We Were Soldiers … and Young.

Nov. 14th, 1965 – 450 soldiers of the American Army entered Ia Drang Valley in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam led by Lt. Col. Hal Moore. Col. Moore was the first soldier to put a boot on the ground, and the last boot to leave the ground at LZ (landing zone) X-ray. All 450 soldiers of the 7th Cavalry left Ia Drang Valley after 3 days of fighting…80 no longer living. In those 3 days, 1800 enemy soldiers  died at the hands of the 7th Cavalry. Col. Moore spent another 293 days in Vietnam before coming home.

This is a tremendous story of bravery and selfless sacrifice. It is a story of the endurance and emotional strength that wives of these soldiers had to have and the movie can be found here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0277434

The names of the 80 soldiers of the 7th Cavalry who died those 3 days in Ia Drang Valley are listed on panel 3 east of the Vietnam War Memorial. To their left and right are the names of 58,068 of their fallen brothers-in-arms.

If you can not go see the memorial in person, there is a beautiful replication of it in Second Life ( http://secondlife.com ). Links directly to the Second Life location are as follows: http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Wall/39/32/26

If you already have a Second life account you can simply teleport to that location. If you don’t have a Second Life account you can easily create a free one using the link provided on the map bubble that appears.

Though there are many fall festivities in November, happy holidays and activities, celebrations and fun, as well as the leaf raking duties, it turns out that Thanksgiving is in November as well as Veterans Day on the 11th which commemorates the end of WWI.

For those of you who are not active duty or veterans of the military service, I ask only two things that would make my day and any veteran’s day…tell us that you know our sacrifice, and remember that We Were Soldiers…and young.