"After the bravado, you're left with the anguish." Col. Nadal US 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry Regiment Air Mobile Few battles have shaped the modern American mind while remaining mostly anonymous to the general public quite like Ia Drang. An iconic engagement that defined not just a war but a generation has gone, for the most part, forgotten. Maybe one of the most misunderstood battles in a misunderstood war, Ia Drang, had a considerable impact on modern American history. The action of Ia Drang Valley, fought from the 14th to the 17th in November 1965 remains, maybe the defining moment of the Vietnam War.
"After the bravado, you're left with the anguish." Col. Nadal US 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry Regiment Air Mobile
Few battles have shaped the modern American mind while remaining mostly anonymous to the general public quite like Ia Drang. An iconic engagement that defined not just a war but a generation has gone, for the most part, forgotten. Maybe one of the most misunderstood battles in a misunderstood war, Ia Drang, had a considerable impact on modern American history. The action of Ia Drang Valley, fought from the 14th to the 17th in November 1965 remains, maybe the defining moment of the Vietnam War.
Hello again, and thank you for listening; this is Cauldron; I'm your host, Cullen. Today we have a harrowing tale coming to you from 55 years ago this week. Welcome to Gary, one of our newest Patrons on Patreon, and a hearty thank you to all the Patrons that have hung in there! I hope the interview with the Armourer's Bench on the life of the M16 was as interesting for you to listen to as it was for me to record! Matt is a treasure trove of weapons info, so if you are into that end of military history go find the armourer's bench on social media or youtube and check out his work. Ok, please find us on IG, FB, TW for maps, images, artwork, and live streams. As always, rate review and subscribe wherever you can! Now, let's get stuck in!
"After the bravado, you're left with the anguish." Col. Nadal US 1st BAttalion 7th Cavalry Regiment Air Mobile
Few battles have shaped the modern American mind while remaining mostly anonymous to the general public, quite like Ia Drang. An iconic engagement that defined not just a war but a generation has gone, for the most part, forgotten. Maybe one of the most misunderstood battles in a misunderstood war, Ia Drang, had a considerable impact on modern American history. The action of Ia Drang Valley fought from the 14th to the 17th in November 1965 remains, maybe the defining moment of the Vietnam War.
Rice. Rubber. International status. Many things made Vietnam an attractive colony to France in the late 1800's. Pre-second world war life in "French Indo-China," a region that encompasses modern Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and parts of southern China, was one of extremes. The extremely wealthy and extremely poor. The weak and the mighty. The Asian and the European. When the Japanese came in the early 1940s, some thought there might be freedom from French rule. When Vichy France allied with the Nazis, the Japanese continued to occupy the area under the auspices of protecting their allies' domains. In reality, they had conquered the French colony but allowed the French to administer the region, thereby avoiding losing the men and material it would take to garrison in force. As the Second World War developed, the Japanese realized they needed to take a more active role in running French Indo China. They expelled the French administrators and folded Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia into their sham Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As the Japanese home islands starved, this official embrace by Tokyo equated to mass murder; they scoured the conquered nations for food, Vietnam, chief among them. By 1945 maybe as many as a million Vietnamese had starved.
With the background of hundreds of thousands, possibly a million starved, and not one but two unwanted conquerors, it's no wonder the Vietnamese hardened themselves to privation and violence. After the war, trying to re-establish some kind of global status-quo and against the adamant wishes of a now-dead FDR, the US and UK, and even the Soviet Union backed France regaining colonial control over the Indo-China region. A thin waif of a man with a goat-like beard was incensed and took direct action to keep his country from becoming a European colony again. In late 1945 the scholarly Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The next thirty years were spent fighting for freedom, albeit under the auspices of a communist government and aide from both the Soviets and Red China. In 1954 the decisive victory over the French Colonials at Dien Bein Phu put Ho and Vietnam on a fixed path. At the Geneva Accords, Vietnam was split at the 17th parallel, an official demilitarized zone. A few years after the split, the hope was that free elections would be held, and the decision on how Vietnam would move forward would be left to the people. George Kennan, Ike, and the Soviets and Mao were having none of it. The rapidly warming Cold War was in the offing, and both sides saw a chance to prove their ideology was right and worthy. The South Vietnamese, with American money and material, began a long-drawn-out death rattle. The North Vietnamese, bolstered by Bejing and Moscow's official recognition, dug in and readied itself for another long bloody fight with some white men from far away.
Ike was smart enough to know that sending American boys off to fight in another Asian proxy war like Korea was a bad deal and worse politics. Instead, he sent ten of millions of dollars and material, and most importantly, he sent advisors, observers, and special forces units to "help" the South Vietnamese. JFK wanted to stay strong in the South East Asia operational sphere; he poured even more money and men into the fighting. LBJ inherited a war that was not a war and had no idea what to do. He was loath to antagonize the Soviets or China. Still, he fully understood that the taxpayers were watering weeds unless the US military's power could be utilized to deliver a quick victory. The South Vietnamese leadership was riddled with weak, greedy, corrupt tyrants. Countless coups, failed coups, back door dealings, and general underhandedness made it clear to US leadership that they would have to win this war on behalf of and often despite their ally.
Operation Rolling Thunder was meant to break the back of the Vietcong, North Vietnam's insurgent militia, as it traveled south along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In a bleak bit of foreshadowing, the US believed it could just bomb this enemy into submission without realizing you had to hit them a) and convince them they were beaten b). Like the Romans of ancient times, the North Vietnamese realized you weren't beaten until you acknowledged the fact. Ho had created a network of fanatics; they would die before they admitted defeat. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was bombed, cut, blown up, burned out, but never truly destroyed. With uncanny speed and ability, the Vietcong repaired the trail time and again.
The spec ops forces in country took a more successful avenue in dealing with the North's insurgents. They set up camps all over South Vietnam with multi-pronged objectives. Seeing the futility of that effort, they also committed to counter-insurgency efforts. By training local village and tribal militias, building infrastructure, and general goodwill missions, these Green Beret units hoped to build up enough local force to allow the South Vietnamese to fend for themselves. One of these Green Beret bases was in a remote place called Plei Me, outside of Pleiku a provincial capital city.
North Vietnamese General Chu Huy Man was the commander of the Western Field Front HQ B3. He'd lobbied hard throughout 1965 for the NVA to take the war to the South in a more traditional fashion. He wanted to cut South Vietnam in half at its gut, the Central Highlands of the Kontum, Pleiku, Binh Dinh, and Phu Bon Provinces. Halfway between the northern cities of Hue and Da Nang and in the south Saigon, the region is covered in scattered mountain clusters, forest, triple canopy jungle, plateaus, and ridges, all surrounded by the high peaks of the South Annamite Range. If Huy Man and his three regular NVA regiments - the 32nd, 33rd, and 66th - could get a foothold in the region, South Vietnam's government might waver. Man's plan to use conventional units and fight a traditional campaign had come under withering criticism from the hero of Dein Bein Phu and Ho's best commander, Vo Nguyen Giap, the "Red Napoleon." He called for a continuation of the hit and run, ambush, and raid style warfare that he had perfected and worked so well against the Japanese and French. Possibly sensing weakness in the ARVN or in the hopes that a bold stroke could bring the enemy to his knees faster, Ho overruled Giap, and the decision to go for broke in the Central Highlands was approved. General Man planned to move his units down the Ho Chi Minh trail and from Chu Pong Mountain. Chu Pong Massif is a whopping 174 square mile, 1600ft high massif that terminates miles into Cambodia a no-go zone for the Americans. From this protected and defensible entry point, Gen Man intended to strike out at several nearby objectives. First, he planned to destroy the Spec Forces bases at Plei Me, Dak Sut, and Duc Co. Then, he would hit the provincial government HQ at Le Thanh and capture the city of Pleiku, only a little over 30 miles away. All these small moves were meant to pull the ARVN forces in the area out into the open where Man was confident his regulars would be able to ambush and destroy them, regardless of American support.
Mid-October saw two things bring the US and North Vietnamese forces ever closer to a head to head fight; the 1st Cavalry Division made its new HQ base in the city of An Khe, and Gen. Man kicked off his conventional campaign by attacking the Special Forces camp at Plei Me. The 1st Cav Div was a old hat in the helicopter game, but in 1965, she'd had a total makeover into something new, an "airmobile" strike force. What Gen Westmoreland would go on to call "the most innovative tactical development to emerge from the Vietnam War." At Ia Drang, the concept "airmobile" was debuted and put to a rigorous field test. Helicopters had been in use to a minimal degree at the end of WWII. Their role expanded in Korea but continued to be mostly supply, evac, and transport in nature. By 1965 military minds in the US had entirely reimagined the helicopter's role on the battlefield, and the results were stunning, transformative, and produced a tactical revolution. The 1st Cavalry was now going to play the part of modern-day dragoons, using their speed and mobility to deliver infantry and firepower almost anywhere on the battlefield, seemingly at will. This allowed planners to think in terms of vertical movement on the battlefield. Now, the fight could be traditional horizontal 2D or vertical 3D or some combination of the two. Warfare would never be the same.
One of the most striking aspects of this new "airmobile" division, beyond its ability to materialize anywhere on the battlefield, was its degree of specialization. For recce, there was the Hughes 6A Cayuse Loach fast, nimble, and with a range of almost 400 miles. For attack, there was the Bell Huey Cobra gunship that packed a real punch. Armed with a 7.62 minigun, 40mm grenade launcher, or 20 or 30mm cannon, and the possibility of mounting 76 rockets, more miniguns, or more cannon. This thing was basically a small battleship in the sky. For transport, there were they Sikorsky flying crane capable of carrying 20,000lbs or the Boeing-Vertol Chinook able to bring a whole 25 man platoon to the battle. And most famous of all the ubiquitous Bell UH-1D Iroquois Huey. These proved the most dynamic, sturdy, and capable of all. Moving at 130mph, armed with four 7.62mm machine guns and 38 rockets, the Huey could act as its own fire support while landing a squad of 6-8 men in its operational range of 250 miles. A truly impressive and iconic machine of war. I don't know if there is any vehicle that merely upon hearing it conjures such vivid images of a particular war? Maybe the Katusha rockets on the Eastern Front?
Plei Me was under a heavy assault by the 32nd and 33rd NVA regiments until October 25th. There were a few dicey moments, which might make a great short episode at some point but suffice it to say the NVA forces came close to winning the day. Only the intervention of the USAF blew them off their spot and forced a withdrawal. The NVA forces limped back to the Cambodian border, hoping to lick their wounds and recover, but the pursuit was hot. The 1st Cavalry Div acted like its horse riding forbearers; once the enemy began to retreat, they swooped in and did their best to create havoc and disperse and kill the enemy. Gen Westmoreland was impressed and wanted to see more. He decided to "give Kinnard his head", allowing the 1st Cav to change role from a reactive force to an aggressor. For the next couple of weeks, the 1st Cav mounted a series of recon missions in their light scout copters aimed mainly at harassing the NVA and tracking. They initially found little to attack as they assumed the enemy had retreated in a North West direction. Radio intercepts between the NVA HQ B3 and Chinese advisors in Cambodia made it clear that the 1st Cav was aiming in the wrong direction. Maj. Gen Kinnard, one of the masterminds behind the air cavalry concept, realized in late October that the enemy was about to slink away beaten but not broken. He ordered Col. Tim Brown of the 1st Cavalry Division to search west towards the Chu Pong Massif - Ia Drang River Valley. Only 25-30 miles west of Plei Me, the area straddles the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. Coincidentally, NVA General Man was in the process of reorganizing and training his men for a renewal of the assault on Plei Me in the exact area Col. Brown had ordered his recon copters to search. The stage was set; the first official encounter between US and NVA regular forces, the US 1st Cav Div and the NVA B-3, was about to begin.
Gen. Man welcomed the fight with the Americans for two reasons. First, he knew that killing as many US troops as possible was always a net positive; a straight-up attrition war favored the North Vietnamese. They had plenty of bodies to throw at the American guns and no critical governing body or media to answer back home. The other reason was it would provide NVA planners an invaluable case study on fighting the Americans. "We wanted to lure the tiger out of the mountain," General Man said, adding: "We would attack the ARVN—but we would be ready to fight the Americans. . . . Headquarters decided we had to prepare very carefully to fight the Americans. Our problem was that we had never fought Americans before, and we had no experience fighting them. We wanted to draw American units into contact for the purposes of learning how to fight them. We wanted any American combat troops; we didn't care which ones."
The US command also welcomed the first fight with the regular North Vietnamese army. As Lt. Col. Moore put it, he and his men "had come looking for trouble. We found all we wanted and more." Their view of the situation was slightly different but still attrition based. US command figured that they were a costly version of the Orkin men. Where a communist infestation popped up, they would be there to exterminate it. But they had to get to grips with the enemy before using all their expensive tech and toys. One US account from 1967 boiled it down, saying, "Regardless of the risks involved in attacking the enemy on terrain of his own choosing, the rare opportunity to catch the North Vietnamese in any concentration of forces could not be passed up." From this mentality, the "search and destroy" mission was born with its modus operandi - "find, fix, destroy- baked in. Rather than looking to break the enemy's will to fight, US leadership was looking to eradicate the enemy in the field and hoped given enough doses of American firepower at some unarticulated point; the NVA would just stop. They did not.
On November 13th, Col. Brown gave Lt. Col Harold G. Moore of the 1/7 Cavalry the green light to engage the enemy on the 14th in the Ia Drang Valley. The order was to seek and destroy the enemy in the Chu Pong Massif area through the 15th. Moore was given 16 copters to get he and his men in and keep them supplied and fighting, along with helo-gunships and Air Force units in fire support roles. Five and a half miles away to the East at LZ Flacon, two batteries of the 1st Battalion 21st Artillery would be on stand by. Moore was a steadfast and dedicated officer; his men looked up to him, and most importantly, they trusted him and with good reason. Moore was conscious of his unit's infamous history and wanted to take every precaution that he could to ensure his men, unlike Custer's, were not slaughtered by swirling enemy hordes. While planning his attack, Moore decided he a) wanted to be the first to land and b) he wanted the LZ to be big enough to hold his entire Battalion. The first decision was made so that he could abort the mission immediately upon landing he decided to. The second was made with the understanding that the enemy would be close and its number unknown; he wanted a space large enough to land as many men on each trip as possible, allowing him to concentrate his firepower quickly while also having room to maneuver and deploy his platoons as needed. Both decisions proved wise.
Moore settled on a place that would be called LZ Xray. He debriefed his officers. They were to land, set up the LZ, then seek out and engage the enemy. It was believed there were two NVA units to the North and West and one of unknown size to the southwest of the LZ, as well as a possible command base in the area.
A fierce, but short 20 minute artillery bombardment of the LZ area started the morning of the 14th. Then at 1040, 16 UH-1 choppers came in at treetop level with their five-man, not the normal eight-man, loads. The landings went smoothly as Moore, and then the rest of B Company rushed off the helicopters and fanned out into the clearing firing as they went more as a precaution than at any known targets. The LZ was littered with tree stumps from the bombardment and thickly layered in the tall, dense elephant grass that could hide a man from sight but not from bullets. Moore decided on a cluster of anthills for his command post. These redish brown anthills, I've also read termite hills, are not the little sand mounds in the cracks of your driveway. These things are 6 to 12 feet tall in some cases and 4-8 feet wide at the base. The anthills also provided decent cover because they are hard, almost cement-like. Moore and his men would find some anthills had NVA inside them. The only way they could effectively destroy them was with anti-tank or artillery rounds. The anthills Moore setup amongst were well placed at about the center of the LZ, which gave him a good feel for the battlefield and in the coming hours helped him get a feel for the flow of events.
A short time after landing B Company secured the LZ, and 1st Platoon pulled an unarmed NVA deserter from the tall grass around 1120. The man confirmed the MACV suspicion that this whole area was a central Communist staging post and training base with three North Vietnamese regular battalions. And Hal Moore and the 1/7th had just landed in their front yard. A Company and the rest of B Company started arriving at about the same time. Then B Company, now intact, set out on patrol along a dry creek bed that formed the LZ's northwestern-most edge. They were moving in textbook formation, 1st Platoon on the left, 2nd on the right, and 3rd in reserve to the rear. The men of B Company's three platoons began taking fire. The first and second Platoon formed up line-abreast and advanced, but as they moved further west of the creek bed, Lt. Devney's 1st Platoon was separated from Lt. Herrick's second Platoon. Devney's men began getting squeezed on both flanks, taking heavy fire and casualties. 1st Platoon was pinned. At the same time, Lt. Herrick and 2nd Platoon started taking fire on his right side, and they aggressively pursued the attackers. The chase pulled him and his men out of reach of both 1st Platoon and the 3rd in reserve; they soon found themselves over 100 yards away from help. Herrick and 2nd Platoon entered a small clearing, and almost immediately, a vicious gunfight erupted. As his men shredded the enemy in front, Herrick realized the enemy was streaming past both his flanks; soon, the little clearing was surrounded. Herrick radioed his CO, Capt Herren, who ordered him to fall back and link up with 1st Platoon. Harrick knew the enemy was too strong for his men to effect a breakout, so he ordered a defensive perimeter set. Herren and 3rd Platoon tried to force their way through to 2nd Platoon, but it became quickly apparent that they were dealing with a large body of well-trained enemy. Within half an hour, the 2nd Platoon was in a fight to survive, as five men had been KIA and the NVA continued to press home attacks from all directions. Lt. Herrick was among the men wounded and soon to die, but before he bled out, he transferred command, had his signal book destroyed, and ordered his replacement to call in close artillery support. Sgt. Palmer was supposed to take control, but both he and his second, Sgt. Robert Stokes was killed. That left Sgt. Ernie Savage to organize and lead a desperate defense until Moore could get a relief force together. The situation was dire as Savage and his surviving unit shortened their perimeter lines as best they could, stock-piled ammo and weapons, and waited. Spec. Galen Bungum, 2nd Platoon, B Company, said "We gathered up all the full magazines we could find and stacked them up in front of us. There was no way we could dig a foxhole. The handle was blown off my entrenching tool and one of my canteens had a hole blown through it. The fire was so heavy that if you tried to raise up to dig you were dead. There was death and destruction all around." Now, stranded a couple of football field s away from safety, all the men of 2nd Platoon could do is stare into the thick elephant grass and hope nothing came out of it.
Back at his CP, Moore monitored the B Company situation closely and tried to help by calling in air and artillery strikes. With A Company fully landed and ready, Moore sent them to attempt a rescue. As A Company crossed another of the dry creek beds crisscrossing the region, they also came under substantial attack. Forced to halt and fend off the NVA assault, A Company was delayed, and B Company's lost Platoon was going to have to wait for salvation. With A and B Company engaged, Moore was in a tight spot. If an attack on the LZ came from the South or East, he was likely to have a repeat of Little Big Horn on his hands. Worse still, with mortar rounds slamming into the LZ all around his CP, Moore was forced to call off the helicopters with only three full companies and part of a fourth on the ground. By 1445 the action was red hot at the LZ as Col. Brown saw first hand. He intended to land at LZXray but was waved off by Moore, who feared the enemy fire would take out anything that touched down. Brown ordered the 2/7th battalion and 2/5th battalion to make their way to Xray ASAP. These reinforcements would land some miles outside Xray and then hoof it overland to the fight, meaning they wouldn't be there anytime soon.
This was not great news for Moore as the perimeter defense was almost broken several times in the late afternoon. Only the continuous wall of lead put up by M16's and M60's and Moore's constant calling in of airstrikes, rocket strikes, and close artillery support kept the LZ from falling. The continual pounding from on high began to take a toll on the unseen NVA attacking the LZ, the fighting slackened, and by 1520 the rest of 1/7th was able to land. With his full battalion compliment on the ground, including his heavy weapons and recce platoons, Moore organized C and D skillfully dispersing them along the perimeter, freeing up the remains of B and A to try once again to mount an effective rescue for the lost platoon. At 1620, after prepping the ground with artillery fire, the American infantry pressed forward into the dense grass, blasting away at anything that moved. The fighting was vicious as both sides repeatedly bumped into each other. Short, bloody little fights sometimes hand to hand, knife to knife contests that saw only one man, sometimes none, walk away. A young Lt. Marm of 2nd Platoon A Company became a legend in the fighting when an entrenched NVA machine gun position halted the American advance. Marm ordered one of his men to hit the place with an M72 round (a light anti-tank round). The weapon misfired, so Marm grabbed the small bazooka like tube and reloaded, successfully firing it at the NVA. Then he ordered his men forward to follow up with grenades. The men misunderstood and threw their grenades from where they were, doing no damage, so Marm led through example. He sprinted across the field in front of the enemy gun position, charged up the small rise all while under heavy fire, and chucked his grenades into the trench. As the surviving NVA stumbled out of their trench, Marm killed them, clearing the machine gun nest and the way forward. Lt. Marm is believed to have killed between 12 and 18 enemies. Marm was badly wounded, shot in the face, but he survived, and a year after recovering, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. The Vietnamese were testing out a theory, the idea of "hugging" the enemy or "grabbing them by the belt". The close, intimate nature of the fighting made bringing in massive fire support or calling airstrikes impossible, as both sides would be destroyed. The tactic was working. The effort to save the Lost Platoon was called off after moving only about 150 yards, WWI type results.
Both sides took the coming of night to lick their many wounds. By 1700 the 2/7th Battalions B Company landed at XRay, giving Moore much needed men and supplies. Moore once again found himself playing a cup game trying to set up the perimeter defenses. The final look had C Company holding the South perimeter, D Company and the newly arrived 2/7th B Company on the East and North East, the remains of 1/7th B Company still maintaining the North West section, and A Company facing Chu Pong holding down the Western perimeter. The whole thing was shaped like an egg with the pointed end going West and the fat end East. Moore's CP was in the middle but closer to the pointy end. The butcher's bill for day one of Ia Drang was B company had taken 47 casualties (including one officer), and A Company had taken 34 casualties (including three officers); C company had taken four casualties. The NVA never rested, though, and throughout the night, they probed Moore's position for weak spots. Cleverly the word was passed for the M60 gunners not to return enemy fire in the night; that way, their location would not be known to the enemy when they launched the expected morning attack. Gen Man had a battalion of the 66th Regiment use the bright moonlight to stealthily move through the forest south of LZ-Xray, positioning itself to attack from the East. While at Xray, the positions solidified; the Lost Platoon just tried to squeak through the night alive. Sgt Savage somehow fended off three attacks, one at midnight, at 3:15, and the final one at 4:30, a precursor to the days fighting. Savage had a small 25-yard perimeter to defend, but he repeatedly called in fire from a helicopter gunship and artillery over and over; in some cases, explosive rounds crashed down only yards away from Americans. Against the odds, Sgt Savage and his remaining men survived the night with no new casualties. Rescue was still hours away.
At dawn on November 15th, it became clear to Moore and his men that the enemy had maneuvered around the LZ in the night and that they intended to end the battle one way or another. An errie silence preceded the fighting and then PAVN units attacked the Southern perimeter and then the East one as well. Hundereds of PAVN soldiers lay down a withering fire so heavy that the entire LZ was getting crisscrossed by small arms fire and hit by mortars. According to war correspondent and co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once and Young" Joe Galloway, the rounds went whistling and zipping by in every direction at about knee-high. Galloway threw himself to the ground as the fire intensified and the pressure on the LZ built to a crescendo. Laying on his stomach, pressing himself as deep into the earth as possible, Galloway suddenly felt a thud in his side; I assume he must-have for a second thought he was hit. Luckily it was no such thing. Standing above him in the early morning sun, was Sgt Maj. Basil L. Plumley. A veteran of WWII and Korea, Plumley had jumped into Sicily, Normandy, Holland, and had seen fighting in Korea. Galloway recalled, 'You can't take no pictures laying down there on the ground, Sonny.' I thought to myself, he's right. I also thought fleetingly that we might all die here in this place---and if I am going to die, I would just as soon take mine standing up beside a man like this. Like a fool, I got up. I followed the sergeant major over to the makeshift aid station where Doc Carrera and Sgt. Tommie Keeton were tending the wounded. Plumley hollered at them: Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves! As he pulled out his .45 pistol and jacked a round into the chamber." Plumley probably sensed with his well-honed soldier's brain that the final push was on its way. The NVA surged, around 400 PAVN, dirty white pith helmets with twigs and leaves bouncing on their heads, frontally assaulted C Company, and the American line almost buckled. Only the tireless fire from C Company's machine guns maintained the perimeter's integrity, even after losing three of five officers in the first minutes of the assault. Still, it was a close-run thing, and small groups and individual NVA soldiers made their way through. These infiltrators created localized chaos, bayonet charging, and grenade lobbing their way in and out of the American perimeter but never amounted to any kind of tactical swing. One M60 gunner, named Willard Parish earned a Silver Star by holding off a massive wave attack of NVA. He blasted away with his machine gun until out of ammo, and then with the enemy less than 20 yards away, he pulled his .45 sidearm and continued firing from his foxhole. The attack petered out. Later the bodies in front of Parish's position were counted at more than 100. After the action Lt. Rick Rescorla, who we will talk about later, recalled the hellish scene: "There were Americans and PAVN bodies everywhere...There were several dead PAVN around one platoon command post. One dead trooper was locked in contact with a dead PAVN, hands around the enemy's throat. There were two troopers - one black, one Hispanic - linked tight together. It looked like they had died trying to help each other." Still, the PAVN infantry came on, and the buckling US lines now began to snap in places, and Lt. Col. Moore made the tough but correct decision to call in a Broken Arrow. This was a code word that was understood by the USAF to mean that an American combat unit was in imminent danger of being overrun.
Moore had his men mark the perimeter with colored smoke and then hunker down, all the while keeping up their fire. The forest around Xray exploded in smoke and fire. Artillery and air support, planes stacked at 1,000-foot intervals from 7,000 to 35,000 feet, rained down on the exposed NVA. in some cases, on the Americans as well. Galloway witnessed one incredibly sad case of friendly fire. Two F-100 Super Sabres flew in over the LZ, thinking they were lined up on their target, ready to drop their napalm load. Napalm, as many of you know, is like modern Greek fire; it's a jelly-like substance that, when ignited, continues to burn on anything it touches until the fuel source expires. It's terrible, nasty stuff. The Sabres intended it for the NVA; at the last moment, they were warned off, they were in the wrong place, but it was too late; one of the Sabres had already dropped its load. The canisters bounced through the LZ and exploded, spreading their hellish mixture all over, including onto several US soldiers. One of these poor souls was Pfc. Jimmy Nakayama, who Galloway reported had become a father that very same week. The majority of the American ordinance found the right targets, though, and soon the NVA attacks slackened. According to machine-gunner Bill Beck "without the artillery and air support we would have been overrun - all of the men agreed with that. The planes and artillery also did most of the killing." As the attack wound down, reinforcements started arriving on the ground and in choppers, giving Moore's men much needed rest. Two pilots, in particular, played crucial roles in evac and supply, braving the hottest of the fighting to fly in and out of Xray. Much of the time, the fire was so intense the choppers didn't even land; they just did the flying version of a tuck and roll. Pilots Bruce "Snakeshit" Crandall and Ed "Too Tall To Fly" Freeman each earned a medal of honor for fearlessly keeping LZ Xray's lifeline open for the surrounded men on the ground. And finally, by 15:30 the lost Platoon was saved. The rescuing force crept up without encountering any NVA. They came upon the tatters of 2nd Platoon, of the 29 men that landed at Xray the day before, 9 were KIA and 13 wounded. Sgt. Savage remembered of the harrowing 28-hour ordeal. "It seemed like they didn't care how many of them were killed. Some of them were stumbling, walking right into us. Some had their guns slung and were charging bare-handed. I didn't run out of ammo – had about thirty magazines in my pack. And no problems with the M16. An hour before dark, three men walked up on the perimeter. I killed all three of them 15 feet away."
That night at 16:00, maybe the most powerful weapon in the American arsenal outside the nuclear weapons was used for the first time in a tactical operation. B-52 bombers carpeted the area around Xray. The NVA forces had to pull away and disperse into the jungle. In the night, Moore received word to head back to Saigon ASAP for a debrief with Gen Westmoreland. He refused, insisting he would only leave when all his men were brought off. Through the rest of the night and into the dusk small probing attacks were mounted and over and over the Americans, now in. their stride, lit the bush up with fire. Each small attack was destroyed in turn. Then at 6:55, Moore sensing another sunrise onslaught, ordered what he termed a mad minute. This was basically a wild flurry of punches with all of the men firing on full automatic at anything that might be an enemy position. The tactic worked and drew out the enemy positions to be isolated and hunted down. By 1030 in the mornig November 16th almost a full 48 hours after they had first touchdown, the 1/7th Cavalry Battalion marched a short distance from Xray to a nearby extraction point and was airlifted out to An Khe. For Moore, Plumley, Galloway, Crandall, Freeman, Savage, Marm, and all the rest, the battle of Ia Drang had ended. In what was some of the most intense combat since the end of the Second World War, Moore lost 79 men KIA and 121 WIA. The NVA forces lost between 600 and 1k dead, and the wounded close to 2k in total.
Once Moore and his men left LZ-Xray was held by the 2/5 under Lt. Col. Tully and the 2/7 under Lt. Col. McDade. They consolidated and secured the position, and on the morning of the 17th, each Battalion headed out for their respective extraction LZ's; Tully's men headed for LZ Columbus, McDade's for LZ Albany. While they marched out, each in a column with artillery support covering their flanks, LZ Xray was pounded by B-52s destroying the ground that just hours before Americans had fought and died to secure. The land itself held no military significance; it was merely the place where the enemy showed itself long enough to be killed. This would repeatedly happen in Vietnam: take ground, die holding it, and then leave it. Eventually, both the soldiers on the ground and the people back home began to question the intelligence of such a seemingly wasteful strategy.
While Xray went up in flames, Tully and his men made it to their LZ and were extracted without issue. McDade was less fortunate. His 500ft plus long column had another mile further to go, and when they reached LZ Albany, he gave his soldiers the opportunity to take five, sit, have a smoke, or a piss. Two PAVN scouts were captured and a field interrogation was conducted. While the enlisted men caught their breath, Mcdade called a quick council of war with his officers and NCOs; they huddled together at the head of the strung-out column of weary, tired, sweaty men. Unknown to the Americans, the 8th Battalion of the 66th PAVN regiment had stalked them and was hiding just out of sight in the brush and tall grass. At 13:20, the PAVN, who had been reserved in the Xray fight so remained fresh, conducted a masterful ambush. They sliced through the long, thin line of the 2/7 air cavalry. Machine guns, rifle fire, and other small arms and grenades made quick work of the unprepared, unawares infantrymen. Similar to the last episode at Fort William Henry, the column leaders were upfront at the time of the attack, so there was chaos along the line from the moment the firing began. Command and control was totally gone and the fighting degenerated into small bands of men trying to stay alive. The fighting was vicious and close-up. Most men found themselves face to face with their killers or their victims. This was again by design, "I gave my orders to the battalion," said the 66th's commander, Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An recalled years after the event. "Move inside the column, grab [the Americans] by the belt, and thus avoid casualties from the artillery and air." 400 men started the trek to LZ Albany, by the time the fighting ended and the unit was extracted, 121 were wounded and a whopping 151 were KIA. This was one of the worst defeats of the entire war. It left American war planners with very confusing data from the Ia Drang experience. They drew all the wrong conclusions.
Both sides believed they had won, maybe not a great victory but a victory nonetheless.
For the first time, the US took the true measure of its foe and found him clever, dedicated, and utterly without fear. "The enemy were aggressive, and they came off the mountain in large groups," Moore's after-action stated. "They were well camouflaged and took excellent advantage of cover and concealment. Even after being hit several times in the chest [with M-16 fire] many continued firing and moving for several more steps." An enemy like that must have struck fear into the heart of the young Americans tasked with stopping them, but stop them, they did. Added to the otherworldly zeal and fervor of the PAVN attacks were the unique ways the Vietnamese found to conceal and kill. Often, Moore remembered his men being forced to clear spider holes and traps along the perimeter of Xray. The NVA would be "dug into small spider holes" and then sit and wait for American infantry to pass, then they would swing up the lid of their hiding hole and begin firing. The shock and surprise were complete, but often the PAVN soldier was on a suicide mission. Still, the take away was, with superior firepower and tech, the US military would prevail. The enemy was incapable of matching the capabilities of the US in Vietnam and so long as they could be brought to battle they could be beaten. Gen Westmoreland summed up the lessons of Ia Drang thusly, "the ability of the Americans to meet and defeat the best troops the enemy could put on the field of battle was … demonstrated beyond any possible doubt, as was the validity of the Army's airmobile concept."
Hanoi now recognized the value of ambushes and guerilla tactics even against well-armed well supplied, organized US troops. Their men fought well, and most importantly now had experience and confidence against America's elite infantry. The NVA realized that the fight before them would be long and extremely deadly, but if they could weather the American lead storm, Vietnam would be united and Communist. That being said, they didn't want to commit national suicide with their strategy by continually meeting the Americans in the field. The Politburo in Hanoi decided to revert back to Gen Giap's unconventional operations. Westmoreland understood Giap's design describing it exactly, "From the first, the primary emphasis of the North Vietnamese focused on the Central Highlands and the central coastal provinces, with the basic end of drawing American units into remote areas and thereby facilitating control of the population in the lowlands." The plan from 1966-67 on was to commit to small unit action, ambush, harass, hit and run, assassination—a war of terror and frustration for the mighty Americans and their sidelined allies in Saigon. The much-vaunted "kill ratio" lauded by LBJ and Westmoreland and touted by MACV was illusory. Yes, the Americans killed more PAVN, but it never meant anything because the NVA never put a cap on how many lives they were willing to lose. Professor Dominic Tierney puts it best, Vietnam was "a limited war for us and total war for them. We have more power; they have more willpower."
IA drang is a story full of heroes and everything in between and I know I have probably missed telling most of them. One that I truly feel must be shared though is that of a man Hal Moore called "the best platoon leader I ever saw", Rick Rescorla. Known to his men as "Hard Core" or the "Cornish Hawk", after his birthplace, Rescorla must have been an incredible warrior to earn such high praise among the airmobile fighting men. Fighting in Vietnam earned him the Silver and Bronze Stars and a Purpleheart, and he retired from the armed services in 1990, having attained the rank of colonel. Hired on as chief of security for Morgan Stanley in the World Trade Center Buildings, Rescorla recognized the juicy target the symbols of capitalism made for America's enemies. To the annoyance of many a superior at Morgan Stanley, he insisted on running evac drills, always ready for the possibility. On 9/11 even as the PA system urged employees to return to their desks, Rescorla disregarded the messages and herded the people into the stairwells with his bullhorn and singing voice. Using his cell Rescorla called his wife saying, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life." Having successfully saved more than 2.5k people, this true hero ran back into the building to try and bring more people out. Like Moore before him, Rescorla refused to leave anyone behind. His last known words were: "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out." At 9:59 the South Tower collapsed as Rescorla was last seen climbing up to the tenth floor. His body was never found.
Alright, that is Ia Drang and the tale of Hal Moore's men. I hope you enjoyed and learned something, I know I did. Check out the social media stuff as always, rate/review/subscribe please It really does help the show and me. The Sources are in the notes but if you get the chance order Hal Moore and Galloway's book We were soldiers once and young. You can't get better than this. Also on youtube, there is a great video of survivors heading back to ia drang its worth watching if only to see them interact with the NVA cemetery. Thanks again for listening! Next up, we are heading back to the American Civil War, Tennesse, and a meeting between US Grant and Braxton Bragg and featuring one of my favorite generals - George Henry Thomas!