Forty years ago Monday, approximately 450 officers and men of the 1st Battalion of the 7th Calvary of the United States Army went into battle.Forty years ago Monday, then-Colonel Harold G. Moore and his troopers, as he lovingly calls them to this day, swooped from the sky in helicopters onto a football field-sized clearing in the central highlands of South Vietnam.
Forty years ago Monday, U.S. regular-army forces and North Vietnamese regular-army forces met for the first time in the Vietnam War.
Forty years ago Monday, Americans and North Vietnamese struggled over a hot, dusty, hell-hole of a piece of ground called Landing Zone X-Ray.
On the field that day and over the next six days, at LZ X-Ray and an even deadlier killing ground designated LZ Albany, Americans fought and died — many heroically — simply because that’s what their country asked them to do.
Those men were husbands and fathers. They were sons and brothers. They were high school sweethearts. They were soldiers.
Many of them also were athletes who did “heroic” things on the fields of play before they were asked to be truly heroic in service to their country.
The stories of their exploits — both in sport and in battle — and those of hundreds of thousands of others who served in Vietnam would fill volumes.
The stories you’ll read here today are those of three survivors of that terrible battle 40 years ago.
In choosing to highlight them, however, we do not downplay or disregard the service of other veterans in other wars.
In truth, we run these stories on this day to serve as a bridge between Friday’s annual Veterans Day commemoration and tomorrow’s Ia Drang anniversary.
In so doing, we pay tribute to all those who have fought in service to our country.
For the last three days, the Ia Drang veterans have been gathered in Washington, D.C., for a reunion to mark 40 years since their walk through hell, and I very much wanted to be there.
To meet Bill Beck, Greg Dillon and George Forrest face to face.
To see my friend Jim Hibbitts from Alexandria — who survived one horrific night cut off and surrounded on the trail to LZ Albany — gather with his comrades-in-arms and share their camaraderie.
To shake hands again with General Hal Moore, who makes his home in Auburn.
Since I couldn’t, this is my way of thanking them and veterans of all ages and all conflicts for the sacrifices they’ve made so we can have the freedoms we enjoy.
The first instinct here was to write flowery prose or poignant phrases in homage to those many, many veterans, but in this case as with most, simple is best.
And it doesn’t get any simpler than the way Jim Hibbitts put it as we talked recently.
“Hate the war, love the warrior,” he said.
There’s no use trying to say it any better.
