We Were Soldiers

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When the 7th Cavalry battled North Vietnamese regulars on Nov. 14-15-16, 1965, I was in Vietnam, too. The 1st Infantry Division was my outfit -- I was not involved in the battle or anywhere in the area. But I remember hearing about it at the time. So I could not wait to view this film.

I was not disappointed. Mel Gibson, in his pre-"The Passion of the Christ" days, when he fell afoul of the Jewish establishment in Hollywood, did a superb job in this war movie which shows us not only what the men on the front lines experience and suffer, but also depicts the anguish their wives and families face, back home, waiting, hoping, and dreading, what they will hear about their loved ones in combat. Gibson stars as Lt. Col. Hal Moore, commander of the companies which become involved in the fierce battle.

The Ia Drang Valley was the first major clash between main-line U.S. troops and North Vietnamese army regulars in the Vietnam War, and it is shown here in all its convincing, bloody awfulness. A friend of mine said she watched this movie before I did, and that she broke down crying before the battle scenes even started, because she was thinking, "This one's gonna die; that one's gonna die ..." That's pretty much the way it is. War is like that; it takes the good, the bad and the indifferent. Bullets and artillery shells play no favorites.

And the deaths of U.S. soldiers reverbate back in the U.S., where a stream of taxicab-delivered telegrams from the Army inform wives and children that their men have paid the ultimate sacrifice. The scenes of the young wives of the young men of the 7th Cavalry, first receiving the tragic news, are heart-rending, and are extremely well played.

The final stage of the battle -- when the elements of the 7th Cavalry, overwhelmed and trapped by superior numbers of Vietnamese, radio a "Broken Arrow" plea to headquarters -- meaning, "We are in desperate straits; send all available combat aircraft at once" -- may be a little too much for those with tender sensibilities. American fighters, bombers and helicopters hem-stitch whole rows of attacking North Vietnamese soldiers with bombs, machine-gun fire and napalm, wiping out hundreds with each new attack. The screams and the sight of very realistic depictions of men on fire and burning to death would shake anyone. In a couple of places, the blood from fatal wounds of men near the camera actually splatters onto the lens itself -- "cinema verite" which may not have been planned, but which the director chose to leave in. And plenty of American combat deaths are depicted, too. A young Japanese-American soldier has just finished proudly telling an American reporter on the scene that his son was born that day, when he is hit and burned horribly by napalm.

After the fighting is over, Gibson as Moore tells another officer that he feels "so ashamed of myself" because he survived the battle and so many of his men didn't. It's that kind of war movie. It shows how close men can become when they have "each other's backs" in armed combat. The survivors can actually feel ashamed, embarrassed, that their buddies died, and they didn't.

This is an excellent war movie. The fact that it includes significant material about the wives and children back home, puts it a notch or two above many others. I highly recommend it.

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