We Were Soldiers Family Review

The story of the first major battle of the American phase of the Vietnam War, and the soldiers on both sides that fought it, while their wives wait nervously and anxiously at home for the good news or the bad news.A telling of the 1st Battalion, 7 Cavalry Regiment, 1st Calvary Division's battle against overwhelming odds in the Ia Drang valley of Vietnam in 1965. Seen through the eyes of the battalion's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (played by Mel Gibson), we see him take command of the battalion and its preparations to go into Vietnam. We also see how the French had, years earlier, been defeated in the same area. The battle was to be the first major engagement between U.S. and N.V.A. forces in South Vietnam, and showed the use of helicopters as mobility providers and assault support aircraft.—grantssIn 1965, as America prepares to send its troops into South Vietnam's green Central Highlands, the devoted commander and seasoned paratrooper, Lieutenant Colonel Harold Moore, prepares to lead the young men of the First Battalion of the Seventh Air Cavalry into the war's first major ground battle. Hopelessly outnumbered--four hundred soldiers against a North Vietnamese infantry division of two thousand men--Moore's soldiers will fight in Ia Drang Valley, or the Valley of Death, during three days of inferno. We Were Soldiers displays the courage and the dignity of few men on the fierce battlefield, as well as the pain and suffering of all those who were left behind alive but, nonetheless, wounded.—Nick RiganasAs the French fail to defend their Indochinese colonies against communist insurgency, US president Johnson decides in cold war logic the US Army must take over the defense of the (South) Vietnamese puppet state, but refuses to mobilize properly. Devout Catholic, patriot and family father lieutenant colonel Harold Moore, CO of the the first battalion, has read up and gives superior paratrooper training to the young recruits of his reorganized 1/7th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division, relying on close collaboration with major Bruce Crandall''s team of combat and medical evacuation helicopter crews. Their dubious assignment to conquer a mountain in Ia Drang, the 'Valley of Death', on a Vietcong division, which proves dug in masterly under tough, capable lieutenant colonel Nguyen Huu An, is a bloody nightmare, with Moore personally commanding his 400 men on the front, where only brotherhood can inspire heroic efforts, as documented by a war reporter from a military family.—KGF VissersIn a place soon to be known as "The Valley of Death", in a football field-sized clearing called Landing Zone X-Ray, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore and four hundred young troopers from the newly formed 1/7th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division were surrounded by two thousand North Vietnamese soldiers dug into the tunnel warren mountainside. The ensuing battle is portrayed here as the signal encounter between the American and North Vietnamese armies. This movie is a tribute to the nobility of those men under fire, their common acts of uncommon valor, and their loyalty to, and love for, one another.—PHD in CT USA