We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam

by Harold G. Moore;Joseph L. Galloway

  Plumley and I were side by side as we boarded the Huey helicopter piloted by Bruce Crandall, the last flight carrying the last few men of my battalion out of LZ X-Ray on the afternoon of November 16. A few weeks later I was selected for promotion to colonel and given command of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. There were two men I brought with me to my new command: Plumley and my operations officer, Capt. Gregory “Matt” Dillon. For the next eight months I made it a point to be on the ground with whichever of my battalions had the key mission or was in active combat on operation after operation, battle after battle, across the Central Highlands from the South China Sea to the borders of Cambodia and Laos. Plumley was always there every step of the way, working his magic on soldiers and sergeants alike, a calm and steady example of courage under fire.

  In the late summer of 1966 we were both ordered back to new assignments in the United States and flew out of Saigon on the same chartered jet bound for San Francisco and on to Columbus, where our families awaited our return. After this tour Plumley was promoted to the new top rank among NCOs, command sergeant major. By now he wore the Combat Infantry Badge with two stars for his service in combat in three of America’s greatest wars of the twentieth century. Fewer than 270 soldiers and officers throughout the Army survived the experience to wear that small silver badge of honor and courage. He served a second full tour in Vietnam, 1968–1969, as command sergeant major of the 2nd Corps advisory detachment in Pleiku, once again stationed in the Central Highlands. In 1972–1973, Plumley was command sergeant major of the 3rd Brigade 2nd Infantry Division and then 1st Corps command sergeant major, both jobs in South Korea.

  In December 1974, I attended the retirement at Fort Benning of Command Sergeant Major Plumley and proudly pinned the Legion of Merit medal on my old friend’s chest. Plumley had completed thirty-two years of active duty with the U.S. Army, but his service to our country and our Army was not at an end. He would work another fifteen years as a civilian employee at Martin Army Hospital at Fort Benning before retiring again to enjoy his bird dogs and quail hunting.

  After my own retirement from the Army in 1977, my wife, Julie, and I spent most of each year at our home in Auburn, Alabama, a short forty-five-minute drive away from Columbus and Fort Benning. Julie and I were frequent visitors to the Plumley home, where Miss Deurice always had a fresh-baked pecan or sweet potato pie ready to cut.

  In the late 1980s as we were researching the Ia Drang battles, Joe came to Auburn to do some work with me on our project. I drove him to Fort Benning to see where my battalion had lived and trained in 1964 and 1965, and then we headed to the Plumley home in Columbus for a scheduled visit with the sergeant major. Joe had not seen Plumley since our last field operation together in Vietnam in 1966. Plumley was standing patiently in his front yard waiting for us. Joe walked up to him and stuck out his hand. The sergeant major ignored that and instead pulled Joe into a bear hug, thumping him enthusiastically on the back. Joe’s jaw dropped in total shock and surprise. “It was like I had been hugged by God Himself,” Joe told me afterward. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”

  Nothing speaks more loudly of the deep and lasting impression that Basil Plumley had on generations of young Army draftees than their reactions to his arrival at some of the first reunions of the Ia Drang veterans in the late 1980s. Although these men had served only a two-year obligation to the Army and nation and had returned to civilian life many years ago, as they gathered in the reunion hospitality suite a few would spot the old sergeant major in the door and, turning pale, would ease their way to the wall and try to make a stealthy exit behind him. Anyone who had ever been counseled for mistakes large or small by Plumley never forgot it and never wanted to repeat it. They were afraid he still had his old pocket notebook and that their names might still be written down in it for a long-delayed personal counseling session.

  During these years Plumley gathered every Friday morning with a small group of other retired sergeants major at a local restaurant in Columbus for coffee and catching up on Army news and gossip. To the casual onlooker it may have looked like a typical group of old grandfathers at their usual table, laughing and joking and ragging each other over their coffee. But they are the lions in winter, the true backbones of our Army. Joe says that even though they wear PX plaid shirts these days he still sees, in his mind’s eye, the rows of combat ribbons on their chests. For him and for me they are the history of America at war for half a century.

  None of these old lions ever roared with greater effect than Basil Plumley, who has marched steadfastly through life adhering to the code of the hills of West Virginia, the rules and discipline of the Old Army, and his own sense of duty fulfilled and a job done well.

  SIX

  Back to the Ia Drang!

  When we reached Pleiku in the Central Highlands, we discovered that the chartered helicopter that would take us to the Ia Drang battlefields would be delayed. Between that and the additional discovery that the green light given in Hanoi did not necessarily apply out in the hinterlands, we spent a nervous weekend in yet another shabby hotel. By now Joe had begun rating our lodging by his own variant of the star rating system—the rat rating system. He pronounced the Pleiku establishment a two-rat hotel, meaning each of us was guaranteed at least two rats in our room. He wasn’t far off the mark.

  Our old hotel sat on a dusty road in a poor section of Pleiku. The new wave of progress and construction had not made it to this wild west frontier town. A dozen or more Vietnamese schoolchildren had spotted the arriving foreign guests and now hung out in front of the hotel, pouncing on us when we emerged to gleefully practice the English they had learned in class. A snake charmer likewise swung into action when we stepped out the door.

  It became obvious that the clearances from Hanoi and the presence of General An had their limitations here, just as they did at the Vietnamese army base in An Khe. Forrest Sawyer, Joe, and I began a round of calls on Pleiku Province People’s Committee officials, who made it clear that no matter what Hanoi said there was only one clearance that mattered and it was theirs to bestow or withhold. Over endless cups of green tea we once again put our case for a historic return to the Ia Drang in company with General An and the two colonels. Having made his point, the chief of the province committee gave us his approval and we were cleared to fly on Monday, October 18.

  In the meantime, worried about the delay in getting the chartered helicopter to Pleiku, I got clearance for Tony Nadal and one of our interpreters to drive out west and scout for an alternate way to reach the Ia Drang by jeep, truck, or even by foot if necessary. Tony came back and reported: “It was a trip from Hell.” No doubt it was, but at least now we knew there was a way to get where we had to go if the helicopter failed to arrive.

  On Monday we convoyed out to Pleiku Airport—formerly the old American airfield where once chartered jetliners and military transport aircraft jockeyed for ramp space and takeoff and landing slots. Now it handles two Vietnam Air flights per week. None was due this day and we found the terminal locked and shuttered and deserted when we arrived. There had been a time when this place was buzzing like a hornets’ nest, the roads jammed with Army jeeps and trucks, huge supply dumps packed with the arriving machinery of war, uniformed Americans moving purposefully in the tropical heat, big chartered jets unloading newly arrived soldiers to do their year in Hell, who marched past columns of smiling, fortunate soldiers who were going home. Now there was only silence.

  Our group sat on the concrete walkway outside and a bull session with Colonel Thuoc developed. He told us he joined the Viet Minh army at age fifteen just in time to fight the French at Dien Bien Phu. He recounted how in September 1965 the company he commanded and others in the 7th Battalion 66th Regiment of the People’s Army set out to march south down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia bound for combat in South Vietnam. Each man carried in his pack a new uniform, packages of salt and rice, a plastic poncho/groundsheet, a packet of quinine tablets for malaria
, and a personal notebook. The march took his unit two months and six days to the Ia Drang River, where they turned east into South Vietnam on November 10, 1965. Two days later they were told to change into the new uniforms they had in their packs.

  The tall, thin Vietnamese colonel remarked that in 1965 his soldiers were well trained in all their weapons but had “very poor radios.” He praised the U.S. Army’s PRC-25 backpack field radio sets and, with a smile, said he captured two of the better American radio sets at LZ X-Ray. As the war continued Thuoc said his men captured enough PRC-25s and batteries to switch over to using them almost exclusively. Jack Smith, now an ABC national news correspondent, who in 1965 fought in the Ia Drang with C Company 2nd Battalion 7th Cavalry, asked Thuoc if his men had executed American prisoners of war during the battles. Thuoc replied simply: “Not intentionally.”

  The opening of Pleiku Airport terminal and the noisy arrival of the Soviet-made Hind helicopter that ABC was chartering at an hourly rate of $4,000 cut short the conversation with Thuoc as everyone scrambled to gather their packs, cameras, and water bottles. The white-painted helicopter normally flew for similar hourly pay for foreign companies exploring for oil offshore and for the U.S. Joint Task Force–MIA on its searches for the remains of missing American soldiers. It was not large enough to handle all of us, so we divided into two groups for the trip across the miles and years to Landing Zone X-Ray, some thirty-five miles and a quarter century away from Pleiku.

  The two civilian Vietnamese pilots in the cockpit passed the word back to those of us on the first lift that they hadn’t the foggiest idea where LZ X-Ray was located. The former Huey pilot Bruce Crandall and I moved forward and knelt between them in the cockpit. I showed them my old Army topographical map of the area and put my finger on the clearing. Not good enough. “Anyone have a compass?” we shouted to the rear. Joe fished around in his pack and pulled out a battered old compass he had carried as a Boy Scout. With it we oriented our pilots and, finally, were on our way.

  For Bruce Crandall, squatting between the two Vietnamese helicopter pilots, the reasons for this journey were twofold. “My purposes for going were to travel with my brothers back to the time and place where we first became a family, and to use the opportunity to find out everything I could about my missing helicopter and crew who are still missing in action,” Crandall said.

  Huey helicopter No. 63-8808 with crew members WO Jesse Phillips, WO Ken Stancil, Crew Chief Don Grella, and Gunner Jim Rice—all of whom flew missions during the Ia Drang battles—disappeared on a routine supply mission between An Khe and Qui Nhon on December 28, 1965. They were in Bruce’s company in the 229th Assault Helicopters and the missing men have been on his mind for all these years.

  Everywhere we went on this trip Bruce asked for information and help finding the crash site and the missing men. He said he was particularly grateful to Colonel Thuoc “for his assistance and continued efforts to find our MIA crew.” The North Vietnamese colonel brought Bruce photos of downed Hueys from military files in Hanoi and at every stop on our journey questioned military and civilian authorities on the subject. “He was and is a true professional,” Crandall said.

  We watched out the windows and windshield as the city gave way to patchwork plots of small coffee and tea plantings, two or three small villages, and then we were over familiar territory—thick scrub jungle, meandering creeks, open areas with tall elephant grass and no evidence of human habitation. Much as it was twenty-eight years ago.

  The first time I flew over this countryside was at dawn on Sunday, November 14, 1965, when we did an aerial reconnaissance mission searching for a clearing in the Ia Drang Valley suitable for our helicopter assault scheduled in just a few hours. To disguise our intentions the two Hueys and two escorting gunships flew a course from Plei Me Camp to Duc Co Camp on the other side of the Ia Drang River. Just passing by, but from the open doors of the helicopters we scanned the terrain carefully with binoculars. We needed a clearing big enough to take eight Hueys landing together. Only two clearings seemed large enough, one designated Yankee, the other dubbed X-Ray. Yankee turned out to have tree stumps dotting the clearing, so it would be X-Ray, at the base of the Chu Pong.

  Now, from two miles out, Bruce and I spotted the X-Ray clearing dead ahead of us at the foot of the Chu Pong Massif. As we approached the clearing I saw clear signs that nature had done much to repair the devastation of war. Shattered trees had grown new branches. Shell holes and the line of old foxholes were at least partially filled. The elephant grass had reclaimed large swaths of land that had been burned over by fires set by napalm and bombs and artillery shells. I was stunned to see wildflowers blooming here and there in the clearing.

  The helicopter settled to the ground almost precisely on the spot where Crandall landed that morning twenty-eight years ago carrying me, Sergeant Major Plumley, Capt. Tom Metsker, and my two radio operators.

  The steps were lowered and at 11:15 a.m. I stepped down into the tall grass, closely followed by Joe and the sergeant major. For those of us who have known him for over four decades, Plumley’s first name is Sergeant Major. He’s that kind of man. Mrs. Plumley once cornered Joe at a reunion and asked him: “Joe, why don’t you call the sergeant major Basil? I do.” Joe just shook his head and tried to explain to Mrs. Plumley why that would be unthinkable to him or any of us. “Ma’am, as far as I am concerned, his first name is Sergeant Major and always will be,” Joe replied.

  For years I had felt the need to return to this place and now, finally, I was here in the company of men who had fought both with me and against me. We were standing on the ground where so much had occurred that resonated throughout a war and throughout our lives. Each of us separated as we came off that Russian helicopter, each moving with little hesitation toward the places that were important to him. Our two nervous Vietnamese military intelligence minders warned us repeatedly of the dangers of unexploded shells and bombs and urged that we watch closely where we stepped. I felt certain that whatever higher power had brought us through this battle and other battles without a scratch had not brought us back here now just to see some of us die a delayed death from an old bomb or mortar shell. Our escorts weren’t so sure.

  We were met by a wall of oppressive heat and humidity as well as a fresh and unfamiliar green on trees and grass that none of us remembered from that November 1965. This time we arrived in the Ia Drang at the tail end of the monsoon season. The ground was moist and soft where in our memory it was baked hard as rock by the sun. Water flowed in what we knew as the dry creek bed—a tactically critical fold in the earth that both sides coveted and fought and died for during the battle. The trees now covered with fresh green leaves had been coated with red dust back then, and the bullets and shrapnel from bombs and artillery rounds denuded the trees of foliage in short order. We were instantly drenched in sweat and every movement was an effort. There was, with the departure of the helicopter, an eerie silence disturbed only occasionally by noises from the tall grass and the jungle forest: an unfamiliar bird’s cry; the whir of insect wings; the distant chatter of a monkey. We heard none of that on our first visit here, when the thundering noise of bombs, rockets, machine guns, rifles, grenades, men shouting orders, other men screaming in pain and calling for the medic or their mothers shut out all other sounds and half deafened us. Then the only smells were smoke from the grass and trees set afire by our shells and bombs, the reek of cordite and gunpowder, the sickly copper smell of freshly spilled blood in large quantities, the awful choking odor of burning human flesh that once smelled is never forgotten. Then, as the days and nights wore on, there was the sickening sweet smell given off by hundreds of dead men bloating and putrefying where they had fallen in a large circle in the jungle all around us. There was none of that now. Only an occasional whiff of stagnant water the rains had left in the bottoms of old bomb craters and foxholes; a musty damp odor given off by the red earth itself; an exhalation of life and growth and greenery from jungle and forest. All around
us the tall elephant grass was a brilliant green.

  My former company commanders, Tony Nadal and John Herren, headed for the creek bed and beyond, where their companies had fought for three days and two nights. With them went Ernie Savage, now a retired master sergeant, who as a twenty-one-year-old buck sergeant in Herren’s B Company had inherited command of the Lost Platoon after his lieutenant and two more senior sergeants had been killed in the first ten minutes of battle—and kept his men alive for twenty-seven hours while cut off and surrounded by a large force of North Vietnamese under orders from General An to wipe them out. They had to hike a hundred yards or more through the tall grass and scrub trees, with Major Hao the minder clucking over them like a mother hen as he warned them to watch every step they took. It wasn’t the poisonous snakes that worried him. It was fields where unexploded bombs and mortar shells and 40mm M79 grenades had rested half buried and untouched for a quarter century but were still just as deadly as the day they rolled out of some American munitions plant. Hao wanted them to turn back, to abandon this risky trek, but they could not and would not. Eventually they came to that slight knoll where Savage had gathered the shattered platoon of twenty-nine men—nine dead, thirteen wounded, and seven able-bodied men—and fought off an enemy determined to wipe them out.

  They found little that spoke of the twenty-seven hours that small, suffering little band spent cut off from the battalion, a tiny island of resistance in a sea of enemy soldiers who came at them over and over during the longest night any of them would ever know. Their medic, Doc Randy Lose of Biloxi, Mississippi, crawled from man to man plugging their wounds and his own with rolls of C-ration toilet paper after his bandages ran out, keeping them from screaming in pain when the morphine ran out and only silence and the black night was hiding them from the enemy all around them. When we pushed out during a lull in the fighting the next afternoon at first we couldn’t find them. They had no time to dig foxholes, but during that night each of them had somehow burrowed down, scraping at the hard, dry soil with their fingers, and as the artillery they called down on themselves and the encircling ring of enemies covered them with dirt and branches and leaves, they became part of the earth itself. When we called out for the twenty-one-year-old Sergeant Savage he slowly raised his hand into the air and suddenly there they were in front of us. From the time Savage assumed command of the shattered platoon not another man was killed and Doc Lose somehow kept all the wounded alive. They still had ammunition and were ready to fight on if necessary. Their story and this place where it unfolded are legend in today’s Army. When we asked General An about this trapped platoon he shook his head slowly and told us that he had ordered his troops to wipe them out. “Their will to live was stronger than our desire to kill them.”