Author Description

Product description Each year, the U.S. Marine Corps Commandant selects a book that he believes is both relevant and timeless to be read by all Marines. This book was the Commandant's choice for 1993. In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War. How these men persevered makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. Their devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles, revealing man's most heroic and horrendous endea About the Author Harold G. Moore is a West Point graduate, a master parachutist, and an Army aviator. He commanded two infantry companies in the Korean War and was a battalion and brigade commander in Vietnam. After retiring from the Army with thirty-two years of service, he became the executive vice president of a Colorado ski resort before founding a computer software company. An avid outdoorsman, he and his wife divide their time between Alabama and Colorado. Joseph L. Galloway was a reporter on a daily newspaper at seventeen and a bureau chief for United Press International at nineteen. He spent fifteen years as a foreign and war correspondent. Now a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report, he covered the Gulf War and co-authored Triumph Without Victory: The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf War. He lives with his family on a farm in northern Virginia. Pete Cross holds a BA in Theatre from the University of Toledo and an MFA in Ac