We Were Soldiers Once… and Young: Ia Drang, the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam

In November 1965, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore led about 400 men by helicopter into a clearing in Vietnam’s Central Highlands called Landing Zone X-Ray. They landed close to a force several times their size. For three days, the first major battle between American and North Vietnamese troops was fought around that clearing.

Joseph Galloway, a 24-year-old UPI reporter, was there with a rifle.

Twenty-seven years later he and Moore wrote the book.

What happens in We Were Soldiers Once… and Young?

The Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, told from the ground. It follows Moore’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry through the air assault and the fight at X-Ray, and then the ambush of a sister battalion marching to a clearing called Landing Zone Albany.

The authors built it from their own memories and from long interviews with the men who survived. Names, ranks and hometowns run through every chapter. The cover photograph shows one of the battalion’s young officers, Lieutenant Rick Rescorla. The book is about the soldiers far more than the strategy. Random House published it in October 1992. It became a New York Times bestseller and has been on the Marine Corps Commandant’s reading list for decades. In 2002 it was made into the film We Were Soldiers, with Mel Gibson playing Moore.

What makes We Were Soldiers Once… and Young different from most battle histories?

Most battle histories are written from the top down, from maps, orders and after-action reports. This one is written from inside the perimeter, by the man who commanded it and a reporter who fought in it, and it keeps returning to individual soldiers by name.

That’s slower reading than a strategic overview, and it’s the reason the book has lasted. Readers who have never served finish it knowing what three days at Landing Zone X-Ray cost particular people.

Who were Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway?

Moore graduated from West Point in 1945, fought in Korea and Vietnam and earned the Distinguished Service Cross at Ia Drang. He retired in 1977 as a lieutenant general.

His career ran from the last months of World War II to the end of Vietnam. He served with the 187th Glider Infantry in occupied Japan and with the 82nd Airborne before Korea. After Ia Drang he commanded a brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division and later the 7th Infantry Division in Korea, and he finished as the Army’s deputy chief of staff for personnel.

In retirement he worked for the Crested Butte ski area in Colorado. He died in Auburn, Alabama, at 94, and he’s buried at Fort Benning. Galloway went on to a long career as a war correspondent. In 1998 the Army awarded him the Bronze Star with “V” for carrying a wounded soldier to safety under fire at X-Ray, the only civilian it decorated for valor in combat in Vietnam. He later covered military affairs for Knight Ridder and died in 2021.

How was We Were Soldiers Once… and Young received?

Very well, by the people who knew the subject best. David Halberstam praised it, and so did Norman Schwarzkopf.

The 2002 film, directed by Randall Wallace, grossed about $115 million worldwide. Moore and Galloway later went back to Vietnam together and wrote a second book, We Are Soldiers Still, published in 2008.

Why does We Were Soldiers Once… and Young belong on this shelf?

It shows what a commander and a professional writer can do as equal partners. Moore brought the command decisions and the men. Galloway brought the reporting and the craft. Both names are on the cover.

The book is better than either could have written alone.

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