We Were Soldiers Once...and Young by Harold G. Moore;Joseph L. Galloway Page A

James Reston think piece washington: war on the installment plan. Joe Namath, who had been paid an unthinkable $400,000 bonus for signing with the New York Jets, was having a great first season in pro football.
    The troop doors on the Huey helicopters were open. We flew at two thousand feet to reduce the chances of being hit by enemy small-arms fire as we traversed 14.3 miles of hostile country. We flew in four groups of four helicopters each, with each group in a heavy-left formation, and Crandalps four helicopter gunships guarding our flanks, two on each side slightly forward of us. Captain John Herren, whose Bravo Company troops filled the helicopters, recalls: "It was a misty, cool morning with some low-hanging fog when we lifted off, but shortly after takeoff we broke into the clear and you could see the 105mm artillery pounding the areas around the LZ as we headed in. Vietnam, even in war, was scenic, with the green jungle, heavy forested mountains, and wild-looking rivers crisscrossing the terrain."
    About four miles from X-Ray, Bruce Crandall gave the signal and his pilots dropped down to treetop level to fly nap-of-the-earth on the final approach. Birds scattered as we roared along at 110 miles per hour just above their perches. High overhead in the command chopper, Matt Dillon was running the fire support preparations: "The hairiest part of any operation was always the air assault. We had to time the flight and the artillery so close. When the choppers were one minute out the last artillery rounds had to be on the way or you get Hueys landing with the shells. We always sweated because if you shut down the artillery too soon the enemy could be up and waiting when the choppers came in. This one was precisely on time."
    We were two minutes out now and could see smoke and dust flying around the landing zone. Minimum fire had been directed on the clearing; if there were enemy they wouldn't be there, but in concealed positions around the clearing's edge. Now the helicopters of the aerial rocket artillery slammed that perimeter with rockets, grenades, and machinegun fire, using twenty-four of the forty-eight 2.75-inch rockets each carried. They saved the other half in case we needed help after we got on the ground. As the ARA ships banked steeply away to take up an orbit nearby, the four escorting gunships left us and dashed ahead to take over the firing that would keep any enemy heads down on our final approach.
    Major Bruce Crandall recalls: "We went low-level and arrived right on schedule at the release point into the landing zone. The landing zone was not as clear of obstacles as we would have liked but we got our flight in without any real problems. The only movement we spotted in the landing zone was something that looked like a dog scampering into some underbrush on the far side. It was probably an enemy soldier." Now the door gunners on the lift ships were firing into the tree line as we dropped into the clearing. I unhooked my seat belt, switched the selector switch on my M-16 to full automatic--rock '' roll--and fired bursts into the brush to the left, toward the mountain, as Crandall came in hot and flared over the dry five-foot-tall elephant grass. As the chopper skids touched the ground I yelled, "Let's go!" and jumped out, running for the trees on the western edge of the clearing, firing my rifle.
    It was 10:48 a.m. Sergeant Major Plumley, Captain Metsker, Bob Ouellette, and Mr. Nik, the translator, were right behind me. Herren and his men came out of their Hueys in like fashion. In less than ten seconds Crandall's first lift of eight ships had roared back into the air, banked north, and hightailed it back east. The second wave of eight helicopters was now touching down to disgorge its troops.
    I ran across twenty-five yards of open ground, then across a waist-deep, ten-foot-wide dry creekbed, and continued running some seventy-five yards into the scrub brush, leading the command group. We stopped to slap