From: ric@updike.sri.com (Richard Steinberger)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Winter Book Recommendation
Date: 21 Dec 92 18:03:00 GMT
Organization: sri
Originator: ric@updike



	Winter Holiday/January book recommendation:  


	We Were Soldiers Once....And Young

	By Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway



	This is a story of first large-scale combat engagement between
the North Vietnamese army and US troops: The battles of Ia Drang.
They took place over a three day period in November, 1965.

	There is virtually NO politics here.  What is described is the
struggles of several hundred mostly young US soldiers whose job it was
to seek out and fight the PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam).  The action
takes place in the Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands of South
Vietnam.  Two Landing Zones (LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany) were the sites of
vicious firefights that eventually resulted in the deaths of some
305 US troops and about 12 times that number of North Vietnamese soldiers.

	[305 may seem like a small number; the North Vietnamese lost 
3561.  One lesson the US "learned" was that it was going to take 1 US
soldier's death to result in the deaths of 12 NVA soldiers.  DoD
Secretary Robert McNamara predicted that the US would need to "sacrafice"
1000 US troops a month to win.  He told reporters at the time, "It will
be a long war."
	In comparison, 29,000+ US troops (Northern and Confederate)
died at Chancellorsville in 4 days of fighting; 26,000+ at Antietam
in 1 day, 43,000+ at Gettysburg in 3 days.  None of them were medevac'd out.]

	Here are a few sample quotations:

	On the ground, the battle had detonated into a series of deafening
explosions of firing, now here, now there, as the enemy commander furiously
probed for our weak spot, the opening that would permit him to drive a wedge
through the thin line of men defending the landing zone.  It was a fast-
moving bedlam of activity.  They were eager to kill us; they hungered for
our deaths.  Now they were slamming into us at four different locations.
	Never before had the Vietnamese army carried the fight to an American
Army with such tenacity.  None of the common wisdom born of the American
experience in Vietnam to date applied to this enemy.

	For the first time since Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the North Vietnamese
Army had taken the field in division strength. . . . The cost of
America's involvement in this obscure police action had just risen 
dramatically.  Vietnam was now a whole new ball game militarily,
politically, and diplomatically.

	"Sergeant James A. Mullartey from our 1st platoon made it back to
our lines.  His story: The NVA had been shooting our wounded.  One came up to
him, stuck a pistol in his mouth, and fired.  The bullet exited the back of
his throat, knocked him out and they left him for dead.  He survived and when
he woke up at night he started crawling back to us."



	Only six or so NVA prisoners were taken; most preferred to die
fighting rather than surrender.  

	If you want to know what it was like to be young, idealistic,
and confronted with an equally decicated enemy force in 1965 Vietnam,
this book should not be missed.  $25, published by Random House.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books