Since retiring he serves on the boards of half a dozen major corporations and also works as a consultant to defense industries. Since I cant have that, I would like a job working as closely with the Army as possible. He is married and the father of four children. DUNCAN, Ken, fifty-three, executive officer of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav, left the Army in August 1966, and returned to his hometown of Thomaston, Georgia, where he works with a textile-manufacturing company. In the spring of 1992, Frank Henry was posthumously inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame. On February 26, 2007, President George W. Bush presented Crandall with the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Ia Drang Valley. ADAMS, Warren, sixty-two, first sergeant, Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, retired in 1968 as the best-educated command sergeant major in the Army. Ia Drang set the blueprint for the Vietnam War with the Americans relying on air mobility, artillery fire and close air support, while the PAVN neutralized that firepower by quickly engaging American forces at very close range. BROWN, Thomas W. (Tim), seventy-three, the 3rd Brigade commander in the Ia Drang, retired a brigadier general in 1973, after thirty-plus years of service and a second tour in Vietnam, with two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars from his three wars. FESMIRE, John A. MARUHNICH, John, sixty-two, mortar sergeant, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in LZ X-Ray, retired a sergeant first class in 1974 with twenty-four years service. GWIN, S. Lawrence (Larry), fifty-one, executive officer, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, stayed with his company through July 4, 1966. He won a National Magazine Award for his October 29, 1990, cover article on the Ia Drang battles. Thus died one of the finest officers who fought in the Ia Drang. He left active duty in 1967, but continued in the Army Reserves until his retirement in 1990 as a colonel. SMITH, Jack P., forty-seven, returned to Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry after his wounds healed, and completed his tour. EIN: 52-1149668, Copyright 2023 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display. Don Cornett had a wife and a son, a mother and a father and two sisters. Spec. Although it was left out of We Were Soldiers, Albany was no less bloody than X-Ray. from around the world. TIFFT, Richard P., Pathfinder team leader in LZ X-Ray, later served as commander of the Golden Knights, the Armys parachute team. He retired a colonel in 1983. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code. Before the Battle of la Drang was over, 305 Americans had been killed along with an estimated 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. USA. About 80 U.S. soldiers were killed, 124 wounded, in the first two days of the fight. MCDADE, Robert, seventy, who commanded the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, retired a colonel in 1975. This battle took place from 11-14-1965, thru 11-18-1965. We Were Soldiers (2002) is considered by many to be one of the best Vietnam War films ever made. It was the first major combat action between U.S. ground forces and the North Vietnamese Army. Feb 25, 2017. 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. In his spare time he camps, climbs, skis, and fishes for trout in the Rockies. After a North Vietnamese strike against the Special Forces camp at Plei Me, American forces deployed in an effort to destroy the attackers. His old company commander, John Herren, and all the survivors of the Lost Platoon believe that Charles Lose should have been awarded the Medal of Honor that they recommended for him. He went home to Anderson County, South Carolina, where he is a deputy sheriff. LAVENDER, David A. It was the first major battle between PAVN and US Army units and one of the war's bloodiest encounters. The Ia Drang Valley is where the U.S. truly went to war. He was forty-five. In a 1967 article for the Saturday Evening Post, former ABC reporter Jack Smith, who was a private first class in Charlie Company during the battle, wrote about Cornett's last moments. On the second day, North Vietnamese forces launched a heavy attack including hand-to-hand combat. The Ia Drang Valley is the place the U.S. really went to warfare. After the Ia Drang campaign, Hastings was badly burned when the O-1E Bird Dog spotter plane he was piloting was shot down over the Mang Yang Pass and crash-landed in the old French Group Mobile 100 cemetery beside Route 19 on Christmas Eve 1965. You can customize the cemeteries you volunteer for by selecting or deselecting below. 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. His friends completed the tree for him and dedicated it to Sergeant China Joe Nye. A total of 305 soldiers died. Jeanette spent the better part of a year in a military hospital while his shattered leg was repaired. He retired from the battlefield only after all possible service had been rendered to the infantry battalion. The outcome convinced the North Vietnamese that they could reduce the threat of U.S. firepower by engaging the Americans at close quarters where U.S. airstrikes would prove risky and then melt away into the jungle or across the border into sanctuaries in Cambodia. He and his wife live in Lake Forest, Illinois. Lt. Col. Hal Moores 1stBattalion, 7thCalvary wasordered to take on an air assaultin the Ia Drang Valley. He is assistant principal of a public high school in the Bronx. He told me his wife's name was [Sylvia]. He is a colonel and the provost marshal of the U.S. Army Forces Command (Forscom) in Atlanta, Georgia. 5 cemeteries found within kilometers of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. Carrara says, I dont dwell on Vietnam, but now and then I hear something or smell something and flash back to those days. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency: Ia Drang Valley Incident. By Trevor Arendall, July 9 . 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. Lt. Don Cornett along with 154 Troopers from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment were killed in the Ia Drang Valley, Nov. 17, 1965, at a small clearing known as Landing Zone Albany. In 1974 he transferred from the infantry to the military police. "My gut told me, this is wrong, this isn't right, something's wrong here. "Why did I deserve to live? . He then formed a computer-software company. Moore and his battalion were evacuated the next day, Nov. 17. They are stories that not only serve to maintain our connection with history, but also educate us and force us to confront the good and the bad and learn from it. When he got back to Refugio, Texas, he called on Joe Galloways parents but mercifully concealed the true circumstances of their meeting on the battlefield in X-Ray. The Battle that changed the war in vietnam Overview A Vietnamese military maxim states: He who controls the Central Highlands controls South Vietnam. Now I felt terribly alone. when I said to hell with it. He and his wife own and manage a trailer park, and Kluges night job is corrections officer for the Arizona State Department of Corrections. He retired in 1990. Among the many survivors of the ambush was 1st Lt. Rick Rescorla, a platoon chief who died Sept. 11, 2001, rescuing individuals from the World Commerce Heart's south tower till it crashed round him. I marked off 65 names and thats when it really hit me what had happened and it just overwhelmed me. Lt. Don Cornett, along with 154 troopers from 2/7 Cav, were killed in the Ia Drang Valley at a small clearing known as Landing Zone Albany. Fighting was so intense that a battalion commander, Lt. Col. Hal Moore, reported finding a dead American with his hands at the throat of a dead North Vietnamese soldier. By Staff. But Westmoreland believed the battle validated the airmobile tactic of quick strikes to catch the enemy off guard, kill as many as possible and withdraw back to base. He owns a property-management firm in Tampa, Florida. "Back then Stars and Stripes would carry the casualty reports and I had a red pen and started checking off the names of guys I knew who were listed as KIA. He died. A high school dropout, he went back to college, earned a B.A., and was working on an M.A. He added a masters degree in Latin American studies to his M.A. The 430 troops of the 1st Battalion, 1stCavalry Division loaded into helicopters and were dropped into the Ia Drang valley. Somebody grabbed him under his arms and dragged him toward the trees, but dropped him in the clearing where air support was dropping napalm. ROZANSKI, Gordon P. (Rosie), fifty-four, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry S-4 in the Ia Drang, was wounded in both arms, both legs, and the stomach in the Bong Son campaign in early 1966. He died less than 100 yards from where his best friend lay wounded. Battle of Ia Drang Valley Survivors These men survived the fighting in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam from Oct 23, 1965 to Nov 1965. WHITESIDE, Jerry E., fifty-five, fire-support coordinator in LZ X-Ray, served a second tour in Vietnam as an adviser. 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. More than anything else in the world I would like to be back in the Green Machine, he says. To the Americans, the battle validated their new airmobile strategy using helicopters to move troops quickly into remote jungle areas often without roads and inflict heavy casualties by airpower and artillery. Her daughter, Camille, was soon joined by a brother, Robert, and a sister, Barbara. On November 14, 1965, Captain Ed Freeman made repeated flights into the Ia Drang Valley under intense fire to bring in supplies and evacuate the wounded. He left the Army in October 1966, and went home to his native Ohio, where he works as a carpenter. At the end of a year only fifteen of the original contingent were still there, Gwin included. 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. He studied to be a tool-and-die machinist and worked at that job for several years until the strain of long hours standing on his bad leg severely affected his hip and back. Edwards is the acting borough manager of Dublin, Pennsylvania; he and his wife, Nancy, live in nearby New Hope. He is married and has four children. A month before the Ia Drang operation, North Vietnamese regulars attacked a U.S. Special Forces base at Plei Me, hoping to lure the ineffectual South Vietnamese army out of its base at the provincial capital, Pleiku, and destroy it. He accepted, I won, but he only recently began paying offone bottle at a time. Plumley says, Scott is so tight with a dollar youd think he came out of West Point.. 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. On his chest he wore the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and five Purple Hearts. Johns retired a brigadier general and is now dean of faculty at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Johns, whose two youngest children are in college, does volunteer work and writes for her own pleasure in her spare time. Some of them had blood on their faces from scratches and from other guys' wounds. He retired in August 1990, and now lives in Peekskill, New York. BECK, Bill, forty-nine, assistant machine gunner, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav in the Ia Drang, left the Army in 1966 and went home to his native Steelton, Pennsylvania. By whatever measure, the chaotic, bloody Battle of the Ia Drang Valley set the tone for the rest of war. McNamara told Johnson that the U.S. could continue with its limited engagement or massively escalate the war with hundreds of thousands more troops. NYE, George (China Joe), demolition-team leader, 8th Engineers, attached to the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in Landing Zone X-Ray, died of an apparent heart attack at age fifty-one on December 8, 1991, at his home in Bangor, Maine. The Ia Drang Scholarship Fund was founded in 1994 by LTG (Ret) Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway from earnings on their book We Were Soldiers Once-And Young. Major Bruce P. Crandall's UH-1D helicopter climbs skyward after discharging a load of infantrymen on a search and destroy mission. The men were still in an administrative maneuver, so when the word to halt came they plopped down where they were. The survivors of Landing Zone X-Ray have always had an aura of fame about them. The losses at Ia Drang prompted the North Vietnamese to rethink their plan to confront U.S. forces with large, conventional formations, reverting to hit-and-run attacks where U.S. air and artillery power was less effective. Another 71 Americans had been killed in earlier, smaller skirmishes that led up to the Ia Drang battles. He co-authored the book We Were Soldiers Once And Young with Hal Moore. He died . In 1946, Ho Chi Minh had warned the French, who were trying to restore control over their former protectorate, that you can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.. The only question was which side could outlast the other. The mission of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) is to honor and preserve the legacy of service and educate all generations about the impact of the Vietnam War. 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. 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. All Rights Reserved. This is the tale of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in 1965.
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