We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam by Harold G. Moore;Joseph L. Galloway

approached by a producer at ABC Television’s Day One program. Terry Wrong told us he would like to make a documentary on the battles and the veterans that would involve taking a group of us back to Vietnam and to the battlefields.
    After a series of studio interviews in New York, those chosen to make the trip to Vietnam included me, Joe Galloway, CSM (ret.) Basil Plumley, former A Company 1/7 Cavalry assistant machine gunner Bill Beck, former executive officer of A Company 2/7 Cavalry Lt. Larry Gwin, former helicopter commander Lt. Col. (ret.) Bruce Crandall, former A Company 1/5 Cavalry commander Lt. Col. (ret.) George Forrest, former C Company 2/7 Cavalry clerk Jack Smith, former A Company 1/7 Cavalry commander Col. (ret.) Tony Nadal, former B Company 1/7 Cavalry commander Col. (ret.) John Herren, and former B Company 1/7 Cavalry Sgt. Ernie Savage. Joining us would be the Day One crew: anchor Forrest Sawyer, producer Terry Wrong, interpreter Quyen Thai, and two crews, each with a cameraman and a soundman.
    Before we left the United States for Hanoi, the Vietnamese government Foreign Press Office asked if there was anything else we wanted to do or anyone else we wanted to see on our trip. Joe immediately suggested that we ask that Senior Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap meet us at the Vietnam Military Museum in Hanoi and give us a briefing on his conduct of the campaign against the French at Dien Bien Phu. We sent a cable back asking for this.
    We landed at Hanoi’s airport on October 13, 1993, an hour behind schedule, and were met by our Vietnamese minders as we stepped off the plane. They were agitated and rushed us through the formalities in a matter of minutes. “General Giap is waiting for you at the museum,” one of them explained.
    It was clear that there had been major changes since our last two visits to Hanoi. The airport—still surrounded by the big water-filled craters that American bombs had dug in the rice paddies—had been expanded and was jam-packed with humanity, where just months before it had been smaller and much sleepier. Change did not end there. The highway to the capital had been widened, potholes had been repaired, and new homes and shops were being built along the roadside. Now there was real traffic to contend with on the highway and the streets of Hanoi—more cars and a plague of small, noisy, smoky motorbikes had joined the quiet stream of bicycles that had owned those streets before.
    The death of Communism and the old Soviet Union had clearly had a salutary effect on a nation that had once been an important client state and the recipient of much Soviet assistance. That support had evaporated and Vietnam was now cautiously searching for another way forward that involved some of the benefits of capitalism, especially foreign investment.
    The Vietnamese Communist Party, shaken but still very much in control, had decided to ease up and see what happened. After nearly four decades of rigid party control Hanoi residents were now experimenting big-time with capitalism and a more free market. A state-owned shop that once displayed four cans of evaporated milk in a dusty window had been transformed into the Hong Kong Kung Fu Video and Coffee Shop and its tiny tables were jammed with young Vietnamese watching Bruce Lee movies. On the sidewalk in front four new businesses were in operation selling trinkets, tea and cakes, tins of Russian caviar, and bottles of brandy. Change was in the air.
    This ancient Red River Delta capital was bustling and busy where it had been quiet and somnolent on our previous two trips. A hundred privately owned restaurants had sprung up where once there had been fewer than half a dozen. People were building small brick and stucco two-and three-story shop houses alongside the airport road.
    At the museum, with its welcoming array of gray-and-green-painted cannons, antiaircraft guns, and old Russian tanks, we were welcomed by a smiling General Giap. It was hard to square the image of