American Valor Quarterly Issue 2 - Spring 2008 | Page 25

Joseph Galloway: It is an honor and a pleasure for us
to be here today, and it’s kind of a rare occasion for all
of us to sit at the same table and have a chance to talk to
a good audience about the experience and what it has
meant to us all over the years. Coming up will be the
42nd anniversary of that Sunday: 14 November, 1965,
when Lt. Col. Hal Moore took his battalion into a place
called Landing Zone X-Ray in the Central Highlands in a
place called the Ia Drang Valley.
My own memories began just after dark when I
bummed a ride off of the man near the end down there
with the gray hair, wearing the black hat—”Ancient
Serpent Six,” Bruce Crandall, gave me a ride in. I was
very eager to get that ride. He also gave me a ride out on
the 16th of November, and I was pretty eager to get
that ride, too! Through the years, I have cursed him for
the ride in, and thanked him for the ride out. But, in
truth, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world.
It truly did change my life, and I think it changed all of
our lives who were there and survived, and it certainly
changed the lives of our brothers who fell there and
their families.

Then-Lt. Col. Hal Moore with North Vietnamese casualties at LZ X-Ray during
the Battle of Ia Drang.

Now, I’m going to introduce to you Lt. General, retired, Harold
G. Moore, Jr. Hal, who was our battalion commander, is, since
those days, my best friend in life and my co-author. I don’t know
what my life would have been if I hadn’t met him, but surely far

Lt. General Hal Moore: Thank you Joe. In short, the battle at
LZ X-Ray, 14-16 November 1965, constituted the major turning
point in my life. I had commanded my battalion for 14 months
at Ft. Benning, Georgia. I knew all my troopers well, though we
got a new batch of troopers in just before we left Ft. Benning.
But I had great company commanders, two of whom are sitting
at this table with me—Tony Nadal and John Herren. We got to
Vietnam, and there was little or no action. We went to a base
camp outside of An Khe village, and did