Research Report: We Were Soldiers Once and Young

By Kathleen Byrne , Perception of War in Literature

1. Abstract: We Were Soldiers Once and Young is a book published in 1992 by Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway about the Vietnam War that focuses on the First and Second Battalions of the 7th Calvary Regiment in the battle of La Drang Valley in November 1965, the United States' first large-unit battle of the Vietnam War. The book is written in first person from the viewpoint of Lt. Gen. Harold Moore.

2. Description:  The book describes the la Drang Battle from the point of view of Lt. Gen. Harold Moore, who was in command of 1st Battalion of the 7th Calvary Regiment during the week long la Drang Battle. The 1st Battalion was an air-mobile unit because of their use of Huey Helicopters. Moore wrote the book with the help of Joseph Galloway, who was the only journalist on the ground during the battle. Because the book is written in the first person, the authors are able to give an account of the emotions, tactics and politics that went into the week long, brutal battle of la Drang. The book gives descriptions of the battalion leaders' personalities and military history before the battle is described. Once the fighting between the People's Army of Vietnam and US starts, the narrative is split between bloody and gory accounts of the brutal fighting. With descriptions like "Jemison got up to throw (a grenade) and was hit again, this time knocked down by a bullet that struck him the left shoulder" (Moore, Galloway, 6) and "the enemy was all over, at least a couple of hundred of them walking around for three or four minutes ... shooting and machine-gunning our wounded and laughing and giggling (Moore, Galloway, 7)," the book gives the reader a feeling for what the war was like for those who lived through it and died in it. The book also focuses in on the thoughts and actions of the battalion leaders, not just the infantry-men and NCO's who lost their lives or survived the brutal battle. In the chapter entitled "Boots and Saddles," Moore articulates his feelings and thoughts in the late night hours proceeding the start of the deadly battle. He shares with the reader that "an endless string of 'what-if's' ran through my mind that nights as I leaned against the earthen wall of the old French fort. Time so spent is never wasted; if even one 'what-if' comes to pass a commander will be a few precious seconds ahead of the game... the hairiest time is that tenuous period before your troops get firmly organized. This is when you are most vulnerable... In the American Civil War it was a matter of principle that a good officer rode is horse as little as possible... I applied the same philosophy to Vietnam... some commanders used their helicopter as their personal mount. I never believed in that" (Moore 40). The book gives the reader the personality, background, thoughts and emotions of the men fighting in this first battle of the Vietnam War. 
3. Commentary: The book presents us with a detailed, interesting evaluation and description of the Vietnam War from the viewpoint of someone who was enlisted in the armed services during the conflict. Interestingly, this book is also written in the “modern” window we are studying (1990-Present), so the author’s voice is dualistic in the context of our project. Moore was a battalion commander during the war, so he is able to describe the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of his time in Vietnam. He has also let enough time pass from the time of the conflict to the publication of the book in order for there to be a more objective, journalistic tone to his writing. This tone is also influenced heavily by his partnering with a co-author who was the only journalist on the ground during the time covered in the book. In the other two books we will be studying in comparison to We Were Soldiers Once…, the authors are historians who have spent years studying a past conflict and have written a book centered around a thesis, or central argument about said war. It may be an imperfect comparison then, to put these differing books in the same category for our project. Despite these differences between the books, because we will be comparing chapters within these books that actually describe battles, rather than those that describe political and social context, personal history of soldiers, or anecdotes about key players in the war story, the books can be compared for our reasons. We will be using the first chapter from We Were Soldiers Once… for this comparison. This chapter is appropriately titled “Heat of Battle” and describes November 15, 1965 between the hours of 6:50 and 7:40 AM for the Charlie Company in Landing Zone X-Ray, La Drang Valley, in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Moore and Galloway open the chapter, and the book with “the bloody hole in the ground that was Captain Bob Edwards’s Charlie Company command post was crowded with men. Sergeant Hermon r. Hostuttler, twenty-five, from Terra Alta, West Virginia, lay crumpled in the red dirt, dead from an AK-47 round through his throat” (Moore, Galloway, 3). The chapter goes on to describe the deadly assault that Charlie Company endured as a result of their encounter with two thousand men of the People’s Army of Vietnam who were resting and recuperating when the American soldiers helicoptered into the area. Galloway and Moore describe the fighting in terms of wounded and dead, acts of bravery and sacrifice and quotations from the surviving soldiers as they recount their time in the La Drang. One such quotation, from an assistant machine gunner reads, “When I got up something hit me real hard on the back of my neck, knocked my head forward and my helmet fell off in the foxhole. I thought a guy had snuck up behind me and hit me with the butt of a weapon, it was such a blow. Wasn’t anyone there; it was a bullet from the side or the rear” (Moore, Galloway, 5). We Were Soldiers Once… And Young is dualistic in many ways that make is unlike other books in the “War Literature” genre: is both factual and emotional, memory and collected data, commentary and personal experience. We will be pulling one chapter from his complex and interesting pages and comparing its sentiment and descriptive word use to other books in its genre. By making this comparison, we hope to see how the Vietnam War, along with the First and Second World Wars, are portrayed in literature. 

     4.  We Are Soldiers Still. Moore, Harold, Galloway, Joseph. 2013.