!