Galloway's Sequel to 'We Were Soldiers Once' Coming in August

[RamboLiberal]

A long-waited sequel co-authored by famed war reporter Joseph L. Galloway will be arriving in August and has already picked up rave reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

A sequel to "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young," and again written with Harold G. Moore, it is titled, "We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam," and will be published by Harper. The first book was made into a film starring Mel Gibson, with Barry Pepper portraying Galloway, who won a Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam.

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Moore's strong first-person voice reviews the basics of the November 1965 battles, part of the 34-day Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Among other things, Moore and Galloway (who covered the battle for UPI) offer portraits of two former enemy commanders, generals Nguyen Huu An and Chu Huy Man, whom the authors met-and bonded with-nearly three decades after the battle.

This book proves again that Moore is an exceptionally thoughtful, compassionate and courageous leader (he was one of a handful of army officers who studied the history of the Vietnam wars before he arrived) and a strong voice for reconciliation and for honoring the men with whom he served.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003816306

Return to Vietnam. Galloway did. After that he covered other battles. He went on to assignments in Asia, India, and Moscow. By the late '80s, he had joined U.S. News and was an editor in Washington, polishing foreign dispatches. But Galloway yearned to return to the field—and, above all, to go back to Vietnam with Hal Moore, who had retired as a three-star general, to reconstruct the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, as it was now known.

His bosses obliged, and on Oct. 29, 1990, U.S. News published "Vietnam Story," a 14-page cover package that explained why the Battle of the Ia Drang was a "fatal victory" for American forces. Tactically, the Americans won: The enemy melted away, leaving a felled forest of perhaps 700 corpses. Yet by validating new air-assault techniques that allowed troops to maneuver by helicopter, not just by ground transport, the battle drew the United States deeper into a war it was destined to lose. In addition to a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the battle—which was so close and bloody that at one point Moore ordered his troops to fix bayonets in preparation for hand-to-hand-combat—Galloway and Moore broke new ground by interviewing North Vietnamese commanders to get their side of the story.

Six months later, "Vietnam Story" earned U.S. News its first National Magazine Award. The story became a book, We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, which has sold about 1.3 million copies since it was published in 1992. Then came the 2002 movie, We Were Soldiers, starring Mel Gibson as Moore and Barry Pepper as Galloway. (Moore says the film is about 60 percent accurate; Galloway, 80 percent.)

Later this year, Galloway and Moore will publish a sequel, We Are Soldiers Still, with fresh material gleaned from additional trips to Vietnam. They also apply the lessons of Vietnam to Iraq—where Galloway, now a columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, sees more fatal victories. "In almost every case," he says, "war is an admission of failure—of leadership, of diplomacy. War is not something you do pre-emptively."

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/05/16/the-story-behind-we-were-soldiers-onceand-young.html

[Historic NY]

1. Galloway is the only civilian to get a Bronze Star with "V" valour..

in Vietnam for his actions in rescuing injuried and wounded at Ia Drang.