Synopsis

We Were Soldiers
Mel Gibson’s, “We Were Soldiers”, follows the story of the US Army’s 7th Air Cavalry division during the Vietnam War (1965). This movie follows several story lines in a parallel manner, with Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore being the main plot line, while various other soldiers in the division and Colonel Moore’s wife are the focus of the majority of the supporting plots lines.
The movie opens with a scene that occurred several years prior to America’s involvement in the war. A unit of French soldiers are on patrol through Vietnam when they are suddenly ambushed by Vietnamese guerilla fighters. The French soldiers are caught completely off guard and are instantly slaughtered. The movie then shifts to Colonel Moore, who is studying a military tactics book in which pictures of the aftermath of the ambush are shown. This portion of the movie is set at a stateside military base. Colonel Moore has been tasked with creating an experimental Army regiment, known as the Air Cavalry, that is designed to go behind enemy lines with limited support from other military units. Colonel Moore struggles through this time as he tries to train greenhorn officers straight out of basic training, after losing a majority of his combat hardened veterans to contract expirations. Despite limited resources and a restrictive time schedule, Moore trains the men to the best of his ability and they are immediately shipped out to Vietnam.
Upon arrival at the forward operating base in Vietnam, Moore is instantly demoralized at both the lack of knowledge held by US intelligence officials and by the success that the Vietnamese appear to be having. With limited resources and almost no intelligence off of which to base his decisions, Moore and his men gear up and enter hostile territory. Thus begins a 90 minute long battle scene that follows Moore and his men through the week long battle of Ia Drang. Throughout the battle scene, the point of view switches back and forth between Moore’s main force, and a small contingency force cut off from the main group. When the smoke clears and the battle has ended, nearly half of Moore’s men are either dead or wounded. True to his word, Colonel Moore is the last man off the battlefield, leaving only after all his soldiers, both dead and alive, have returned home. The movie closes with Moore returning home to his wife and children, and is followed by a memorial to all the servicemen who lost their lives during the Vietnam conflict.