Read We Were Soldiers Once...and Young for Free Online Page B

transferred or reassigned elsewhere. Between April and July we also lost by discharge or reassignment our intelligence officer, surgeon, personnel officer, air operations officer, supply officer, assistant medical officer, chaplain, and two company commanders.
    In early June we were assigned six brand-new second lieutenants. We plugged them into the vacant rifle-platoon leader slots and gave them seven weeks of "get rich quick" on-the-job training in airmobile-air assault tactics. But in early August, shortly before we deployed, all six were yanked out of the battalion to stay at Fort Benning and attend the six-month Infantry Officers Basic Course: Someone had discovered an Army policy that new lieutenants could not be sent into combat before attending. The policy may be sound, but the net result was that the battalion and the troops in the ranks were whipsawed by unnecessary leadership changes.
    Each rifle company got three new rifle-platoon leaders, except Alpha, which got two. Each rifle company had a mortar platoon, but we had no officers to lead them. Delta Company had a new recon-platoon leader, Lieutenant John Arlington, and a new mortar-platoon leader, First Lieutenant Raul E. Taboadarequera.
    There was precious little time to jam fourteen months' worth of airmobile training into the new lieutenants' heads. We did our best and so did they. When they reported in, I called them all in, together with their platoon sergeants, and told them we were heading for war and time was short. I issued two orders: One, platoon sergeants will teach their new platoon leaders everything they can about airmobility, small unit tactics, the men in the ranks, and the leadership those men deserve.
    Two, the new lieutenants will keep their mouths shut except to ask questions, and will listen to and remember everything the platoon sergeant tells them.
    In early July the Pentagon announced that the 11th Air Assault Division (Test) had served its purpose; now it would become the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Colonel Brown, with an eye to military heritage and tradition, immediately asked that his two battalions be given the historic colors of the 7th U.S. Cavalry. My battalion was reborn as the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry. Our sister battalion became the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry.
    In the days when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer commanded the 7th Cavalry the regiment adopted a rowdy Irish drinking song, "Garry Owen," as its marching tune. The words "Garry Owen" made their way onto the regimental crest, and the officers and men of the regiment customarily accompanied each exchange of salutes with a hearty
    "Garry Owen, sir!" We picked up the tradition with the 7th Cavalry colors, and the troops accepted it all with enthusiasm.
    The officers and pilots of Lieutenant Colonel John B. Stockton's highly spirited 3rd Squadron of the 17th Cavalry now became the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry--and had already absorbed the very essence of cavalry esprit. They wore big cavalry mustaches and black Stetson hats, and they carried their papers in leather saddlebags, despite everything that more conservative elements in the division command could do to stop them. Stockton and his men even smuggled their mascot, Maggie the Mule, to Vietnam in spite of a strict no-pets-allowed order intended to ensure that the mule stayed home.
    Unfortunately, my battalion and every other in the division now began to suffer the consequences of President Johnson's refusal to declare a state of emergency and extend the active-duty tours of draftees and reserve officers. The order came down: Any soldier who had sixty days or less left to serve on his enlistment as of the date of deployment, August 16, must be left behind.
    We were sick at heart. We were being shipped off to war sadly understrength, and crippled by the loss of almost a hundred troopers in my battalion alone. The very men who would be the most useful in combat--those who had trained longest in the new