Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 08:37 AM 3/3/02 -0500, B. D. Colen wrote: >Marc- I do not want to get in a huge to-do here - but there were TWO >consecutive battles fought in the Ia Drang in Nov. '65, from, I believe, the >14th through the 17th. The first, at landing zone X-ray, the battle depicted >in the movie, was indeed fought by the 1st battalion of the 7th Cavalry - >Col. Hal Moore's outfit - and Custer's old outfit. The second, at landing >zone Albany, was, as you note, fought by the 2nd of the 7th. So the movie >DID get it right, and, in essence, so did you. For sources, which I know you >demand ;-), I would refer you to "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young" by Hal >Moore and Joseph Galloway.(sp?) > BD You completely missed my point. The review stated that the unit in question was the "second regiment of the 7th Cavalry (Airmobile). That is wrong on two counts -- it was the second BATTALION of the 7th Cavalry (REGIMENT), which was part of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). The review misidentified a battalion as a regiment, and got the Airmobile designator with the wrong level -- this goes with the division title, not the regiment title. A battalion has approximately 800 men and is commanded by a lieutenant colonel. A regiment traditionally has three battalions and includes slightly under 3,000 men, and is commanded by a full colonel. In the US Army, we've had very few true "regiments" since ROAD was adopted in 1958; in a line division, battalions are lumped together into brigades, and the regiment only survives on paper as a lineage item. A brigade is now commanded, as was the regiment, by a full colonel but is more readily adapted to task organization. And, to be really picky, the unit in question might have been the second SQUADRON of the 7th Cavalry Regiment -- normally, cavalry units have "squadrons", the same unit as a battalion, but the name is different. But I recall that the 1st AirCav used "battalion" as the troops were infantry despite the fancy cavalry titles. The CMH web site would probably have this information. None of this stuff is hard to get right, and old soldiers DO note the difference. The reliability of a movie reviewer who hacks up the terminology collapses, precisely as would a photographer who wrote an article in which he spoke of setting his shutter speed by adjusting the aperture. It's just sad when someone who was there in a senior position and should have, as part of his job, known these differences gets it wrong. But, then, the US media in Viet-Nam often didn't pay much attention to what the Army was doing and how they were trying to do it. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +276/343-7315 Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir! - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html