Joe Galloway was born in Texas three weeks before Pearl Harbor. His father and his uncles immediately left to fight in World War II for the next four years, while he and his mother stayed with grandparents, aunts, and cousins. Mr. Galloway grew up in Refugio, Texas, and after high school he was a reporter for a daily newspaper. In 1963, he became the United Press International bureau chief in Topeka, Kansas, where he covered the In Cold Blood murders, but his eyes were firmly fixed on Southeast Asia. In1964, he was assigned to Tokyo and by April of 1965 finally made it to Saigon when the U.S. Marines landed in Da Nang. He tells of his many adventures beginning with his introduction to the Vietnam War: “And they shut the chopper down and we jumped out. And I looked again and all of the men in all of these holes—a battalion—were dead. Vietnamese Rangers, I believe. … And why they brought Henri and I along was they were looking for the two dead American advisers. And we went from hole to hole until we found them, and then helped carry them back to the chopper.” He learned “the care and feeding of the .30 caliber, air-cooled M2 machine gun” at Plei Me. And he shares his account of the Ia Drang, the first, and one of the longest and bloodiest battles in Vietnam. For his actions there the Army awarded Mr. Galloway the Bronze Star with “V”. He is perhaps the only civilian to have received that honor from the Army.