Read Online We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam by Harold G. Moore;Joseph L. Galloway - Free Book Online

chance meeting of old enemies were quickly laid to rest as the Vietnamese veterans smiled and held up a hand-lettered sign that read, in English: Welcome American Veterans. Some of us blinked back tears. We shook hands warmly and visited with them for a few minutes before moving inside to a private room, where we were divided up and mixed together, Vietnamese and American veterans, table by table.
    Joe and I were seated with the Vietnamese generals, Man, An, and Phuong, whom we now felt we knew well from our previous trips and interviews. After a good Vietnamese meal of spring rolls, fish, chicken, and rice washed down by cold beers, we turned to the obligatory preliminary conversations about families and work and life in general as the hot tea was poured.
    The lives of professional military officers are not all that different, no matter what country they soldier for. In our earlier interviews we had learned something about their families—General An had a daughter who was an army doctor and a major; General Man had a son who was an engineer and later would study in the United States; General Phuong lived with a daughter and her family. I had always urged my men never to celebrate the killing of an enemy—“remember that he has a mother too”—and to respect them as worthy opponents. From those same conversations and our book the generals knew something about our families as well.
    There were the murmurs of a dozen other conversations at the small tables, the clatter of dishes in the nearby kitchen, which gave off the enticing scents of the next course. The lights of Hanoi sparkled around the dark lake.
    Now the Vietnamese generals pulled closer to the table. General Phuong, the historian, spoke for them all. “We have had your book translated into Vietnamese and I have read it twice already and will read it again,” Phuong told the two of us. “We like your book. You are the first serious historians to come here and ask us for our version of what happened and you quoted us accurately. You wrote that our soldiers fought and died bravely in battle, and for that we thank you. Like you, we love our soldiers.”
    The small, bespectacled Phuong—a lieutenant colonel when he arrived on the Ia Drang battlefields in 1965 to write the Vietnamese army’s report and lessons learned on the battle and now a major general and chief historian of the Vietnamese army—had something else to say. “You wrote in your book that our men killed your wounded on the battlefield and this is true. But we want you to know that we never gave such orders. We always knew the value of prisoners. The situation on that ground was very difficult. The fighting was hand-to-hand and our wounded and your wounded were mixed together. Our soldiers could not go out in the dark and get our wounded and ignore yours, who were armed and could shoot them if they passed them by. These terrible things happen in the confusion of war, and not just on our side.”
    It was clear to us that our book about the battles had opened the hearts of these Vietnamese generals and it was that, and our determination to get and tell their side of the story as honestly as we could, that had opened the door to this journey back to our old battlefields.
    Ours was not the only fascinating talk going on that evening. Across the room at another table a stunning conversation was unfolding between a Vietnamese army colonel, machine gunner Bill Beck, and George Forrest. Through an interpreter the colonel asked where Bill had been during the fight at LZ X-Ray. Bill explained that he had been way out front, guarding the American flank next to the dry creek bed. He drew a quick map sketch on a paper napkin. George Forrest helpfully reached over and added the symbol for machine gun to Bill’s X marking his position.
    The Vietnamese officer gasped and turned pale: “You and your machine gun killed my battalion! Four hundred men. You killed my best friend. I am godfather of his daughter and