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Thank you for your interest, Freeper Calpernia.

Since I was Lt. Col. HAL G. MOORE's 1st Radioman / Driver / Orderly in Vietnam he gave closer access to me and my cameras than just about anybody else in the Battalion after he made me his 7th Cavalry S-1 Personnel Clerk just before the IA DRANG Campaign.

I carried 2 half frame slide cameras, one hanging down from each shoulder strap, and started taking photos after egressing from our Huey and Chinook Helicopters.

My personal Vietnam Story is shared in my Thread titled:

'WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE..& YOUNG'..4 FREEDOM

http://www.Freerepublic.com/forum/a39626542519c.htm

My resulting Perspectives are shared in our:

"WE WERE SOLDIERS" Forum

http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8

My being ..'A Witness to the Heroism of Many'.. Book Contribution can be found in:

'MODERN DAY HEROES: In Defense of America'

http://www.ModernDayHeroes.com/aloha

Hit: 'Rescource Center'
Hit: 'Aloha Ronnie'

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Evening to you!

This is interesting!

'WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...& YOUNG'...4 FEEEDOM

...Excerpt from the PROLOGUE to this 1992 New York Times Bestseller & 1993 Commandant of the Marine Corps - Book of the Year- ........"The Class of 1965 came out of the old America, a nation that disappeared forever in the smoke that billowed off the Jungle Battlegrounds where we faught and bled. The country that sent us off to war was not there to welcome us home. -IT NO LONGER EXISTED-. We answered the call of one President who is now dead (LBJ); we followed the orders of one who would be hounded from office (Nixon), and haunted, by the war he mismanaged so badly. Many of our countrymen came to hate the war we faught. Those who hated it the most - the professionally sensitive - were not, in the end, sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who had been ordered to fight it. They hated us as well, and -WE WENT TO GROUND- in the crossfire as we had learned in the jungles. ...In Time our battles were forgotten, our sacrifices were discounted, and both our sanity and our suitablity for life in polite Amercan Society were publically questioned. Our young - Old Faces, chiseled and gaunt from the fever and the heat and the sleepless nights, now stare back at us, lost and damned strangers, frozen in yellowing snapshots packed away in cardboard boxes with our medals and ribbons. ...We built our lives, found jobs or professions, married, raised families, and -WAITED PATIENTLY FOR AMERICA TO COME TO ITS SENSES-. As the years past we searched each other out and found that the half-remembered pride of our service was shared by those who had shared everything else with us. With them, and only with them, could we talk about what had really happened over there --- what we had seen, what we had done, what we had survived. ...We knew what Vietnam had been like, and how we looked and acted and talked and smelled. No one in America did. Hollywood got it wrong every damned time, whetting twisted political knives on the bones of our dead brothers. ...So once, just this once: This is how it all began, what it was really like, what it meant to us, and what we meant to each other. It was no movie. When it was over the dead did not get up and dust themselves off and walk away. The wounded did not wash away the red and go on with life, unhurt. Those who were, miraculously, unscratched were by no means untouched. Not one of us left Vietnam the same young man he was when he arrived."

.."This story, then, is our testament, and our tribute to 234 young Americans who died beside us during four days in Landing Zone X-Ray and Landing Zone Albany in the Valley of Death, 1965. That is more Americans than were killed in any regiment, North or South, at the Battle of GETTYSBURG ...for we were soldiers once...and young." ...Signed:..ALOHA RONNIE, VET-HHC, 1/7th Cavalry-Battle of IA DRANG-1965 www.lzxray.com

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39626542519c.htm#19

...As 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment (CUSTER's) Headquarters S-1 Personnel Clerk at IA DRANG, I was one of those there who carried the Real American Heroes from Helicopters that were flown into us at Artillery's LZ Falcon fresh from LZ X-Ray in the Valley of Death that was IA DRANG in that November week of 1965...for transfer to Pleiku Airstrip bound Helicopters. Soon the casualties became so heavy that we just started flying them there direct. As a consequence there was time to witness this 2nd Battle of the Little Big Horn by experiencing the stench of over 1,100 dead Invading North Vietnamese Communist Army Regulars baking in over 100 degeee days which burnt our throats, constant firing of our close support Artillery Batteries for days, following the Battle on our Battalion and Brigade Net Radios, and helping the casualties. After a Battle that brought one Congressional Medal of Honor Winner, with many more left not so acknowledged, my duty was the typing of then Lt. Col. HAROLD G. MOORE's many Letters to the hundreds of family members of those Hero Soldiers KIA and WIA of our U.S. 7th Cavalry at IA DRANG. In the end that Operation was also expanded to anyone that could type at Battalion and Brigade Headquarters...for weeks after we returned to our Base Camp at An Khe. It was during this time that then Defense Secretary ROBERT S. McNAMARA took a short 15 minute After-Action briefing from HAL MOORE on our Victory at IA DRANG after which the man simply said "Thanks" to the Colonel and then left on a D.C. bound plane for home where he began writing his -Memo to the President- that said that the Vietnam War was not winnable! ...IA DRANG = THE DEFINING MOMENT OF THE VIETNAM WAR IN MANY, MANY WAYS...it appears...?

19 Posted on 07/04/2000 20:15:24 PDT by ALOHA RONNIE