334 WE WERE SOLDIERS
starring Mel Gibson, the film is based on the book We Were Soldiers Once... And
Young (1992) by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Gal-
loway, both of whom were at the battle.Background
The Battle of Ia Drang (14–18 November 1965) was the first major set- piece battle
between U.S. Army forces and regulars of the Vietnam People’s Army (PAVN) dur-
ing the Vietnam War. The two- part battle took place at two adjacent landing zones
(LZs) west of Plei Me in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. While being fer-
ried to LZ X- Ray by Huey he li cop ters, the 450 men of 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry
were attacked by a much larger force of PAVN. After two days and nights of heavy
fighting (14–16 November 1965), the Americans were able to hold out and survive
as a unit. On 17 November the North Viet nam ese ambushed and obliterated the
2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry near LZ Albany. In the end, both sides suffered heavy
casualties; the U.S. side had about 300 soldiers killed, and the North Viet nam ese
lost more than 1,000 men. Twenty- five years later, after a research trip to Vietnam
with Lt. Gen Harold “Hal” Moore (USA- Ret.), the commander at LZ X- Ray, Joe Gal-
loway (the only journalist pres ent at the battle), published “Vietnam Story,” a
detailed account in U.S. News & World Report that earned a 1990 National Maga-
zine Award. Galloway and Moore expanded Galloway’s article into a book: We Were
Soldiers Once... And Young: Ia Drang— The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam
(1992). Published a year after the stunning success of “Operation Desert Storm”—
when renewed pride in American military prowess made the public more recep-
tive to the ideological rehabilitation of the Vietnam- era soldier— We Were Soldiers
sold an astonishing 1.3 million copies. Randall Wallace, a former seminarian
from Tennessee turned novelist/filmmaker, read the book and was captivated by
it. He approached Moore and Galloway to option the film rights in the fall of
1993, which they sold to him in 1995, some months before the release of Mel
Gibson’s Braveheart, a property written by Wallace, which made him a Hollywood
force to reckon with.Production
Having written the screenplay, Randall Wallace co- produced We Were Soldiers
(with Mel Gibson’s partners at Icon Entertainment, Bruce Davey and Stephen
McEveety). Wallace also directed the film— his second directorial effort after The
Man in the Iron Mask (1998)— and cast Mel Gibson, the star of Braveheart, to play
Lt. Col. Moore. After Wallace had his key players meet their real- life counter-
parts, he put the cast through a Hollywood version of boot camp at Fort Ben-
ning, Georgia. With cinematography by Dean Semler (an action movie specialist
and frequent Mel Gibson collaborator), We Were Soldiers was shot between
5 March and 30 June 2001. The battle scenes were filmed at Fort Hunter
Liggett, a 167,000- acre Army training reservation in Monterey County 150 miles
south of San Francisco that doubled for South Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
Training scenes were filmed at Fort Benning, and domestic scenes were shot in
Pasadena.