Landing Zone Albany.

[Subdeacon Joe]

http://www.stripes.com/blogs/the-ruptured-duck/the-ruptured-duck-1.160117/lz-albany-the-forgotten-battle-1.160992

 

Thursday marks the anniversary of the ambush near LZ Albany, the
second and largely forgotten half of the Vietnam War battle of the Ia
Drang Valley in 1965.

The first part of the battle has been dramatized in the 2002 movie
"We Were Soldiers" and lionized in the recent History Channel
documentary "Vietnam in HD," both of which show U.S. troops’ heroic
stand at LZ X-Ray.

Neither mentions the far bloodier engagement that followed, when the
2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry was nearly annihilated. Of the roughly 400
soldiers in the battalion, about 70 percent were killed or wounded.

"What happened out there was just a shootout in the grass, and man oh
man, the enemy was ready for that fight, we were not," said Joe
Galloway, a reporter at the time who co-wrote the book "We Were Soldiers
Once … and Young," upon which the film was based. He was also featured
in "Vietnam in HD."

Galloway covered the first part of the battle as a reporter for
United Press International, but his book provides an account of the
battle as a whole. More than half of it covers LZ Albany.

On the day of the ambush, the battalion was strung out in a long
column snaking its way through the jungle and tall grass, Galloway
said. When a platoon captured two prisoners, the battalion commander
decided to personally interrogate them and he called all the company
commanders and their first sergeants to converge on his position at the
head of the column, Galloway said.

That left most of the rest of the soldiers leaderless when the enemy struck, racing through the column, killing anyone they saw.

The result was chaos, said Bud Alley, a second lieutenant in the battalion at the time.

"There were no maps, no water; we had not slept for three days,"
Alley wrote in an email. "Everywhere one turned, you either stepped on a
dead GI or dead NVA. Grenades going off, mortars and artillery coming
in, and then jets and napalm."

When asked what memories from the battle are still with him 46 years
later, Alley replied," All of them: The noise, the screams, the
confusion, the helplessness, the chaos."

Yet the general public has no idea what happened at LZ Albany, he said.

Scott Reda, executive producer of "Vietnam in HD," said the episode
on the Ia Drang focused on the first part of the battle because that was
the part that Galloway witnessed firsthand.

"'Vietnam in HD' is not meant to be a comprehensive documentary about
every battle in the Vietnam War; that would take far more than the six
episodes we produced to do it justice," Reda said in a
statement."Rather, the series is meant to give viewers a better
understanding of the war, but primarily focus on the personal stories
and experiences of a handful of participants, which by their very nature
is limited in scope.

"I hope you understand that we mean no disrespect by not including certain battles."

Likewise, a segment in the movie "We Were Soldiers" that addressed
what happened after the first part of the battle was cut from the film,
Galloway said.

"I disagreed with that, so did Gen. [Hal] Moore, but when you sign a
contract, you lose control of the movie part of it anyway, they do what
they're going to do," Galloway said. "It's kind of like giving up your
child for adoption."

Director Randall Wallace explained why the movie version of Galloway's book omitted LZ Albany.

"Stupendous courage and sacrifice was displayed at LZ Albany, but the
characters we chose to focus on (Hal Moore and his unit) we're not at
that confrontation; telling the story of LZ Albany and the stunning
heroism displayed there, would require a separate film to do it
justice," he said in a statement.

But LZ Albany's absence from both the movie and documentary clearly pains Galloway.

"The men and officers of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, who survived
that battle, my hat's off to them," Galloway said. "I deeply regret
that the movie, that the various documentaries have never taken account
of their bravery, their sacrifices and the horrible memories that they
live with."

[Litl Red]

It's truly a shame there isn't a "required reading" (or for today, a "required viewing") of movies from every war we've ever been in. Few movies cover entire wars and every significant engagement.

 

Worse yet is that American History as taught today doesn't dig very deeply. It hasn't the time. And that in itself speaks volumes.

[Utah Bob #35998]