We Were Soldiers Once. And Young

We Were Soldiers Once.  And Young.

I quit watching Viet Nam movies.  All of them cynical, with thinly veiled tut-tutting that left me more pissed-off than inspired. Oliver Stone values; not John Ford's.   Last Friday, by chance, I stumbled over We Were Soldiers Once, and Young (2002).   I'm the last male in the room who hadn't seen it, I reckon.  I may have read the book, but forget; I've read so many.  We Were Soldiers  stars Mel Gibson as Lt. Col Harold G. Moore, in a  film about the initial battle of  Ia Drang Valley in 1965.  I got caught up in it.  Saturday morning I was compelled to watch it again.    The telegram sequences were poignant; the battle scenes intense, and believable. This is by far the bloodiest war film I've ever seen.  Intense?  The Pop-Tart in my hand at the beginning was uneaten and crumbled as the credits rolled.   There must have been 500 gross of blood packs used in it's making. The First Bn. of the 7th Air Cav ( once Custer's command) killed 1800 of 4000 Vietnamese soldiers to 72 out of 395  American fatal casualties   It was the American fighting man at his best.   I had a good movie hangover afterwards.  Sense of well-being; I dunno, hope?  Calm?  Pride? Satisfaction and pride?   Unlike every post-war film about Viet Nam I've seen, this was uplifting and positive.  I remember that John Wayne made The Green Berets (1968) partly to counter the leftist message of failure and doom that was by then pervasive in the media.  This, 34 years later, is the second attempt. “ The book was adapted into the movie We Were Soldiers, directed by Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson as Moore. In the book, Moore complains that "Every damn Hollywood movie got it wrong"; Wallace has said he was inspired by this comment and became "determined to get it right this time." [Wikipedia] ” I just tonight watched it a third time.  On Sunday, at my granddaughter's second birthday party, I was talking with my son-in-laws step-dad.  Turns out we're the same age, and had many of the same experiences.  He was turned down by the Army because of a medical problem, but his brother was in Nam.  Fought at, "was it Pork Chop Hill?"  No, I said that was Korea.  I mentioned that I'd just watched a movie about IA Trang Valley and he jumped, "That's it."  He was in that first battle (it went on for 300 days). His brother said the movie was pretty damned accurate. “ The Vietnamese government did not greet the film with approval. In fact, Don Duong the Vietnamese actor, who played the Vietnamese commander Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An, was officially condemned as a traitor, subjected to interrogations to force him to sign a "confession" to "crimes" he had supposedly committed. Duong refused to give in. After months of negotiations between the Bush White House and Hanoi, Duong and his family were allowed to immigrate to the United States in 2003.[Ibid] ” Anyway, when I began watching tonight, I was very wound up over all the same things that you are upset  over.   When it ended,  I was again filled with a certain calm. I don't know why.  I may have to watch it every day from now on.