WE WERE SOLDIERS 335
Plot Summary
Prologue: during the final year of the First Indochina War (1954), Viet Minh forces
ambush a French army unit on patrol and wipe it out. Cut to Fort Benning, 12 years
later. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Hal Moore (Mel Gibson) is chosen to train and lead a newly
created air cavalry battalion. Soon after arriving in Vietnam, Moore’s unit is fer-
ried into the Ia Drang Valley by he li cop ters at a site that turns out to be the base
camp for North Viet nam ese Army units totaling some 3,000 men. After arriving
in the area, a platoon of soldiers led by 2nd Lt. Henry Herrick (Marc Blucas) is
ambushed. Herrick and several others are killed and the surviving platoon mem-
bers are surrounded. Sgt. Ernie Savage (Ryan Hurst) takes over the command
and utilizes the darkness to keep the Viet nam ese from taking over their posi-
tion. Meanwhile, he li cop ters constantly drop off reinforcements. On the second
day of the battle, the outnumbered U.S. force keeps the enemy at bay using artil-
lery, mortars, and he li cop ter airlifts of supplies and reinforcements. The PAVN
commander, Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An (Duong Don), orders a large- scale attack
on the American position. On the verge of being overrun by the enemy and with
no options left, Moore orders 1st Lt. Charlie Hastings (Robert Bagnell), his For-
ward Air Controller, to call in “Broken Arrow” (an emergency call for all avail-
able combat aircraft to attack enemy positions, even those close to U.S. lines).
The aircraft strafe, bomb, and napalm the enemy, killing many PAVN and Viet
Cong troops. The second Viet nam ese attack is stopped, and the surviving U.S.
soldiers, led by Sgt. Savage, are brought to safety. Back in the United States, Hal
Moore’s wife, Julia (Madeleine Stowe), has taken on a leadership role among the
soldiers’ wives on base. Meanwhile, Moore’s unit organizes, stabilizes the area,
and waits at the bottom of a hill. Lt. Col. An organizes a final siege on the Ameri-
can troops and sends most of his own to stage the assault. The Viet nam ese get in
position, but Hal Moore and his men go on the offensive, charging forward with
fixed bayonets. Before the Viet nam ese can fire, Major Bruce P. “Snake” Crandall
(Greg Kinnear) and other men in he li cop ters gun down the Viet nam ese. An
is forced to evacuate his headquarters. With their objective reached, Moore and
his men return to the LZ for pickup. The film ends with the revelation that the
landing zone reverted to the North Viet nam ese as soon as the American troops
departed.
Reception
Made at an estimated cost of $75 million, We Were Soldiers did quite well at the
box office: $78 million in domestic receipts and $36.5 million in foreign ticket sales
for a total of $114.6 million— a healthy profit after promotion expenses. The criti-
cal response was, however, mixed. Many mainstream film reviewers lauded the
movie’s graphic simulated realism, narrative coherence, and even- handed depiction
of the soldiers on both sides of the fighting. However, some critics found We Were
Soldiers clumsy and ideologically suspect, that is, rife with John Wayne– era war
clichés and nationalistic righ teousness obviously designed to revise the image of the
Vietnam War in the popu lar imagination and glorify the U.S. soldier— while studi-
ously avoiding any hint that the war was misguided or, worse yet, a catastrophic