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We have a very vibrant and active veteran and military community within our community,
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introduced the idea of establishing such a committee after campaigning and hearing across the board
there is a need for that. The coastal city of about twenty six thousand
people is home to more than sixteen hundred veterans. For more great veteran stories,
just go to National Defense Network dot com. Welcome to Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is Ernie Savage. He is
a US Army veteran of the Vietnam War and served in the Battle of Landing
Zone X Ray as part of the larger Battle of Aya Drang and Ernie,
it's a great honor to have you with us, thank you very much.
Should point out that Ernie served in the first Battalion of the seventh Cavalry in
the first Air Cavalry Division, which was a groundbreaking unit in the Vietnam War.
And we'll talk more about that in a little bit. But Ernie,
where were you born and raised? I was born in Alabama, Race Stair
as well. And had there been a history of military service in your family?
Yes, I had three brothers. You served in the Marine Corps,
Air Force, and Army. You guys covered the branches pretty well. Oh
yeah, When did you join the service and why did you choose the Army.
I joined in sixty nineteen sixty two. I was originally going to go
into Air Force with the guys that are always going with couldn't pass the tests,
so we all went in the Army together. Where did you do your
training? I did my basic training in Fort Raley, Kansas. At what
point did you have the opportunity to serve in this emerging Air Cavalry division.
I served in Korea is sixty two sixty three and when I came out of
Korea, I came to Fort Beating and joined the leveled air assault tests that
sport. They were tests in the aeros concept for the Army, explained the
concept your concept was and still riding around wheel retract vehicles or jumping out of
the air and walking. We were from point A to point me on helicopters,
so the transports it very quickly. You get up and move out quickly,
and you wouldn't you were would more out for walking. Half of we
did walk quite a bit. People thought we flew, but we did do
quite a bit of walking. How did you train for that before you were
in combat? When you're here in the States testing this concept, what does
that look like? Well, basic infantry training on the ground is the same.
You know, your train is your your squad and platoon company level type
of operation BADAIA level top orporation. Do your concept with with the air cowb
which that you moved everybody by a helicopter and in our test we tested against
the age second airborne into four brag and uh, of course stay again jumps
out of a plane. They had to walk and we could move from point
A to point B to snap of your finger, so we would always show
up where we're supposed to be. So we gave them a pretty hard time
tests. So were you trying to perfect how quickly you could unload and load
and take off and land and that sort of thing. Yeah, you could.
You could go into places where you know, where wheel vehicles couldn't go,
and uh, later on the Vietnam just played off because you know,
you could fly over to the jungle and drop down where the enemy was hiding.
Uh, and it would be very difficult to determine where you were coming
from or when you were coming and the same with that where it worked as
well. In the tests. What kind of helicopters were you using and how
many guys could fit on there? We were using a Huet UH one helicopter.
You could pretty well hit a squad on there with the equipment. And
that depends also on the weather. It was really hot, you Uh,
that helicopter couldn't pick up as much weight as it could if it was cooler.
But you could normally put a nine man squad on there with equipment.
All that temperature difference is good to know when it comes to Vietnam because,
oh yeah, a couple of times we ran in trouble with that. When
did you first deploy to Vietnam. We've deployed to Vietnam in August of nineteen
sixty five. We went over by ship. We went on the US in
this Rows. Everybody that was owned that ship called it the Rembling Rows because
when we went across the Pacific, we had to go around a hurricane,
so we were like an extra week or so, had to take a d
tour. So where did you land in Vietnam and where did you go from
there? We landed Quantam Bay, Vietnam. That's where most of the ship
stuff were coming in at the time, and then we went from there to
an k which was our base count. What were your early assignments? The
first thing we did. We got there, and of course we the area
had already been selected. It had been sung clearing and designated where the units
would go. But other than that, it was bear land. So we
had to go in there and pretty well clean up. We were going to
set our tents and stuff up, and we ended up saying in two ben
tents. We were in two intents two or three months there, and the
first couple of days we're there, it rained really hard and we learned very
quickly. You got it, put trainings, ditches, surrounders in the washing
everything you had down the hill. So we went in the background and set
up two mantians. You mentioned the frequent rain there and heavy rain. What
else did you notice about the climate? The terrain as soon as you got
there? What the monsoons is of course when you have the most rain,
but you'd have rain frequently. The temperature was very hot, very humid.
And what was the land like a lot of vegetation, right, a lot
of vegetation, but depending on what area was operating in, you had a
lot of RoCE petties. On the areas that was not jungle type, and
there's flatter land there were ross petties, so we operated a lot around ross
petties and then do the double canopy jungles. But uh, all the jungles
we operated dinners was fairly clear underneath the kennopy because the trees were so high
and they well blocked out sound. Then to the underbrush. The fighting that
we're going to be talking about at x Ray is November of nineteen sixty five.
But give us a little bit of the background that led up to this
mission. What was happening that your commanders felt that you needed to respond there
well, play me on special Force account was under siege by the North Fifties
Army. It was basically a siege. They didn't really want to take an
outpost, but they wanted to ambush to reinforcements coming in. And basically what
happened on there there was a make arvenue. The Republic Army reperfect with Vietnam
Army. Army unit moved in, but it had American advisors with it who
knew basically what the proy was that they were pulling, and so they were
ready for artillery and air support. And when it's Throng do An Bush did
pretty well wiped out to the ambushing units. And we knew about that and
UH before we went into the x Ray itself, we were in a security
of the UH, the Brigade headquarters UH for a couple of days, and
then they moved from there to play meet Count UH where we stayed to go
into l Z X ray. So we'd been out about a week or sol
training patrolling, UH before we win the X trade. So explain the plan.
The plan basically from what I understood for the operation orders was, you
know, we knew that the NVA was somewhere out there that didn't know exactly
where they were. We knew they were they were withdrawing from their tackle play
meeting. We found out later though, there were a lot of new units
that came in we weren't we weren't aware of. So we were more or
less like a search destroyer type operation. We were going into the area.
They talked to her where they were located at. The NVA was located there,
but we wasn't sure exactly what was going on. It was because tell
us a little bit about your leader, Lieutenant Colonel hal Moore. He's a
legend now, but from all the air Calf guys that I've spoken with,
his qualities were evident long long ago. So what made him such a great
leader. He was a great leader technically and technically proficient, a very good
personality. You get right down in the French as you're talking at your level.
His leadership was superb. He'd been to a lot of things that improved
training for us and the leadership training. Specifically, he had one program to
call for drop out your dead. Basically he could walk up to a leader
and kill him, so you're dead. And then you know there had to
be somebody prepared to jump in that position, because once you did, of
course you keep saying any thing. We're always trained from the lawyer's level up
at least one or two levels up that we could take over if we had
to. Well, that turned out to be a very good idea. Well
we did, yeah, one level, we sure he did. Okay,
So let's get to that day now, this is mid November of nineteen sixty
five. Explain what happened as you landed and began there. Well, first
of all, when we came from security for Brigade, we flew into play
Me Camp, which had been on the siege. We were flew in there
on what she knew, helicopters, and when we got off the helicopters there
was a big pile of trash which we thought was shresh and when we walked
pil we realized that it was Vietnam vieing these army soldiers who had been pulled
who had been police up out of the wire and around the camp had been
piled up in position to have a mess burial. So that is self,
you know, alertic, you hate. Things are a little different what you
were used to because the only thing we had come in contact with wore was
the grittles and the black and the black pajamasus. These guys were there were
professionals. When we flew out of there on a Huey helicopters, I can
remember as we approached the l Z, I could see the smoke coming off
of it because the huge When we first fly like that, we fled at
a higher level paybe five thousand feet in the air, and you could see
a long waist. But when you start approaching to the l Z, he
dropped down what would call tree top level and basically kadeer at the tree tops.
You're doing one hundred and sixty knots at the tree tops in training,
you know, every once in a while, the branches would hit the bottom
of the schedule the helicopter, you know, and he was scared the hell
out of her. But going into the l Z, you know, we
weren't too concerned about the limbs because we could see what was going on for
Smoker off the l Z on the prep far. That's Ernie Savage, a
US Army veteran of the Vietnam War and the intense fighting at Landing Zone x
Ray as part of the Battle of Ayadrone in November nineteen sixty five. The
service of Savage and many others in the first Battalion, seventh Cavalry in the
first Air Cavalry Division is immortalized in the book We Were Soldiers Once and Young,
which was later made into a feature film. In just a moment,
mister Savage picks up his story and explains what happened when he landed at x
Ray, how his platoon got cut off from other American forces, and how
he was suddenly thrust into leadership. All that and much more is still ahead.
I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Ernie Savage, a
US Army veteran of the Vietnam War and the intense fighting at Landing Zone x
Ray as part of the Battle of Ayaedrang in November nineteen sixty five. We
now pick up his story as mister Savage describes everything that happened once they arrived
at land Zone X ray. Then when we landed, nothing happened. When
we went in, the machine guns or the door gunners were firing into the
sides of the off the sides of the LC which that was a that was
sop through that, And we jumped out of the helicopter and ran out to
the edges of the of the LZ like you should to secure it. The
helicopters took off and then it was dead silence, not in that thing.
Nobody fired around, nothing really quiet. Nothing was going on at that time.
For about ten to fifteen minutes, I know, we were sitting there
waiting and tour platoons had been sent off towards the mouth, and we were
only one company on the ground at the time, Provo Company John Harron's company
and my patoon was still sort of held back. And the two platoons that
went out made contact with the NVA soldiers coming off a Choupong Mouth. Captain
Harry sent my platoon up to hook up to the right side of the first
platoon. So Lieutenant Harrit got us up and we took off up to cover
the right flank of the first of the first platoon, and by the time
we approached the first platoon, then uhr Herd turned the platoon and chased off.
What I found out later was NVA soldiers. Because I was a trail
squad, so I didn't really know what was going on up front. I
knew that we were going where we shouldn't be going, and we were going
away from the company itself, And so we went up five six hundred yards
up there and uh as to come up on a little no we run head
on into a unit coming down the valley in Va was probably an NVA battalion.
We were sure, we didn't know what it was. The first two
squads went down and took him under the fire. And I was a trail
squad and me and machine guns flanked our front, went out front and flanked
the enemy. We actually flanked the enemy and fired on them before they fired
on us. And then you had to. Then I looked and I seen
like two batoons of NBA flanking trying to flank us to the right. There
wasn't firing, they were just moving quickly to the right, trying to get
into our floint and about that time the machine gun we had two machine guns
who had set up off to my right flank. They started firing and we
fired, and my squad far maneuvered back to where the batoon was at and
just got burried up with the platoon when the main part of the force hit
us and started to fire, and we ended up losing the platoon leader,
platoon sergeant, weapon, squad leader, artillery, fol mortar fo all went
in by the first five minutes on the battle and it was a very intense
fired back and forth there for about twenty to thirty minutes initially to and the
morefold guy had come around to my flak and he got hit and killed out,
hit in the head. He had a radio. He had dropped the
hands of the radio and he was trying to get artillery in. I tried
to reach over the log and get it, but when I did that,
all kinds of fires started hitting the log. Warder in view was faring at
me, and I had to reach under the log. I reached under the
log and pulled a handset and started just the R two rate and I adjusted
the artillery around us, and all fire is going on at this time back
and forth, very tense. It was so loud you could hardly think clearly.
There's so much ammunition being fired out. And I finally trying to get
the artillery adjusted in. And when I was given to a gun target line,
not a gun observer target line, they couldn't adjust that, but I
could hear the archery firing and the distance. So I went to a gun
target line, which means I know where you're firing from, and I know
where you're firing to, and my adjustice will be from that. And so
I made the adjustibation on the gun target line and quickly got the artillery and
around us, and I called it in very close around the where we were
at, so close one time that when they fired for effect, a couple
of rounds fell on the opposite side of where they were firing at. The
main thing with the artillery saves us their and we kept the artillery going all
afternoon. Uh. And I set up target reference points all around the perimeter,
and the log those at the artillery site. So later on when I
had to call for artillery, I would just call for that target reference point
and I could get a fire for effect. That's all the gun fired at
one time on that point. So we fought more that afternoon, and then
it started backing off of the bent around five o'clock in the afternoon. We
were still getting people fired back and forth, but the most intense part took
place for probably thirty five to forty minutes, you know. But then we
had killed a whole lot of them, and did also killed a whole lot
of us. But they took by artillery that I ain't known because the l
Z was under at that But the whole time I never remember hearing the artillery
firing on the l S or the small arts far from the l Z.
I guess because the artillery was so close that it it hurt my ears.
I know I can already hear it now anyway, but I think it just
forty drowned it out everything I was hearing other than right around me. But
during the night they run into us a couple of times jurer the night,
either deliberately or by accident. There was a short firefight and they would back
off because I would have called the artillion. And then I know that a
major unit was rousing down the bottom about three o'clock in the morning, and
they stopped right at one of my refuge boards on the target reference points,
and I called a fire for effect on that, and I think they fired
twelve guns on that. They fired a lot of artillery, so they killed
a lot of the folks that was coming down the autumn. And they had
tried to reach us a couple of times the afternoon the day before. They
weren't able to get anywhere. In years, I never seen them, never
heard them, but they lost a few people trying to get to us.
I do remember that. The next morning they called and said they were coming
in. I think the battalion of the first fifth Calve had came in,
and some of the secondest seventh calv had came in, and then they left
the Elsie and came up and caut us. They got us about eleven o'clock
the next morning, about eleven o'clock, and uh, we had lost eight
ki's out of the patuone between the twenty seven people there. All of the
twenty seven people, one was a company medic, one was an artillery for
reserver, one was a mortar observer. So three of them didn't even belong
to pratoon. So we had a fight to four for only twenty four people.
Basically what was doing well. Everybody's fighting, but only twenty four people
actually belonged to the platoon. But they gay got us about eleven o'clock and
it took just about the whole company to move all of the wounding and dead
back to theos. That's Ernie Savage, a US Army veteran of the Vietnam
War and the intense fighting at Landing Zone X Ray as part of the Battle
of Ayadrang in November nineteen sixty five. Coming up, mister Savage reflects on
what it was like to take command of the platoon while under heavy fire,
making critical decisions while surrounded by the enemy, and why he was nervous before
combat but not once the fighting began. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans
Chronicles. This is Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this
edition is Ernie Savage, a US Army veteran of the Vietnam War and the
intense fighting at Landing Zone X Ray as part of the Battle of Ayadrang in
November nineteen sixty five. We just heard mister Savage explain how his platoon was
finally able to rejoin American forces after many hours of being surrounded by the enemy
coming up. In this final segment of our conversation, mister Savage tells us
about returning to the fight almost immediately after his platoon rejoined American forces, and
how he trained fresh troops for the Air Cavalry after many of the others got
to go home. But first we'll hear how he realized he was thrust into
command, what he was thinking as he took command of his platoon under extremely
stressful circumstances, and why he wasn't all that nervous once the fighting began.
No, I found out out when they went down. The opportunitier died right
behind me. The Patuta charger died right behind me, The FO died right
in front of me, and the artiller the fort was behind me. He
was hitting the head, didn't kill him, but he incapacitated. He knocked
him out. He was out just a BYuT the whole time we were there,
so I knew everybody was dead. The only ones I didn't know for
sure was dead was the weapon squad would have hurt because both of those guns
had fired. I guess all the AMMO and then when they quit fire,
they were overrun and everybody down there was killed. But I didn't know that
at the time, So you knew that you were in charge. Then I
knew I was in charge as soon as I grabbed that radio. When the
FO went down in front of me, I knew the lieutenant was already down,
and I knew the platoon charges had been hit, but he was He
could still talk, but he couldn't do very much. And the canade came
in and roll right eg next is back that killed him. And so you
mentioned earlier how you had trained to be ready in case something like this happened.
I don't know if you could necessarily train for this particular situation though,
So were you basing your decisions on training on instinct based on the situation?
How are you deciding what should happen next? All of the book, while
you were talking about the situation and your training, it all comes in.
When you get an intense battle like that, your training takes over, your
drenaling gets high, your fear is basically could go. And my experience in
Vietnam was you're afraid right before it happens, but once it starts you're drenaling
takes over and you're you're more like you're you're not really there, you're outside
looking at what you're doing, and your training takes over and you do what
you we're trained to do. Now, the way that you arranged your men
to pret tacked your position, Ultimately nobody else was killed once you did that.
Was that something you had been trained to do, or was that your
reaction to the situation. Well, first of all, you had two other
squadaders there at the time, and they had their own squads. Two of
those squads were already down in position, as you remember I told you earlier.
They went down in a position and took the enemy on the fire.
And as soon as they realized what was doing, they adjusted their people and
I integrated my people in the complete circle on it, told them to redistribute
ammunition. We took ammunition of all the dead, every grenades and AMMO and
stuff like that, and redirected. We took the signal operator destruction, SOI
we burned it. The reason we burned it because the enemy got a hold
of it, they would be able to read our codes they were going out
on the radio, So we burned it. So I knew that had to
be done, and we did it because we didn't know where we were going
to survive or not as a patune or as anybody. So what kind of
communication did you have? The only communication I had is that one radio that
I was talking to the artillery for deserver and kept your hair as well over
the same frequency. Matter of fact, some guys try to dig in.
The guy next to one of my guys was trying to dig in and he
got about six inches down. You hit like rock and stuff, and I
say, hey, man, let me have your fox. Always say you
have you want to sor you can get it. Doesn't know. I want
to put this damn radio in there so it doesn't get hit, because that's
all we got communicate with. So I put the radio in the hole,
he doug. Now, you mentioned a couple of positions that ran out of
ammunition and the enemy over ran them. How did you manage to have enough
ammunition at your position to hold out the position we're talking about? I will
runners of machine guns. They were separate from us. They were to have
the hill from us, and they actually wanted to provided far fire against the
image. It allowed me to pull my squad back and they stayed in position.
That's why they ended up getting killed. Everybody getting killed. Now far
as AMMO was concerned, we had a lot of ammunition. We had the
old equipment, the M fourteen ammunition pouches for the M fourteen would only hold
two twenty round magazines. For the M sixteen, each palch would hold five
twenty rue magazines, and everybody had two paluchies, so they had at least
ten ten magazines in the pouches, and a lot of them had extra magazines
and grenades in the backpack. So we had ceny AMMO going in. When
the people got killed, we took the ammon reistributed. How much did you
have left when you finally reconnected. We've probably still had a basic load,
but I think it basic loans, like one hundred and twenty rounds At the
time we were each one who had at least three hundred plus. What did
you learn about yourself that day and that night and the men around you?
Well, you always wonder what you would do in a situation like that,
and you just end up doing it, you know. And as far as
all night and the concern your dreaming, our adrenaliness, stayed up all night
basically the whole time we were there, because he was always to thread or
the anybody to be the firing on us, or we knew he was getting
ready to fire on us or attack us. And so I was well trained,
so I knew exactly what to do. And I trained with all those
guys that were up there with me, and I knew they knew what to
do, and I knew that they would do what they were supposed to do.
So I had confidence in myself as far as capabilities concerned, and I
had confidence in the squads, all of them do my opportune. We trained
to get there over a year, year and a half. What did you
do once you reconnected? Once they brought us back, they brought us back
to the ELZ and everybody was either wounded or dead except me and a couple
other guys, and they put us at the battalion headquarters there in the LC
and we stayed about an hour or so like that, and I told the
colonels say, hey, sir, we don't need to be back here.
We need to get back up on the line, you know, because we
felt safer actually over the line, but the back. And he said okay,
if what you won't go ahead? So we were back on the line.
And who did you fold in with if most of your men were injured?
Just me and two other guys there and one one of them got a
machine gun, got up on the line, and the other guys joined the
other rifle one and I was in the ditch behind everybody but the two guys
I had rejoined another patoon. Because that was all of us. There were
just three people out of the whole batoon. They're still a Bravo company still
with Bravo coming you. And then what was that fighting like? Well,
there was a little bit of fighting when we got it in the ditches there.
I think people guys Theyden wounded out there, and I've seen three or
four people running around. They may have been trying to get their buddies something
like that. But there was no major attack on Bravos area, but it
did. I think world Charlie Company was before they had a major attack over
there that night or the next morning. That's when the second sever had taken
the position of Charlie Company, and uh they got attacked by a least the
battalion on that side the next morning. So Bravo Company is doing a little
bit better. Charlie Company is under heavy fire. What happens after that?
What Charlie Company had the company commandity? Charlie Company had hit the day before,
and so the company they came in there was Delta was from a second
to seventh or sister battalion. They moved into Charlie Company's area. Of course,
Charlie Company had a lot of klas and they just shifted to a little
bit and the other and moved in between them. And of course what was
left the charge company was still there, but the major fight was the secretary
sebbnth. But after that, you know, the uh, that was the
day that we pulled out. The next day we pulled out. How did
you go over what had happened? How did you dissect it and learn from
it and figure out what to do the next time you're and I don't think
there's a whole lot of dissect to do to it, you know, and
figure out what you're going to do next time. You realize you know that
the training we had had paid off greatly and that we were still alive,
most of us were still alive. But then we had all those people who
were not killed who de ros That means they were getting discharged from the army.
A lot of those people killed there were supposed to be discharging the army
about two weeks because they were draft these two year guys, and we've been
training with them eighteen months or so, so most some were ready to rotate
out. Would have rotated out if we came back from that mission without hitting
elsik Ray. Most of those guys are killed would have went home. But
then the ones that weren't killed or wounded, majority of those did rotate out.
Once we get back to base camp I had we had nobody left in
the Betune, very few people left in the company, so we uh we
had to have not they all were killed or anything like that and are wounded,
they were discharged from the army. So we had to take a group
a new people in, integrated them and train them. But we used our
experience in training and our experience and what we went through and how we trained
those people, and so we did have a few of the good and the
CEO's left. We had a lot of them that were killed, and my
opportunity. The two of the major ones were the platoon charger and the weapon
squad leader and the other rest of them wounded. Uh So I was one
of the n c os left that went over. Originally we didn't have that
many, so we had to uh help integrate the new n c os in
and new ones we were getting and as well as uh trained the new people
had we had. Did the new people get up to speed pretty quickly?
Oh? Yeah, they had heard all about what went on, you know.
They were they were very interested in learning what to do correctly. Uh.
They had heard what happened in the LC. See some of them were
back in base camp and just landed there and did not hadn't been brought to
the field when that happened. So they were they knew what was going on,
and so once we started training, they paid very close attention. How
soon were you back in action? We trained those guys probably uh month or
so off and on, but we were still out there playing with the with
the VC. We call them trainers training four, which was because they can
shoot as well as the regular guys. But in January we went to bonk
Sun, which was along the coast, mostly ross Patties. We run into
the NVA down there also were in Bonkton for forty five days straight and just
about every every day we were in contact make contact with the enemy. Sometime
we fight them four or five hours and they would take it. He'd get
dark and it would take off and we would jump on the helicopters and catch
them ten to fifteen minutes. I remember said, damn, let him go
for a while. Yeah. But yeah, it was forty five days there,
and we lost quite a few people there as well. And I found
out one thing from that, you know, the old vets we had left,
we probably didn't lose any more of those guys. So experience makes a
difference in combat. If you experience combat, you're change to the survival or
much greater. And if you're with the well trained unit, your experiency survival
are much greater when everybody knows what they're doing. But if you got new
guys and something happened, they don't know exactly what to do, to hesitate
or to do the wrong thing, and they caused them to get killed or
get hit. And that proved yourself very well in Boks. How long did
you stay on that tour? I left in July of sixty six, July
six, sixty years. How many tourists. Did you serve there? One?
I know you served until the early eighties. Where are their assignments did
you have? I was assigned to Fort mcclull Alabama when I came back from
Vietnam in sixty six. There was a training base there where were training the
infantry advanced training at Fort McCloughan, and I was there for about a year.
Then they ship me to Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska. I was in
fair Bak, Alaska for two and a half years and then I got out
of shurs three years. So fich belittle zero, make Alabama boar won't to
get out? That'll do it. So the story of Landing Zone X Ray
and Aya Draang is an incredibly powerful story, but it really became well known
thanks to the book that Colonel Moore and eventually General Moore wrote with Joe Galloway.
So what's it like to have what you lived become a very well read
story and then turn into a movie, And so your story becomes a story
that a lot of people know. Well when the book first came out,
you know, I read the whole book, which is the book itself includes
in letting his own Albany as well, it was the actually just one part
of that of that battle, you know, And the book is probably ninety
ninety five percent true because they interviewed everybody was in the fights, so the
information they wrote the book on it is based on actual memories of the guys
that faulted. Now, the movie itself is probably seventy percent accurate as far
as historical is concerned, and the rest of his thirty visioness Hollywood. You
know, it's a lot of things they showed in the Hollywood. Any other
thing on the movie is they take a three day fight and they try to
put it into two hours. When you do that, everybody's fighting all the
time. To have it historical account or what happened, you know, and
you're very proud of the people who were there with you, and that includes
Joe Gallaway and Gillen Moore from for actually doing the book. It felt because
I think it's one of the most accurate books done at the time, and
the movie itself was as well, because a lot of the movies were strictly
based on what Hollywood thought was going on in Vietnam, and this movie was
based on an actual book telling what went on. And of course they took
Hollywood license to change it the way they thought should should sell sell tickets.
Imagine, as you look back at your career, what are you most proud
of both and that operation and throughout your twenty years in the service. Well,
I'm proud of that outfit, you know, and anybody who was served
with it will tell you that the first Sevil has stayed together Gid Moore's battalion
as far as the reunions, better than I think any other battalion. We
had close to two hundred people show up at our last reunion we had and
in Georgia and there was seventy eighties showed up to one we had the other
day, and there will probably been more. But it's very close to when
they're having the reunion in d C for November eleventh, and a lot of
guys go to that. The CALF has its own reunion there during that time
too, so a lot of people wouldn't go to both places. I was
very proud to serve that union. I was very proud to done a career
in the army or wouldn't change anything to have done. And as a Georgia
as I'm sure you know that military base, I think it's Fort Benning now
is being renamed for General Moore and his wife? Yes, he is renamed
for his General Moore and his wife is for more now, Yeah, we
intend to be renaming of it just about all the guys that could come there
from one seventh Colt. General Moore's off here, we're there. What does
that mean to you that he gets that honor and then as a result of
his story, which is also your story, lives on even more. I
would say if they's going to have to rename the post, they did it
for the appropriate guy because he really deserved it, and his wife as well.
Now you got to remember that she did things that has effective. Way
the Army treats casualties now even to now there hasn't changed. And if you've
seen the movie or read the book, you know that taxes used to deliver
the telegram telling someone their their husband or brother or sister or whatever had been
killed. Has he changed that? And so including ears part of it was
appropriate. Well, it's an incredible legacy, and I know how much all
of you revered General Moore, and the fact that this brotherhood continues now nearly
sixty years later is a testament to his work and your own work as well.
So that's true. Like I say, there's no battalion he sticks together
as much as this one one seven. So thank you very much for your
time today, and thank you very very much for your incredible service to our
country. Take you sure we've been speaking with Ernie Savage. He's a US
Army veteran of the Vietnam War, serving the Battle of Landing Zone x Ray
as part of the larger Battle of Aya Edrang. He was also part of
the first Battalion, seventh Cavalry, first Air Cavalry Division. I'm Greg Corumbus.
This is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks
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