"… and Colonel Moore said the interpreter got this scared look on his face because what the prisoner said was there are three battalions up there on that hill and they very much want to kill Americans. I think that really got everybody's attention."
Description of Interview:
Retired Army Colonel Bob Edwards shares memories and insights from his two abbreviated tours in Vietnam, first in 1965 as a combat company commander with the 1/7 Cav and then as an adviser in Nha Trang in 1969. Mr. Edwards was commissioned in 1960 through ROTC at Lafayette College, finished officer basic training and airborne school at Fort Benning, and then spent three years in Germany. He volunteered for company command in Vietnam in 1964, and after a year of testing and training the new airmobile cavalry concept, deployed to Vietnam in September of 1965, where the new division, re-flagged as the 1st Cavalry Division, began building base camp at An Khe in the Central Highlands. On the second day of the Ia Drang clash between 400 Americans and approximately 2,000 regular NVA troops, Edwards took a bullet which broke his shoulder blade and was medevacked off the battlefield and back to the States for care. After recovering, he completed the Army career course, and by 1969 was back in II Corps in Vietnam, this time on advisory staff at the beach in Nha Trang. “My worst day in Nha Trang was when I was playing touch football at noontime and I fell in the sand and scraped my knee,” he recalls.
Key Words: ROTC, Lafayette College, land-grant colleges, 11th Air Assault Division, airmobile, United States Military Sea Transport Maurice Rose, LSTs, Qui Nhon, An Khe, Plei Me Special Forces camp, Street Without Joy, Ia Drang, Valley Forge General Hospital, Pleiku campaign, Chu Pong Mountain, Colonel Hal Moore, LZ X-Ray, PRC 25, PRC 10, 105 howitzers, We Were Soldiers Once-- and Young, Fort Benning, TO&E (table of organization and equipment), Nha Trang, adviser
Key Names: President Johnson, General Harry W. O. Kinnard II, George Armstrong Custer, Bernard Fall, Brigadier General Richard T. Knowles, Colonel Tim Brown, Sergeant Ernie Savage, John Herron, Colin Powell, Norm Schwarzkopf
Unit:
Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)
Service Location:
II Corps, Central Highlands, Ia Drang
Read the Complete Transcript of this Interview.