Posted on 09/11/2008 7:22:07 AM PDT by Dawnsblood
This iconic image is from the Battle of Ia Drang. The grimy, unshaven, soldier, bayonet fixed, jaw set in fierce determination, is Lt. Richard Rescorla, a platoon leader with Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Air Cav Division. It was taken on the morning of November 16th, 1965, the third day of the battle as he leads a bayonet charge forward. Although most of the soldiers under his command were new to war, he was not. And this would not be the last time he would bravely lead others in a crisis.
Cyril Richard Rescorla was born in May of 1939 in Hayle, Cornwall, England. He had grown up reading of commando operations and the French Resistance, and he soon followed the path of a warrior himself, joining the British Paratroops while in his teens. He had fought communist guerrillas on Cyprus as an intelligence officer, leading small unit counter insurgency operations. He then joined Her Majesty’s Colonial Force and fought in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. After some time with Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad conducting operations against the IRA, he and a comrade from Rhodesia, Dan Hill, decided that the next fight against communism was going to be in Southeast Asia, and they both joined the US Army in 1963. Hill was an American mercenary when Rescorla met him in Rhodesia, and they both shared an ardent hatred of communism. Hill had been active in various capacities in Hungary in 1956 and in Lebanon in 1958, and in training exercises for the Bay of Pigs operation, in 1961. Their decision to join the Army was based solely on the desire to continue the fight against the world wide threat of communism.
(Excerpt) Read more at nicedoggie.net ...
Rick Rescorla Ping
http://www.rickrescorla.com
THE RICHARD C. RESCORLA MEMORIAL FOUNDATION
Awesome! Incredible!
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