Originally posted by fdiron
(2) I watched a documentary on the Ia Drang valley on TLC a while back. It noted how a command decision to have a platoon march from LZ X-ray to another LZ 2 miles away caused the platoon to get ambushed. This was not depicted in the movie either.
Actually, the first battalion, Lt. Col. Moore's, was withdrawn, and the second battalion was sent into LZ XRay - it was this battalion that made the march to LZ Albany, a couple miles distant, and ran into an NVA ambush. The second battalion suffered FAR heavier losses in the ambush than the first battalion had suffered at LZ XRay. I was watching Vietnam: On the Frontlines last night, and in an interview with the XO of Able Company of the 2nd Battalion, the lead company in the march, he said that he lost all but 3 people in his first platoon, and all but four in his second.
I saw this movie on Saturday, and it has hung with me... very well done - I won't make the mistake I made with Blackhawk Down in not going to see it again before it left our theatre.
In looking at it in contrast to Platoon, or Full Metal Jacket, I think it did a good job of capturing the different sort of army that went in at first, without the political and emotional baggage that came along later. I originally thought the movie was too innocent - that it idealized the soldiers... then when I thought of it in the context of when it happened, and the perceptions of Vietnam at that time... I think they did pretty damn well...
My one complaint is that the soldiers didn't always act like they had been trained, or told how to look like soldiers - always exposing themselves to fire, grouping together and running over the hill in a big crowd... and my number one complaint has to be that when they got on the bus in the US to leave for Vietnam, not only did they have magazines in their rifles, but at least one of them had a 30 round magazine which was adopted later. Sheesh. Friggin' hollywood.
