Analysis of We Were Soldiers Once and Young Book by Moore - Essay Example

The top military command in America miscalculated; the political leaders failed in their arithmetic, but not the soldiers. They did the ultimate commitment and sacrificed their lives. The following observation by the author indicates how the soldiers, many of them young and a few war veterans, stood by the “7 Army Values of "Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage" Moore argues in the prologue, “We were the children of the 1950s and we went where we were sent because we loved our country.”(xviii) This sums up all the qualities that are expected of an American soldier.

The story of the book from Chapter I, “Heat of the Battle’ to Chapter 26, “Reflections and Perceptions,” provides vivid accounts of what must have transpired at the battlefront and in the minds of those who died and the mute witness were their mutilated bodies. Those who survived provided vital information about the historic days of the war. November 14, 1965, was the fateful day. Four hundred and fifty men of Harold Moore’s battalion engaged the Vietnamese regulars in a helicopter assault on a landing Zone in the Ia Drang Valley of South Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

America was trying out new tactics and weapons since World War II. The troops were far outnumbered, with more than two thousand enemy soldiers who challenged men under Moore’s command. Brutal firefights followed until November 16 and the enemy was repulsed. A counterattack by the North Vietnamese was fast. The next day another American battalion was attacked, taking the American army by surprise. They held the battlefield but suffered heavy casualties. Casualties on either side were heavy.

Two hundred and thirty-four Americans were killed in the battle of Ia Drang. Each death was an extraordinary example of heroism and describing one such martyrdom of a soldier Moore writes, “ We discovered in that depressing, hellish place, where death was our constant companion, that we loved each other, we killed for each other, we died for each other.”(6) Narrating one specific incident he sums up, “Just five-days past his twenty-fourth birthday John L Geoghegan of Pelham, New York, the only child of proud and doting parents, husband of Barbra and father of six-month-old Camille, lay dead, shot through the head and back, in the tall grass and red dirt of the Ia Drang Valley.”(6) This description gives the total picture as to what must have happened in those three awful days and how the soldiers sacrificed their lives to uphold the 7 Army Values.

As a result of this war, new political equations were thought of, fresh military strategies were drawn up and the author argues, “That changed the spring of 1965 when we lost eight of our fifteen platoon leader lieutenants. Most were reserve Officers who had completed their commitment.”(24) The pages of those 3 days of American history about Vietnam War will remain daubed in bloodshed forever. Conclusion: The American high command strategy of war of attrition failed, but the soldiers upheld the high traditions of the army. The soldiers did the greatest sacrifice in the tragic war.