The Bronze Star Medal (BSM) is a United States Armed Forces decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for either heroic achievement, heroic service, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service in a combat zone.
Harold Gregory Moore Jr. was a United States Army lieutenant general and author. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the U.S. Army's second-highest decoration for valor, and was the first of his West Point class (1945) to be promoted to brigadier general, major general, and lieutenant general.
Basil Leonard Plumley was a career soldier and airborne combat Infantryman in the United States Army who rose to the rank of Command Sergeant Major. As a combat veteran of World War II and the Vietnam War, he is most noted for his actions during the Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam.
The Battle of Ia Drang was the first major battle between the United States Army and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), as part of the Pleiku Campaign conducted early in the Vietnam War, at the eastern foot of the Chu Pong Massif in the central highlands of Vietnam, in 1965. It is notable for being the first large scale helicopter air assault and also the first use of Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers in a tactical support role. Ia Drang set the blueprint for the Vietnam War with the Americans relying on air mobility, artillery fire and close air support, while the PAVN neutralized that firepower by quickly engaging American forces at very close range.
We Were Soldiers is a 2002 American war film written and directed by Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson. Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young (1992) by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, it dramatizes the Battle of Ia Drang on November 14, 1965.
Cyril Richard Rescorla was a British-American soldier, police officer, educator and private security specialist. He served as a British Army paratrooper during the Cyprus Emergency and a commissioned officer in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. He rose to the rank of colonel in the Army before entering the private sector, where he worked in corporate security.
Henry Barrett Tillman is an American author who specializes in naval and aviation topics in addition to fiction and technical writing.
Joseph Lee Galloway was an American newspaper correspondent and columnist. During the Vietnam War, he often worked alongside the American troops he covered and was awarded a Bronze Star Medal in 1998 for having carried a badly wounded man to safety while he was under very heavy enemy fire in 1965. From 2013 until his death, he worked as a special consultant for the Vietnam War 50th anniversary Commemoration project run out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and has also served as consultant to Ken Burns' production of a documentary history of the Vietnam War broadcast in the fall of 2017 by PBS. He was also the former Military Affairs consultant for the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers and was a columnist with McClatchy Newspapers.
Bruce Perry Crandall is a retired United States Army officer who received the Medal of Honor for his actions as a pilot during the Battle of Ia Drang on November 14, 1965, in South Vietnam. During the battle, he flew 22 missions in a Bell Huey helicopter into enemy fire to evacuate more than 70 wounded and bring ammunition and supplies to United States forces. His actions in the battle of the Ia Drang valley were portrayed by actor Greg Kinnear in the Mel Gibson film, We Were Soldiers. By the end of the Vietnam War, he had flown more than 900 combat missions. He retired from the army as a lieutenant colonel and worked several jobs in different states before settling down with his wife in his home state of Washington.
Julia Compton Moore was the wife of Hal Moore, a United States Army officer. Her efforts and complaints in the aftermath of the Battle of Ia Drang prompted the U.S. Army to set up survivor support networks and casualty notification teams consisting of uniformed officers, which are still in use.
Reconnaissance by fire, also known as speculative fire, is a warfare tactic used in which military forces may fire on likely enemy positions to provoke a reaction, which confirms the presence and the position of enemy forces.
Harold Elwood "Bunny" Comstock was an American fighter ace in the 56th Fighter Group during World War II, and a career fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. After a test flight of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt on 13 November 1942, Republic Aviation issued a press release on 1 December 1942 claiming that he and fellow pilot, Lieutenant Roger Dyar had exceeded the speed of sound.
Vietnam in HD is a 6-part American documentary television miniseries that originally aired from November 8 to November 11, 2011 on the History Channel. From the same producers as WWII in HD, the program focuses on the firsthand experiences of thirteen Americans during the Vietnam War. The thirteen Americans retell their stories in Vietnam paired with found footage from the battlefield.
Robert Alexander McDade was a United States Army colonel. He is best known for commanding the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment during the Battle of la Drang in 1965, during the Vietnam War.
Myron F. Diduryk was an American United States Army Major, who played a key role as an infantry company commander in the Battle of Ia Drang, the first major battle of the Vietnam War. His exploits in that battle were described by Hal Moore in, We Were Soldiers Once and Young. Moore said that Diduryk was, "… the finest battlefield company commander I had ever seen, bar none." Diduryk was killed in action on his second tour in Vietnam.
William "Bill" Albracht was an Army captain in the Vietnam War. He is a recipient of three Silver Stars, and is the author of Abandoned in Hell: The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate.
Gregg Jones is an American journalist and the author of three critically acclaimed non-fiction books. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was selected as a 2015-2016 Kluge Fellow by the Black Mountain Institute at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.
John Laurence is an American television correspondent, author, print reporter and documentary filmmaker. He is known for his work on the air at CBS News, London correspondent for ABC News, documentary work for PBS and CBS, and his book and magazine writing. He won the George Polk Memorial Award of the Overseas Press Club of America for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad" for his coverage of the Vietnam War in 1970.
The Chu Pong Massif, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, is a mountain with complex topography, valleys, and forests that stretches into Cambodia. The Chu Pong is situated north of the Gia Lai river, south of the Ia Krel river, and lies within Vietnam's Chư Prông District.
