A bit more than 30 miles southwest of Pleiku, in what was once the Republic of Vietnam – AKA South Vietnam – flows a river.\u00a0 It flows through the region of South Vietnam called the Central Highlands.<\/p>\n
The people living there were the Nguoi Thuong.\u00a0 They were not ethnically Vietnamese.\u00a0 Westerners termed them “Montagnards”.<\/p>\n
In their language, the term “Ia” meant river.\u00a0 The river referenced above was the “Drang”; the place it flowed, the Ia Drang valley.<\/p>\n
In November 1965, the Ia Drang valley it was the site of what is generally regarded as the first major battle of the US Vietnam War.\u00a0 The battle lasted for four days.<\/p>\n
For a bit more about the battle, you can read these articles (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>) previously published at TAH and elsewhere.\u00a0 Or you could read LTG Hal Moore’s and Joe Galloway’s book<\/a> for a more detailed account.<\/p>\n Those there were, for the most part, soldiers.\u00a0 Many were young; some, not so much.<\/p>\n Many who went to the Ia Drang valley in November 1965 didn’t come home.\u00a0 That’s true for both sides.<\/p>\n May the fallen, and those who have passed since, rest in peace.\u00a0 And may the passage of time, along with the grace of God, comfort the survivors – both the families of the fallen, and those still among us who lived through the battle.<\/p>\n I just thought this deserved a mention today.\u00a0 Today’s the 48th anniversary of the battle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bit more than 30 miles southwest of Pleiku, in what was once the Republic of Vietnam – AKA South Vietnam – flows a river.\u00a0 It flows through the region of South Vietnam called the Central Highlands. The people living there were the Nguoi Thuong.\u00a0 They were not ethnically Vietnamese.\u00a0 Westerners termed them “Montagnards”. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-real-soldiers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-9Yw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}