We Were Soldiers Once...And Young
By Lt. Gen. Harld G. Moore (Ret.)
HarperTorch, $7.99
ISBN 0060506989

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Into battle with Hal and Mel

At age 80, Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) is once again reliving his most important battle. We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young, the 1992 bestseller he co-wrote with former war correspondent Joseph L. Galloway, is now a movie, called simply We Were Soldiers. Set in South Vietnam's Ia Drang Valley (known as "the valley of death") in 1965, the film stars Mel Gibson as then-Lt. Col. "Hal" Moore.

Speaking from his home in Auburn, Alabama, Moore wants to set one thing straight: He never said he preferred John Wayne to Mel Gibson in the role. "Last January," he explains, "Mel Gibson, [director and screenwriter] Randall Wallace and others from Hollywood were down in Fort Benning, Georgia, looking over the post and buying a few weapons. We went out to lunch and, after lunch, we were interviewed by a local Columbus, Georgia, reporter. The reporter asked me what I thought about Mel Gibson playing [me]. Before I could answer, Joe [Galloway] popped off and said, 'Well, he would rather have had John Wayne, but Mel will do.' When Joe finished that awful comment -- right in front of Mel -- I said to the reporter, 'I'm very pleased that the best actor in the world is going to play my role.' Of course, the reporter chose to lie and tell the public all around the world that I made that stupid comment."

The three-day slaughter chronicled in the book and movie was the first clash between American soldiers and North Vietnamese army troops and one of the most savage battles in history. Moore commanded the American forces and was in the heat of battle from start to finish. The 400 U.S. Air Cavalry troops were outnumbered as much as eight to one, but supported by withering air power, Moore's soldiers finally drove back their attackers.

"My troops -- most of them draftees -- had done such a great job in this battle," Moore says, "that I determined some day to write their story. I knew if I didn't do it, nobody would get it right. Joe Galloway agreed with me." Together, the two spent "upwards of 10 years, off and on," researching the project.

When Random House published their book, the authors received several movie offers. But Moore doubted an American movie would do justice to the story. In the book's prologue he wrote, "Hollywood got it wrong every damned time, whetting twisted political knives on the bones of our dead brothers."

So why trust Hollywood now? "Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay for Braveheart, told us in our initial meeting that he had bought our book and read it on a long airplane trip. [He said] that the first thing that struck him was that comment in the prologue. As he read the book, he said, he became determined to tell the story of the Vietnam veterans as it should be told. So we agreed to let him have it."

Moore says he's happy with the film: "I think it captures the intensity and the truth and the emotion of the battle. And it captures the fact that the Vietnam soldier was a good soldier -- and that soldiers in battle fight for each other. They kill for each other. They die for each other. Soldiers in battle do not fight for the flag or for the president of the United States or for Mom and apple pie. They fight for each other. And the movie captures all that."