Vietnam Story

Below on X-Ray, Moore urgently called for air, artillery and helicopter-gunship strikes on the North Vietnamese attack routes down the mountain and sent the rest of Nadal's men up to reinforce Herren. As Nadal moved toward Herren's left flank, he ran into 100 to 150 North Vietnamese charging down a dry creek bed -- a natural highway that led off the mountain straight to the heart of the landing zone. "They're PAVN [People's Army of Vietnam]," the Vietnam veteran yelled into his radio. These were no black-pajama guerrillas pouring off the mountain. They were North Vietnamese regulars in khaki battle dress, their pith helmets camouflaged with clumps of elephant grass. Most were armed with Soviet-made AK-47 rifles, and all carried big pouches full of wooden-handled "potato masher" hand grenades. They also had Maxim heavy machine guns and RPG-2 shoulder-fired rockets.

Bill Beck, a 22-year-old machine gunner from Harrisburg, Pa., was in Nadal's company. "We were left of the dry creek bed, about 30 yards, and moving forward toward Chu Pong," he recalls. "I heard Bob Hazen, the radio operator, yelling about Lieutenant Taft being hit, that he was hit in the neck and bleeding to death. I could see Hazen leaning over Taft when a North Vietnamese blasted him from behind, and I saw his radio explode into pieces." A handsome 6-footer from Highland Park, Ill., 23-year-old Robert Taft was the first young lieutenant to die in the Ia Drang Valley.

Out in the landing zone, the choppers were bringing in the first men of Bob Edwards's Charlie Company. A native of Trenton, N.J., Edwards had entered the Army straight from Lafayette College, where he had finished at the top of his ROTC class. He was, in Hal Moore's view, "a superb and very perceptive leader -- aloof and strictly business."

Moore was deeply worried about his left flank. Lieutenant Herrick's charge far to the right seemed to have confused the enemy commander; the North Vietnamese attacks were now shifting to the left, and Moore had to shift with them. He ran into the landing zone under heavy fire, grabbed Edwards at the helicopter door and "yelled at him to run his men toward the mountain, tie in with Nadal's company on the right and get ready to be attacked in strength." The young captain sped off in the direction Moore pointed, waving at his 106 men to follow. Within a few minutes, they had found cover or scraped shallow holes in the woods just off the landing zone. A minute or two later, a wave of more than 550 North Vietnamese slammed into the thin line of waiting American riflemen.

Moore and Sergeant Major Plumley had been in constant motion on the battleground and the landing zone, shifting newly arriving troops to where they were needed most. When a new flight arrived, Moore stood in the open, guiding the helicopters to the safest landing spots. "After giving Edwards his orders, I was walking along the line by the creek bed when the firing around my head took on a distinctly different sound -- like a hell of a lot of bees," Moore remembers. "I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. It was Sergeant Major Plumley, shouting above the noise of the guns: 'Sir, if you don't find some cover you're going to go down, and if you go down we all go down."' Moore reluctantly moved to the waist of the figure-8 clearing and set up his command post behind a big termite hill.

Landing Zone X-Ray was now, as the pilots put it, "very, very hot." Maj. Bruce Crandall was in charge of the 16 helicopters assigned to the mission. He and his 6-foot-6 sidekick, Capt. Ed "Too Tall to Fly" Freeman, along with their wingmen, brought reinforcements, ammunition and precious water, and they carried out the wounded. If Moore said it was O.K. to land, they landed. Crandall flew two choppers this day -- his first was crippled when it hit a line of trees hauling wounded out of the battle. Crandall vividly recalls one flight: "I saw a North Vietnamese firing at us from just outside my rotor blades [20 feet away]. After taking on wounded, I pulled pitch [lifted out] in a hurry. I had three dead and three wounded, including my crew chief, who was shot in the throat."