Posted on 12/09/2001 2:27:55 PM PST by Rocko
This is the trailer for the eagerly awaited Mel Gibson epic. Didn't see it posted before. The book is excellent -- but will the film be worthy?
(ENJOYING this thread!!)Hiya, Merc!
I figured that YOU would find this thread eventually. ;o)
The prologue to the book is posted at: LINKThanks for the link, OkieGrit2!
From:
Prologue - We Were Soldiers Once and Young
Posted on 12/10/01 6:43 AM Pacific by OkieGrit2
"...This is a non-profit site. (www.LZXray.com)
We would appreciate it if you would send a donation to the Ia Drang Scholarship Fund
Corporate Matching Funds (up to $15,000) have been promised to match your donation!
This story is about time and memories. The time was 1965, a different kind of year, a watershed year when one era was ending in America and another was beginning. We felt it then, in the many ways our lives changed so suddenly, so dramatically, and looking back on it from a quarter-century gone we are left in no doubt. It was the year America decided to directly intervene in the Byzantine affairs of obscure and distant South Vietnam. It was the year we went to war. In the broad, traditional sense, that "we" who went to war was all of us, all Americans, though in truth at that time the larger majority had little knowledge, less interest and no great concern with what was beginning so far away.
So this story is about the smaller, more tightly focused "we" of that sentence, the first American combat troops who boarded World War II-era troop ships, sailed to that little known place and fought the first major battle of a conflict that would drag on for ten long years and come as near to destroying America as it did to destroying Vietnam.
The Ia Drang Campaign was to the Vietnam War what the terrible Spanish Civil War of the 1930's was to World War II---a dress rehearsal. The place where new tactics, techniques and weapons were tested, perfected and validated. In the Ia Drang, both sides claimed victory and both sides drew lessons, some of them dangerously deceptive, which echoed and resonated throughout the decade of bloody fighting and bitter sacrifice that was to come.
This is about what we did, what we saw, what we suffered in a 34-day campaign in the remote Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in November, 1965, when we were young and confident and patriotic and our countrymen knew little and cared less about our sacrifices.
Another war story, you say? Not exactly, for on the more important levels this is a love story, told in our own words and by our own actions. We were the children of the 1950's and we went where we were sent because we loved our country. We were draftees, most of us, but we were proud of the opportunity to serve that country just as our fathers had served in World War II and our older brothers in Korea. We were members of an elite, experimental combat division trained in the new art of airmobile warfare at the behest of President John F. Kennedy.
Just before we shipped out to Vietnam the Army handed us the colors of the historic 1st Cavalry Division and we all proudly sewed on the big yellow and black shoulder patches with the horse head silhouette. We went to war because our country asked us to go, because our new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, ordered us to go, but more importantly because we saw it as our duty to go..."
...Looks like a real programing change over at KPLS as First Time Radio Host LAURIE ROTH announced at the end of her sudden BOB DORNAN Replacement Show that she will be on again tomorrow during his entire 1-4pm Pacific Time Slot in Southern California.
...BOB DORNAN's E-Mail website address.. bob@bobdornan.com ..has been inoperable for over a week.
...Ever since I've been talking to BOB DORNAN on the air over the years he has always been MOST supportive of my U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment IA DRANG-1965 Brothers.
...I went out to a fast food resturant shortly afterword, ordered at the drive-up, went to the pick-up window, paid and then started to drive right off without the food...! The restaurant gals just LOVED it =
...Keep the Money, Keep the Food. Such a Deal.
...I hope it hasn't come across too much in my on the air calls into DORNAN ever since...?
Inquiring minds want to know what is going on.
March 1, 2002.
I WANT to hear Dornan!!!!!
...the picture you see ...under Lt. RICK RESCORLA's at IA DRANG-1965 ...is of our very first wounded man to come out of LZ X-Ray to us at LZ Falcon ...SkyTrooper CLINTON POLEY.
...I think the guy right behind a wounded CLINTON POLEY is our IA DRANG-1965 1st Battalion U.S. 7th Cavalry S- 1 Personnel Clerk ..ALOHA RONNIE.
...The Video of this scene taken by an ABC-TV News Crew can be viewed in -Aid Station- of the -Combat Camera- Section of.. www.lzxray.com's ..Home Page. I know this because I also took a slide of the Crew taking these pictures.
...CLINTON POLEY, as do others from IA DRANG-1965, now wear hearing aids in both ears.
...Can't imagine why...?
...National Talk Radio Show has been moved today in So. California to 7-10pm Pacific Time on KPLS 830 AM 'Radio on the Right.'
...So BOB DORNAN is airing on this 50,000 Watt Radio Station right now as we speak.
...Hear BOB DORNAN Live daily on.. www.TalkRadioNetwork.com ..6-9 AM Pacific Time.
GOD Speed BOB DORNAN
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