Old War Dogs: Movies

Thanks go to Old War Dog J D Pendry for passing on this excellent movie review written by his fellow retired Command Sergeant Major, Fred Marshall Jr., a three-tour Viet Nam veteran who has discussed the movie at length with three of the four lead characters.
REVIEW - We Were Soldiers
by Fred Marshall Jr.
Command Sergeant Major
United States Army, Retired
March 1, 2002
If a better movie has ever been made..

..on any subject.

...

I haven't seen it.
This review is intended to enhance your enjoyment of the movie by giving you some insights so you will recognize and appreciate certain key features of the film. Many things obvious to Vietnam veterans would never be noticed by people who did not serve In Country.

I submit that even many non-infantry Vietnam veterans will not notice some of the nuances identified in this review.
This is not a critical media review by a non-soldier movie pundit; rather it is an unbiased peer review of sorts, and is being written immediately following my first viewing on March 1, 2002, the day the movie opened nationwide.
The movie recounts the experiences of the men of the 1st of the 7th Cavalry, of the 1st Air Cavalry Division.

...

of General George Custer fame...

.in the first major military battle of the Vietnam war, which occurred in 1965, beginning on November 14..

..it was to later be regarded as a key turning point in the War.

The battalion (395 men) was inserted, by helicopter, into the Ia Drang Valley (Ia is pronounced Eye-aah, and Drang rhymes with bang ) and the 70 men who went in on the first wave walked into an ambush by a reinforced North Vietnamese Regular Army (NVA) Regiment (2,000-plus men). Over the next two hours, the rest of the battalion arrived and the relentless intensity of the encounter raged on for nearly three days and two nights.
The movie's pre-credit kickoff briefly introduces the audience to a North Vietnamese captain who led an ambush and massacre of French troops in 1954.

Eleven years later, as a colonel, the same man directed the ambush of American forces...

.at the same geographical location..

..which this movie portrays.

It begins in earnest by familiarizing viewers with the main characters and their families in the States, as they train in preparation for deployment to Vietnam. Viewers will feel the anticipation that accompanies the approaching departure from the States, and will later sense the fear and anxiety which precedes a combat infantryman's baptism by fire, the men's recognition of the presence of God, and you will understand why men don't fight for mother, country and apple pie..

..they fight for each other.

For the first time in my life, I watched a true-story movie in which a star character is someone I know, or have known, in real life. In this case, I personally know two of the four lead characters, have met several times and talked with a third, and I served nearly three tours in Vietnam as well, one of which I deployed as part of an entire combat unit (101st Airborne Division) in a fashion similar to the one the movie portrays. These factors give me an unusually keen appreciation for the events recounted, and the uncommon accuracy with which they are portrayed in the movie.

Mel Gibson plays the real-life character of Harold G. (Hal) Moore, then a lieutenant colonel (later retired as a three-star general) and commander of the battalion depicted in the movie. Hal co-authored the best selling book We Were Soldiers Once.

...

and Young, the story the movie tells, with Joseph Galloway as a contributing co-author. Galloway was a UPI war correspondent accompanying the 7th Cavalry.
I met Hal when he was a full colonel, in 1970 or thereabouts.

On June 12, 2001...

...

during the cocktail hour immediately preceding the Infantry's annual Doughboy Awards Ceremony and Dinner at Fort Benning (a civilian clothes black tie affair attended by more than 70 general officers)...

...

I discussed with him (then a retired three-star general), and Command Sergeant Major (Retired) Basil Plumley, their screening of the raw, unedited footage of the combat scenes of the movie. They were thoroughly satisfied, they said, with the filming of the combat scenes, even though editing of the total movie was just getting under way at that time.
Hal is a genuine high-caliber military leader, with a one-of-a-kind irresistible personality.

Mel Gibson must have spent endless hours with him, studying his habits, the way he speaks, his gestures, his mannerisms, his walk, his movements, and his facial expressions. Mel portrays the man so superbly that it was like seeing Hal Moore with Mel Gibson's face. Mel deserves an Oscar for this career-best performance, one he's not likely to surpass in his lifetime, but the timing of the movie's release, after Oscar selections had concluded, prevents his even being considered.

This is not the Lethal Weapon Mel Gibson you are accustomed to seeing.
Basil Plumley was Colonel Moore's battalion (command) sergeant major during the times recounted in the movie. I met Plumley in 1969, and served a year under him, when I was assigned as a first sergeant in his brigade here at Fort Benning.

I knew him to be a highly decorated combat veteran, but I did not then know any of the details of his experiences, either in the Korean War or the Vietnam War. Plumley is currently retired here in the Columbus, Georgia, area and I see him occasionally still.
Sam Elliott plays Sergeant Major Plumley, and his portrayal of the man presents a remarkably accurate resemblance, both in stature and in character.

You will love both Elliott, the actor, and Plumley the Sergeant Major. Watch his actions and expressions and listen to his words and their delivery. You will come to appreciate a professional (command) sergeant major who is, indeed, one-of-a-kind in his own right.

Next is Ernie Savage. The name of the actor who portrayed Ernie escapes me at the moment. I have known Ernie since 1972.

He, too, lives in this immediate area. I believe he is still employed as a DA Civilian at Fort Benning, but he may have retired recently. I haven't seen him now for some six months.

Ernie was a three-stripe buck sergeant when the ambush began. Within hours, he was acting company commander, because he was the highest ranking man in his company still alive.
While discussing the footage with General Moore and CSM Plumley last year during cocktail hour, I mentioned that I knew Ernie Savage.

General Moore looked directly into my eyes with total concentration, and said Ernie Savage is the one of the finest blankety-blank soldiers ever to shit between a pair of jump boots. He meant it. When you've seen the movie, you will know why.

The fourth key character...

..and the one I have never met.

...

..is Joe Galloway, a civilian war correspondent who joined the battalion within a few hours after the mission, to find and kill the enemy, had gotten underway.

He began the mission with only a camera and a pad and pen. He became an effective rifleman and seasoned combat infantryman in very short order, however, because he found himself in a situation in which he had to fight or die. He is the only civilian, to my knowledge, to have been awarded the coveted Combat Infantry Badge.

Galloway is played by Barry Pepper, the actor you may remember as the cold, calculating, emotionless southpaw sniper in Saving Private Ryan. He is an outstanding actor in this film as well.
One of the most striking single aspects of the film.

...

.and the one which distinguishes it from all other war movies..

...

.is its accuracy. The uniforms, weaponry, helicopters, vehicles, and scenes depicted are authentic and circa 1965.

The deficiencies and inaccuracies I noted are so minor and insignificant that they are not worth mentioning. The sounds are, by and large, authentic..

...

.choppers, jets, direct-hit and ricocheting bullets, tracers, hand grenades, mortars, artillery, rockets, and blossoming illumination flares. My main criticism of the sounds is that the unique sound of AK-47 rifle fire is not distinctly recognizable in the movie, as it is in reality.

The appearance and effects of napalm, foogas, and white phosphorus are seen. The movie captures the effectiveness of air support and the early use of helicopters as lightly-armed and jerry-rigged gunships, before the heavily-armed factory-made gun ships became part of the Army's arsenal. Back then, airmobile tactics and techniques had not yet come of age, and any written manual or doctrine that may have existed was still in the conceptual and basically experimental stages.

Heroism, sleep deprivation, and physical exhaustion blend into a mixture that few men in history have experienced; a combination that fewer still have endured and survived.
The true nature of raw professional military leadership under pressure and under fire is vividly demonstrated, and the undeniable facts that success is often born of necessity, and that real men rise to the occasion when called upon, are painfully evident.
Unusual camera angles used are inventive, display extraordinary perspective and detail, and represent a departure from many of the tired old Hollywood movie-making techniques and standards.

There is a number of scenes in which eight-to-ten different dynamics co-exist.
The innovative use of muffled sound..

...

to trigger the sensation of momentarily floating in a dream, a nightmare...

..is both astounding and quite effective (it reminds me of the use of slow motion, to suggest extraordinary speed, which debuted in the TV film series Six Million-Dollar Man, in which Lee Majors played Steve Austin, three decades ago).

It's a good bet that every man who has faced ground combat has had fleeting thoughts, at one time or other while under fire, that he would wake up at any minute from this horrible dream.
You'll even see the emergency employment of combat coolant for mortars, when the men urinate on the overheated 81mm mortar tubes to cool them.
Efficient evacuation of the wounded, by chopper, and the crisis treatment of the wounded in field medical facilities are shown, austere and often crude, as they were then actually improvised, hastily assembled and administered.

Hell, they even got the dust right. How they managed that I do not know, but it could not have been more realistic. The best dust sequences occur after the battalion has arrived in Vietnam and set up a base camp, but before they embark upon the search and destroy mission that leads them into the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) trap.

In Vietnam, helicopters kicked up clouds of dust where you didn't even think there was dust, and 99.9% of it found its way into the beads of sweat which covered your body in 110-120 degree heat. Clean was a feeling you lost 30 seconds after a shower.

...

the few times an infantryman had access to showers.
You may not even detect the conspicuous absence of the drug use that has sadly permeated, even dominated, most of the other Vietnam war movies. How this film escaped the anti-American sentiment normally injected by the liberal Hollywood power structure is beyond me (considerable drug use existed in Vietnam, but was found mostly in support and rear echelon units).

You'll observe the dedication and professionalism of the well-trained and highly motivated North Vietnamese Regular soldier fighting to defend his homeland, and be aware of augmentation of the Regiment by local Viet Cong (part-time citizen soldiers).
You will see the gore and horror that is the dead and the dying, and the agony that often precedes death when it isn't instantaneous. Men engulfed in flames flounder in severe pain as they exhale their final breaths.

You'll feel the intensity of the threat of imminent death. You'll see hand-to-hand combat in its rawest form, up close and personal, and almost feel the sting of sharp bayonet points penetrating your flesh.
You will witness many acts of unbridled heroism and uncommon valor, by the leaders, the soldiers, and the often unsung heroes that were the young chopper pilots who delivered the troops to the landing zones, vulnerably hovering or landing while under blistering small arms fire, trip after trip after trip.

These young pilots, warrant officers predominately...

.though the movie portrays mostly captains and majors..

..were valiant, dedicated, unselfish, and much appreciated by the troops.

This applies to the med-evac, or dust-off, pilots and re-supply pilots as well.
Unlike any war movie I have ever seen, there is a moving segment the ladies should love, and for which the men should gain a new-found appreciation.
As did many units, the 1/7th deployed to Vietnam, in tact, leaving the wives in government quarters on a Stateside post.

...

in this case, here at Fort Benning. While Hal Moore commanded the men in Vietnam, his wife..

..superbly portrayed by Madelline Stowe.

...

mothered the wives left behind, after having befriended them all earlier during the time their husbands were training here in preparation for deployment. The camaraderie which held those brave women together is something to behold, especially when the dreaded telegrams from the Secretary of the Army begin to arrive in the most unexpected of ways.
I saw nothing in the movie I would characterize as filler; that is, I'm aware of nothing which was inserted to fill space or to absorb time.

Everything was realistic and necessary to the story and its actual real-life plot and sub-plots. Before the movie has ended, you will have seen..

...

almost experienced...

..more emotion within a two-hour time span than you could ever have imagined possible at a movie.

There is one exceptionally effective sequence of scenes in which the story is told with images alone, without the need for spoken words. It occurs the last night at Fort Benning, as soldiers spend their last moments with their families, and the following morning when the battalion departs for Vietnam. Pictures are truly worth thousands of words.

Remarkably...

..and this will come as a surprise.

...

..every last one of you will understand, with indelible clarity, why the military so strongly abhors the press corps.

You will discover a new-found distaste for the inconsiderate media whores and the pain, the damage and the destruction they inflict upon those most deserving of sympathetic consideration, and most will loathe them for their total disregard for the privacy of anyone. Joe Galloway was a glaring exception, because he was a participant as well as a reporter.
Finally, I must give you my best estimate as to why the movie failed to mention the four soldiers who were later awarded the Medal of Honor for actions during that three-day encounter with hell itself.

I have met one of them on two separate occasions.
He is Colonel (then second lieutenant) Walter J. Marm, Jr.

, though he is not identified in the movie. I have read the citation describing his conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity, at risk of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, and the individual actions which merited his recommendation for the Country's highest military award for valor against a hostile enemy, and its eventual award two years later. He clearly deserved the award, as I'm confident the three others did.

However, every single man who survived that nightmare was a hero of the highest possible order, having endured intense mortal danger for every single minute of nearly 60 hours, most without a wink of sleep, and all held little hope of ever seeing home again. All truly deserved the greatest measure of recognition and the highest awards their country could bestow upon them.
To have singled out and recognized one or two gallant acts would have been to disparage the others.

...

heroes all...

.and would have decried the singularly outstanding and unselfish devotion to duty exhibited by each and every brave individual, down to the last man. The decision to omit the specifics of the bravery of these four men was not intended, I think, to slight them in any way but, instead, was intended to preserve the honor of the elite group of American heroes that was the immortal 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry Squadron of the 1st Air Cavalry Division.

That is my ever-so-humble opinion, and I have nothing upon which to base it but pure logic and a thorough understanding of pride, appreciation, motivation, and leadership.
See the movie. Then see it again.

You may well never see a better one in this life.
Copyright March 2002
Fred D. Marshall Jr.

May be reproduced and distributed in its entirety only, without change or modification, within the parameters of the non-profit provisions of Title 17, USC, Section 107
*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 2007.02.

25.21:08
For some reason the system refused to let CSM Marshall leave the following as a comment on this post. Fortuitous, in a sense, since it's more likely to be seen as an addendum to the main post anyway.

I just re-read that review for the first time in years. I'm truly amazed at how clearly I had recalled the movie in such detail immediately after having seen it for the first time.
My original intention was to see the movie at 1 PM on Saturday, when it opened, with my arms folded, then see it a second time with a notepad in my lap so I could take notes for writing a review.

After watching, though not with folded arms, I went to buy a ticket and see it again, only to find it was sold out through the midnight showing. So I decided to go home and write what I could from memory and go see it again the following day and finish the review then.
By 9 PM I had written 99% of what you have read above.

I thought it was sufficiently complete and accurate to go ahead and post it on the Internet so people planning to see it Sunday could read it before going.
After seeing it a second time, the only thing I saw fit to add was the description of the long span during which there was neither narration nor dialog, when images alone told the story. I had not been so keenly aware of that at my first viewing.

Sometime later, I found it necessary to correct the number of participants who were awarded the Medal of Honor. I had originally known of only two..

..Colonel Marm and the man who threw himself on a grenade in the movie, whose name escapes me at the moment.

...

but learned there had been four, so I corrected that. Yesterday, I read that Major Crandall will be awarded the Medal of Honor by President Bush within the coming week. That has been a long time coming, but there can be no doubt it was completely earned.

[Please see my related post -- BF]
Medal of Honor recipients (not winners ) are a rare breed. I served in units with Lieutenant Ed Schowalter (MOH in Korea) in the 188th Airborne Infantry Regiment (11th Airborne Division), and later when he was a colonel at the Infantry School, then-Major Lew Millett (MOH in Korea) when he was Commandant of Recondo School in the 101st, Jake Lindsey (MOH in WWII) while we were both instructing in jump school in the 101st, Paul Huff (MOH in WWII) when he was the Recruiting SGM for the 101st, and knew all four. I have since met and spent time with Ron Rosser (MOH in Korea), Sammy Davis (MOH in RVN), Roger H.

C. Donlon (first MOH of RVN), Roy Benavidez (MOH in RVN), and Walter Marm (MOH in RVN). All are/were outstanding men in their own right, who rose to the challenge when faced with extraordinary circumstances.

In October 2000, I shared the guest speaker's platform, and spent the day, with Sammy Davis when we addressed a gathering of some 1500 VFW members of West Tennessee VFW chapters. I spent a whole day in Las Vegas with Colonel Donlon, after having read his book in a single sitting the night before, during the 2004 SFA Convention at the Riviera. Ron Rosser and I spent several hours together at a 187 Rakkasans reunion a few years back, and I had a one-on-one breakfast with Roy Benavidez at the Plaza in Las Vegas during the 1995 SFA Convention.

What an honor it has been for me to know nine men who have received the nation's highest award. One learns true humility in the presence of such men.
Isn't it great to have been members of the uniformed armed forces?

Have never understood how liberals can disrespect so much what soldiers do. In the urinal in the men's room of my son's restaurant, there is a laminated picture of Jane Fonda. That boy, though he never served in uniform, has his shit together!

Command Sergeant Major Marshall, your review mirrors my perceptions of that fine movie exactly. The attention to the details of the Army of that era were exceptional. Watching it, I kept telling my wife, Sunovabitch!

They got it right! they actually got it right! Sorry bastards actually got it right for a change!

It is without question the best Vietnam War movie ever produced by those pinko pukes in Hollyweird.
As it happens, I actually served with COL Moore, right alongside him as a matter of fact, as his SSGT, tactical net radio operator for a whole 24 hours in a little known battle in a place called Truong Loung in the 101st area of operations near Tuy Hoa in the summer of 1966.
Our battalion-minus, 2d, 327th, Airborne Infantry, air-assaulted right into the middle of the 18B NVA Regiment while the rest of 1st brigade was off on an operation and we were supposed to be guarding the airstrip at Tuy Hoa.

I was the battalion CBR NCO, functioning as an assistant S-3 NCO and rotated the radio operating job with other junior NCOs when we were on forward operations. As soon as the HQ element went in on what had begun as a company-sized operation, we discovered that we had NVA regulars all around our TOC. Although I had served several months as a line company NCO before my CBR slot at battalion opened up, this was the closest I'd come to heavy incoming small arms since becoming a staff weenie once again.

It was flying all around us and casualty reports from the line companies were coming in fast and furious. It wasn't quite Ia Drang but it was starting to get real hairy, real fast.
As soon as our CO correctly assessed the situation, we began calling for help from II Field Force.

There was a Marine landing force sitting just off the coast but they were completely green and their commander balked at committing them. Just as the situation was beginning to look desperate, here came the Cavalry, riding to the rescue from An Khe, in the form of full colonel Hal Moore and the legendary 7th Cav. COL Moore swept into that TOC like George Patton himself and immediately started barking orders at officers and NCO's alike.

I looked at this guy and I thought, There stands the ultimate Airborne infantry commander. He was tall, lean and Airborne mean and left no doubt in anyone's mind that we were going to get out of this mess. Our own battalion CO was an old Airborne warhorse himself from WWII and Korea but he wasn't in the same category as Moore, not even close.

For the next 24 hours, my butt was glued to an upended wooden ammo box while I sent out COL Moore's orders to his Cav troopers and our paratroopers and took back their sitreps. I have very little actual memory of any of it: it's all a blur to me; but I never forgot the image of that lean mean fighting machine in action. Truth is though, I couldn't remember the colonel's name until the book came out with his picture and I said to my wife, Hey, that's the guy I probably owe my life to!

After reading the book, I sent Galloway an email and corresponded with a vet who had been Moore's RTO at Ia Drang. Both said they'd put me in touch with the General but neither ever did. I have to admit also, that I don't remember his CSM although I'm sure one came with him; if it was CSM Plumley then I must apologize and would love to do so in person sometime when I'm at Benning on business.

Please let him know I'd be delighted to buy dinner and if you're in that area for you as well.