We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam by Harold G. Moore;Joseph L. Galloway
Authors: Harold G. Moore;Joseph L. Galloway
Tags: United States, General, History; Military, Asia, History, Travel, Military, War, vietnam, Asian history, Military Personal Narratives, Military History, Military History - Vietnam Conflict, Vietnam War, Military - Vietnam War, Southeast Asia, Essays & Travelogues, Southeast, Military - United States, Postwar 20th century history, Military veterans, c 1970 to c 1980, c 1960 to c 1970, from c 1945 to c 2000
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service to our country and our Army was not at an end. He would work another fifteen years as a civilian employee at Martin Army Hospital at Fort Benning before retiring again to enjoy his bird dogs and quail hunting.
After my own retirement from the Army in 1977, my wife, Julie, and I spent most of each year at our home in Auburn, Alabama, a short forty-five-minute drive away from Columbus and Fort Benning. Julie and I were frequent visitors to the Plumley home, where Miss Deurice always had a fresh-baked pecan or sweet potato pie ready to cut.
In the late 1980s as we were researching the Ia Drang battles, Joe came to Auburn to do some work with me on our project. I drove him to Fort Benning to see where my battalion had lived and trained in 1964 and 1965, and then we headed to the Plumley home in Columbus for a scheduled visit with the sergeant major. Joe had not seen Plumley since our last field operation together in Vietnam in 1966. Plumley was standing patiently in his front yard waiting for us. Joe walked up to him and stuck out his hand. The sergeant major ignored that and instead pulled Joe into a bear hug, thumping him enthusiastically on the back. Joe’s jaw dropped in total shock and surprise. “It was like I had been hugged by God Himself,” Joe told me afterward. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Nothing speaks more loudly of the deep and lasting impression that Basil Plumley had on generations of young Army draftees than their reactions to his arrival at some of the first reunions of the Ia Drang veterans in the late 1980s. Although these men had served only a two-year obligation to the Army and nation and had returned to civilian life many years ago, as they gathered in the reunion hospitality suite a few would spot the old sergeant major in the door and, turning pale, would ease their way to the wall and try to make a stealthy exit behind him. Anyone who had ever been counseled for mistakes large or small by Plumley never forgot it and never wanted to repeat it. They were afraid he still had his old pocket notebook and that their names might still be written down in it for a long-delayed personal counseling session.
During these years Plumley gathered every Friday morning with a small group of other retired sergeants major at a local restaurant in Columbus for coffee and catching up on Army news and gossip. To the casual onlooker it may have looked like a typical group of old grandfathers at their usual table, laughing and joking and ragging each other over their coffee. But they are the lions in winter, the true backbones of our Army. Joe says that even though they wear PX plaid shirts these days he still sees, in his mind’s eye, the rows of combat ribbons on their chests. For him and for me they are the history of America at war for half a century.
None of these old lions ever roared with greater effect than Basil Plumley, who has marched steadfastly through life adhering to the code of the hills of West Virginia, the rules and discipline of the Old Army, and his own sense of duty fulfilled and a job done well.
Back to the Ia Drang!
W hen we reached Pleiku in the Central Highlands, we discovered that the chartered helicopter that would take us to the Ia Drang battlefields would be delayed. Between that and the additional discovery that the green light given in Hanoi did not necessarily apply out in the hinterlands, we spent a nervous weekend in yet another shabby hotel. By now Joe had begun rating our lodging by his own variant of the star rating system—the rat rating system. He pronounced the Pleiku establishment a two-rat hotel, meaning each of us was guaranteed at least two rats in our room. He wasn’t far off the mark.
Our old hotel sat on a dusty road in a poor section of Pleiku. The new wave of progress and construction had not made it to this wild west frontier town. A dozen or more Vietnamese schoolchildren had spotted the arriving foreign guests and now hung out in front of the
After my own retirement from the Army in 1977, my wife, Julie, and I spent most of each year at our home in Auburn, Alabama, a short forty-five-minute drive away from Columbus and Fort Benning. Julie and I were frequent visitors to the Plumley home, where Miss Deurice always had a fresh-baked pecan or sweet potato pie ready to cut.
In the late 1980s as we were researching the Ia Drang battles, Joe came to Auburn to do some work with me on our project. I drove him to Fort Benning to see where my battalion had lived and trained in 1964 and 1965, and then we headed to the Plumley home in Columbus for a scheduled visit with the sergeant major. Joe had not seen Plumley since our last field operation together in Vietnam in 1966. Plumley was standing patiently in his front yard waiting for us. Joe walked up to him and stuck out his hand. The sergeant major ignored that and instead pulled Joe into a bear hug, thumping him enthusiastically on the back. Joe’s jaw dropped in total shock and surprise. “It was like I had been hugged by God Himself,” Joe told me afterward. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Nothing speaks more loudly of the deep and lasting impression that Basil Plumley had on generations of young Army draftees than their reactions to his arrival at some of the first reunions of the Ia Drang veterans in the late 1980s. Although these men had served only a two-year obligation to the Army and nation and had returned to civilian life many years ago, as they gathered in the reunion hospitality suite a few would spot the old sergeant major in the door and, turning pale, would ease their way to the wall and try to make a stealthy exit behind him. Anyone who had ever been counseled for mistakes large or small by Plumley never forgot it and never wanted to repeat it. They were afraid he still had his old pocket notebook and that their names might still be written down in it for a long-delayed personal counseling session.
During these years Plumley gathered every Friday morning with a small group of other retired sergeants major at a local restaurant in Columbus for coffee and catching up on Army news and gossip. To the casual onlooker it may have looked like a typical group of old grandfathers at their usual table, laughing and joking and ragging each other over their coffee. But they are the lions in winter, the true backbones of our Army. Joe says that even though they wear PX plaid shirts these days he still sees, in his mind’s eye, the rows of combat ribbons on their chests. For him and for me they are the history of America at war for half a century.
None of these old lions ever roared with greater effect than Basil Plumley, who has marched steadfastly through life adhering to the code of the hills of West Virginia, the rules and discipline of the Old Army, and his own sense of duty fulfilled and a job done well.
Back to the Ia Drang!
W hen we reached Pleiku in the Central Highlands, we discovered that the chartered helicopter that would take us to the Ia Drang battlefields would be delayed. Between that and the additional discovery that the green light given in Hanoi did not necessarily apply out in the hinterlands, we spent a nervous weekend in yet another shabby hotel. By now Joe had begun rating our lodging by his own variant of the star rating system—the rat rating system. He pronounced the Pleiku establishment a two-rat hotel, meaning each of us was guaranteed at least two rats in our room. He wasn’t far off the mark.
Our old hotel sat on a dusty road in a poor section of Pleiku. The new wave of progress and construction had not made it to this wild west frontier town. A dozen or more Vietnamese schoolchildren had spotted the arriving foreign guests and now hung out in front of the
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