...See today's -OUTSTANDING- Atlanta Journal-Constitution on ..'WE WERE SOLDIERS'.. by Staff Writer BILL HENDIRCK at...From http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/living/0227benning.html:.. www.ajc.com ..
...that shares we IA DRANG-1965 Vets' reaction to our Special Screening of the new ..'Braveheart in 'Nam.. Movie at Ft. Benning GA on Feb 13th.
...Access the Article under MEL GIBSON's Picture with the Heading ..'Vietnam Vets say MEL GIBSON's film captures the horror'.. for the Article titled:
'Film's horror too true, say 60's soldiers'
[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 02.27.2001] Film's horror too true, say '60s soldiers
By BILL HENDRICK
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff WriterFort Benning -- His voice quivering with emotion, his eyes blood red, Dick Ackerman is having a hard time expressing his feelings about the super-hyped Mel Gibson movie "We Were Soldiers," which opens Friday.
"It has everything but the stench," says Ackerman, 60, who drove his motor home from California for a special screening of the movie that depicts one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. "The fighting was hand to hand, like it showed. That's how it was. But worse."
Jim Lawrence, of Birmingham, Ala., who was at Battle of Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in November 1965.
VETERANS' REACTION
Here's what veterans of the Battle of Ia Drang Valley in November 1965 say about the movie, "We Were Soldiers," which depicts the struggle:
- "It's the best Vietnam movie that's been made. It's terrible to see it on the screen, but that's how it was. You can't clean it up. But I loved the movie. This message could not have come at a better time for our country in a new time of war in a new century."
RONNIE GUYER, 59, Chino, Calif.
- "It really made me sad. I was only one of a few black Rangers, and had some trouble because of my race on the way over by ship. But we didn't have any of that at Ia Drang. We were brothers, and the movie shows that."
LANG COLEMAN JR., 61, Montgomery
- "I was able to control myself, but only in certain places. It was that realistic. It was hand to hand. The noise, the confusion, the fear."
JIM BRIGHAM, 67, Charlotte
- "It's close to the way it was. It was emotional. I had friends who died there. I had a lump in my throat the whole time."
BENJAMIN JACKSON, 73, Columbus
- "To me, the other movies, like 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket', haven't come close [to the real-life horror of the scenes]. The closest, believe it or not, was the battle scene in 'Forrest Gump.' But I don't think I want to see any more war movies, ever again. It's too painful. Just too intense."
DON CAMPBELL, 57, Guntersville, Ala.
- "I didn't like the movie . . ."
PATRICK "JIM" KELLY, 59, of Smyrna.
He thought it overly glorified the authors of the book on which the movie is based.
Other survivors of the Battle of Ia Drang Valley nod in agreement, hugging, sobbing, shaking hands. Many are trembling.
"No question, this is the best [Vietnam movie] there's been," says Michael Mantegna, 59, a Cumming lawyer. "It was extremely hard to watch for all of us. . . . Every scene is forcing us to recollect people and faces and events in 1965."
There are close to 80,000 Vietnam veterans in the Atlanta area, maybe twice that many in Georgia, and more than 8 million in the country.
Many of the old soldiers -- potbellied, graying, balding -- have brought their wives, children, even grandchildren to the screening at a theater on this sprawling military base, the home of the infantry, near Columbus. The invitation-only audience is made up of survivors of the horrific battle in November 1965. More than 300 American soldiers died at the Battle of Ia Drang Valley -- more than in the entire Persian Gulf War.
The sniffling starts soon after the lights go down. Then come muffled gasps, the throat-clearing noises men make when they're trying to choke back tears.
Vets furtively slip white handkerchiefs from their pockets, clutching them in their laps and tightly clenched fists. There are long, heavy, heaving sighs.
"I feel like I just left there," says John Gilardi, 59, of Shelter Cove, Calif. "It's deja vu. This movie is our parade we never got."
Lots of the vets feel that way, but they're also excited about the dramatic rise in U.S. patriotism. That's become clear in the past few months, with flags sprouting like weeds in millions of yards and decorating countless cars.
Polls show that the military is enjoying the highest levels of confidence since the early days of the Vietnam War, when headlines about the Battle of Ia Drang Valley galvanized American resolve, at least for a year or two.
Veterans, like Mantegna and Patrick "Jim" Kelly, 59, of Smyrna, feel it's high time their story was told sans Hollywood hype.
"The Vietnam War has never ended for many of us," says Mantegna. "We carry it around inside. The press and the public still need to be educated about Vietnam."
That sentiment was echoed by many bleary-eyed men and women who chatted in the theater's lobby after the movie ended, lingering, hugging, shaking hands, talking about the film, but also about bypass operations, cornea transplants, grandchildren.
Some are upset that many Americans know little about America's most divisive war and don't grasp how that long conflict changed the country and still affects society.
"I hear people say, 'Who cares what happened way back in the '60s,' but the movie and what's going on in the world right now show that everyone should care," says Jim Lawrence, 60, a former lieutenant, who lives in Birmingham.
"Everything changed on Sept. 11," Lawrence says. "Patriotism has never been lost, but sometimes it takes something tragic to rekindle the spirit."
The Vietnam War is part of the curriculum in most high school history classes, like those taught by Ann Rogers, 60, at Walton High in east Cobb County, who taught boys who died in the war. She's appalled that few students know much about Vietnam, or about the turbulent '60s.
"They have no awareness of the period," she says. "Either parents don't talk because they're veterans and can't, or others are ashamed they protested, or others are ashamed they didn't protest enough."
"I believe it is important that young people today learn about the Vietnam War," says Jami Hanzman, 19, of Alpharetta and a freshman at the University of Georgia. "This is a war that I care a great deal about. And after recent events, we have seen that we are not invincible."
But students concede they don't know as much as they should.
"The only thing I know about Vietnam is what I learned from movies like 'Good Morning Vietnam' and 'Apocalypse Now,' says Robert Wollner, 20, of Marietta and also a UGA student.
"I could tell you about Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Bulge, D-Day, the Lusitania, Treaty of Versailles," he says. "We even learn about the Battle of New Orleans fought after the War of 1812. But I couldn't name one battle, general or anything about Vietnam."
Many of the vets have come to honor an old pal, Rick Rescorla, one of many heroes of the battle, who survived the war but was killed Sept. 11 while saving lives in the south tower of the World Trade Center.
He would have been here, the vets say.
Both Kelly and Mantegna knew him well. Most of the Ia Drang men remember Rescorla as the gaunt grunt who graces the cover of the 1992 best seller, "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young." The book, on which the movie is based, was written by Joe Galloway -- then a reporter-photographer for United Press International, who snapped the picture -- and retired Gen. Hal Moore, now 80, whom Gibson portrays in the movie.
Rescorla was a popular, fearless platoon leader in the 7th Cavalry at Ia (pronounced eye) Drang. He kept in touch with his fellow survivors.
The night of Sept. 11, e-mails zipped across the country. He was missing. His wife desperately called hospitals, visited Ground Zero.
"We called his wife, Susan, every day," says Kelly.
Within days, e-mails brought the news everyone suspected.
Rescorla, 62, who'd been security chief for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and was credited by the company with saving all but six of its 5,700 employees, probably wasn't going to be found. After evacuating the firm's employees, he'd gone back into the south tower to help others. "The fact that some terrorist in an airplane killed him rubs us all the wrong way. But, as we say in the cavalry, he died with his boots on," said Mantegna.
Terry Skipper, 62, of Charlotte, says Rescorla was "one of those types of guys who in a dangerous situation would laugh and joke to get people to get their minds off personal problems. That's what they say he was doing when the tower collapsed. We just all have to go on."
That's what Betty Mapson has done, but it hasn't been easy, since the telegram came a day or so after her father, Sgt. Jerry Jivens, 36, was killed at Ia Drang.
"In those days, like it shows in the movie, the telegrams came by taxi. I had a girlfriend over. She lived across the street, spent the night," says Mapson, then a 13-year-old. "When the cabdriver knocked on the door, it was like 4 in the morning. I could hear muffled voices. My mother was just screaming. He was a real devoted daddy. It just killed me, seeing the movie."
She laments that her son and daughter, now grown, "never got to meet their granddaddy. They've seen his picture, and I have his wallet. But now I can say, 'This is where daddy went. This is where he died.' At least they'll know something."
