survivors of ia drang valley

FREEMAN, Ed (Too Tall to Fly), sixty-five, Bruce Crandalls wingman, retired a major in 1967 after twenty-one years Army service. He would recover after some physical therapy and return to duty in 1966 to finish his tour. HERREN, John, fifty-eight, commander of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, served a second tour in Vietnam as a staff officer at MACV/Saigon, was a battalion commander in Germany, and served in the office of the secretary of defense until his retirement in 1985 as a colonel. (Photo Credit: US Army / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain) The real life Battle of Ia Drang took place between November 14-19, 1965. Major Bruce Crandall made over 20 flights into intense enemy fire during a battle in the Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, in November 1965, evacuating 70 wounded and delivering ammunition. Lessons in leadership, in the importance of training, in courage, in sacrifice and in loss. He lives in Columbus, Georgia, and is a serious collector of firearms and active in a local shooting club. President Johnson Jeanie Hunter in Oskaloosa, Ia on November 24, 1984 and she survives bikinis. His injured right hip deteriorated, and on the Thursday before Thanksgiving, 1986, he found himself back on an operating tablethe same place he had been on the Thursday before Thanksgiving, 1965. It is laced with hard facts, observations, anger, sadness and even some humor. On the second day, North Vietnamese forces launched a heavy attack including hand-to-hand combat. Elements of the Armys 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) entered the first major land battle of the war at landing zones X-Ray and Albany, which would turn out to be proving grounds for a whole new kind of warfare. We saved so many more people because of that helicopter.. KELLING, George, fifty-four, who ran Charlie Med, the rear-area casualty receiving station during LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany, retired a lieutenant colonel in 1978. (AP Photo) A wounded American soldier is aided to a helicopter for evacuation from Ia Drang Valley area, near Plei Me, Vietnam, November 18, 1965. It was the first major battle between PAVN and US Army units and one of the war's bloodiest encounters. MICELI, Carmen, forty-eight, rifleman, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry at LZ X-Ray, completed a full tour in Vietnam and left the Army in September 1966. Winkel and his wife live in Springfield, Virginia. Freeman reconstituted the unit and led it back up Pork Chop. Many did a second tour and others left the service and returned home to their families. George Nye was a sparkplug of Operation Welcome Home, which brought veterans groups, brass bands, and Bangor townsfolk to the airport by the hundreds to hug and shake hands with the Desert Storm veterans. Our town is only ten thousand people and we lost eleven young men from here killed in Vietnam, says Purp. The bullet was still in there. They had this Learning to be a Teacher program; I tried it and loved it. Parish now runs the Bristow, Oklahoma, toll gate on the Turner Turnpike. He is married and has a daughter in college and a son in the U.S. Marines. Between the Army and the Interior Department, Freeman logged a total of seventeen thousand hours flying time in helicopters and eight thousand hours in fixed wing. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code. When the last of his old friends in the 1st Cavalry and the U.S. Marines rotated home, Galloway also left, vowing never to return. Please complete the captcha to let us know you are a real person. After two days of intense North Vietnamese attacks and mounting casualties, Moore radioed the code word Broken Arrow, calling for all available aircraft to rescue an American unit about to be overrun. Your new password must contain one or more uppercase and lowercase letters, and one or more numbers or special characters. SCOTT, James A., sixty-nine, the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalrys sergeant major, served a second Vietnam tour in 1970-71 as command sergeant major, USARV Scott retired as a command sergeant major on May 1, 1973, after thirty years, ten months, and twenty days of service, wearing the Combat Infantrymans Badge with one star; six Bronze Stars; three Purple Hearts; a European Campaign ribbon with four battle stars and one invasion arrow; a Korean Service ribbon with two battle stars; a Vietnam Service ribbon with four battle stars; and the Presidential Unit Citation badge. Word reached the battalion traveling to Columbus, who sent Bravo Company back to Albany to serve as reinforcements. If you yield to it, it will absolutely paralyze you. 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 and his wife, Theresa, live on a farm in northern Virginia with their sons Lee, fifteen, and Joshua, twelve. THORPE, Henry, fifty-eight, commander, Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, left the Army as a captain in September 1967, after eight years service, and went home to his native North Carolina. He assumed that like the French, the Americans would tire of seeing their young men coming home in body bags. TADEMY, Dudley, 3rd Brigade fire-support coordinator in the Ia Drang, served a second tour in Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry and retired a colonel in January 1987, after thirty years service. I ask that question every day. He retired in August 1990, and now lives in Peekskill, New York. LOSE, Charles R., the medic of the Lost Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, has dropped out of sight. Georgia, James T. Lawrence, a first lieutenant in the Battle of Ia Drang Valley, learned a lesson in leadership the hard way 50 years ago. I couldnt grasp it., More from us: Val Kilmer Accidentally Landed Matthew Modine the Starring Role in Full Metal Jacket. In August 1977, at the age of forty-four, Colonel Frank Henry died when an aneurysm ruptured. This praise is largely due to the heavy emphasis director Randall Wallace put on ensuring what he created was as accurate to the real events of the Battle of Ia Drang as possible. This is the tale of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in 1965. You can always change this later in your Account settings. In Washington, Ia Drang convinced Johnson that he was in for a long, bloody war. On November 27, 1965, Diduryk wrote a detailed account of Bravo Companys actions at X-Ray for the ROTC students at his alma mater, St. Peters College in Jersey City, New Jersey. He is partly paralyzed as a result of his terrible wound. I pulled the muscles in that leg so badly yanking it free that I couldnt walk for three months, he said. He was forty-five. Box 159 He is now a financial officer with the U.S. (67 votes) Very easy. Being the firstbig units there, we had to make our own camp, no showers for months, World War II C rations to eat, no toilets, just a hole dug in the ground, etc. Within an hour, they came under attack for the first time by North Vietnamese regulars, launching a four-day battle that killed hundreds of Americans and perhaps more than 1,000 Vietnamese and changed the course of the Vietnam War. BEAN, Roger, fifty-two, Huey pilot who was wounded in LZ X-Ray, was wounded again in early 1966 in the Bong Son campaign. Before the Battle of la Drang was over, 305 Americans had been killed along with an estimated 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. A North Vietnamese map, captured in 1966, accurately depicts enemy maneuvers and attacks during the Ia Drang campaign. Fought between November 14th and 18th of 1965, around the hills surrounding the valley of Ia Drang, on the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. He earned his masters degree in public administration in 1976 and retired in 1977 as a lieutenant colonel. We Were Soldiers (2002) is considered by many to be one of the best Vietnam War films ever made. 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. For the Ia Drang Valley survivors, October 10, 2012 will be a day they will remember for the rest of their days. SHUCART, William, M.D., surgeon, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, had nearly completed his tour in Vietnam in the summer of 1966, when he suffered a broken back in the crash of a Chinook helicopter. His awards include the Combat Infantrymans Badge with two stars; two Silver Stars; two Bronze Stars; four Purple Hearts; a Master Parachutist Badge with five combat-jump stars; a European Theater Service ribbon with eight campaign stars and four invasion arrows; a Korean Service ribbon with three campaign stars and one invasion arrow; a Vietnam Service ribbon with one silver and three bronze campaign stars; and the Presidential Unit Citation badge. When I go to the wall, I see Don Cornett's name 58,000 times.'. He lives in Golden, Colorado, where he owns a firm that deals worldwide in antiques. Crandall won the first Helicopter Heroism Award of the Aviation/Space Writers Association, for two daring nighttime landings under fire to rescue twelve badly wounded troopers from Captain Tony Nadals Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in Operation Masher-White Wing in January 1966. He spent that night among the dead and wounded. He had just turned thirty-six years old. Cash served a second tour in Vietnam as an adviser to the Royal Thai Army forces. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Memoirs and histories written after the event capture it . To use this feature, use a newer browser. Terms of Use | Hear Bruces story. FESMIRE, John A. Please enter your email and password to sign in. By Staff. The Battle of Ia Drang Valley was a series of engagements between the U.S 1st Cavalry Division and the B-3 front, North Vietnamese Army. Its not so much what we went through as it is knowing what the other guys went through. They saved some 70 soldiers. Very difficult. I felt a flash of panic. Moore and his 450-man 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, flew into Landing Zone X-Ray at the base of the Chu Pong Mountain west of Plei Me and miles from the Cambodian border. 'Can't you see I'm dying?' This was the first major engagement between the United States Army and the North Vietnamese Army. . He and his wife have two college-age children. After three days of fighting, 240 Americans had been killed and another 300 wounded (more troops were brought in in support). He says he did a lot of praying during the Persian Gulf War, when his son, his brother, and his old friend Galloway were all on the battlefield. Bob Edwards saying that these were the stripes Paolone earned at LZ X-Ray but never got. I still have my leg, and I can walk on it. Photo extracted from U.S. Army motion picture footage from November 1965. The location of the battle, far into the jungle from any roads, meant troops had to be airlifted in. In the spring of 1992, Frank Henry was posthumously inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame. LOMBARDO, Riccardo, sixty-one, Huey pilot in X-Ray and Albany and Pop Jekels good buddy, was retired on one hundred percent disability after a serious back injury in 1967, when he was thirty-six. WASHBURN, Richard B., fifty-seven, platoon leader, 2/20th Aerial Rocket Artillery in the Ia Drang, returned to Vietnam for a second combat tour. After retiring from the Army, Freeman became the northwest area director of aircraft services for the U.S. Department of the Interior. Lacking confidence in the South Vietnamese, Gen. William C. Westmoreland ordered the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, which had been in country about a month, to pursue the enemy, using newly minted airmobile tactics. ; s bloodiest encounters and even some humor forty-four, Colonel Frank Henry posthumously... Reset password code in public administration in 1976 and retired in August 1977, at age. 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