By Al Zdon

Galen Bungum never had a notion as he trudged through the jungles of Vietnam that a Hollywood actor would someday play his part in a major movie.
Bungum grew up on a dairy farm near Hayfield, Minnesota. He milked cows seven days a week.
At Hayfield High School, he played on the football team and in the band. He graduated in 1961, and, by 1964, the Vietnam War was heating up and the draft was going full blast. At that time, Bungum was still working at his father's farm, and also driving a milk can route every day of the week.
"A bunch of guys I went to school with were scheduled to leave in April. I checked and found out I was going to be drafted in May, so I just volunteered."
He was sent to Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri where he found his upbringing on the farm had some advantages. "They made you do the monkey bars before you got chow. I had no problem, but some of those guys just couldn't make it. Their hands were all torn up. My hands didn't do that."
After training in Missouri and at Ft. Ord in California, Bungum was sent to Ft. Benning, Georgia, where he spent the next 11-1/2 months.
He was part of the 29th Infantry Division whose major role in life was to provide the opposition for the Ranger School based at the camp. "They were the aggressors and we were their enemy. If they went out for 21 days, we went out for 21 days."
In July of 1965, Bungum took 21 days leave back in Minnesota. He returned to a surprise.
"I walked into the barracks and somebody told me that we were all in the First Cavalry Division. There was a bulletin board on the wall, and if your name was on it, you were going to Vietnam."
Bungum's name was on the list.
He was assigned to the First Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry — known through history as Gen. George Custer's regiment at the Battle of the Big Horn.
The division was moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where it boarded the USS Rose, a World War II vintage troop transport that made its way down the East Coast, went through the Panama Canal, and then came up the West Coast before heading for Vietnam. The 29-day cruise included a major three-day storm.
"We were just like a cork on the water. I thought we were going to go down. I went to get some chow, but I took one look at it and threw it in the garbage. I didn't eat for three days, and that was a good thing. You couldn't get near the latrines, and you had to strap yourself in your bunk at night. I was in the fourth bunk up with the overhead right above my face."
Bungum said the main attitude of the soldiers was anticipation. "We really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. We didn't know what was going to happen."

The Rose landed in Vietnam and the Seventh Cavalry was loaded on trucks bound for its base camp at An Khe. "It was nothing but a jungle. We had to clear out quite a few acres. There was brush everywhere and tarantulas and snakes."
The battalion made its own camp with the men living in tents. "When it rained, you couldn't dig a trench deep enough to keep out the water. And it rained pretty regularly."
Temperatures during the day were often 102 to 105 degrees with a high humidity. And some days it got warmer.
"After we had been there a while and the helicopters got some wear on them, there were days when they just couldn't fly after about 10 a.m., the air was so heavy. They just couldn't get them off the ground with any kind of load in them."
It took a month or so to get the base camp set up, and the army hired workers from some of the nearby villages to help. "You couldn't really tell the difference between the VC (Viet Cong guerrilla forces) and the friendlies. We found out after a while that the day workers would leave sticks pointing like arrows to the commander's tent. At night, the black pajama VC would try to break through the perimeter and follow the arrows. It took us a while to figure that out."
Once the camp was ready, the battalion headed out on regular search and destroy missions, being taken out by helicopter to patrol some expanse of the jungle. The missions varied from a few days to nearly 40 days. "That's a long time to be wearing the same fatigues you left in. You'd get back and the shirt would just stand up by itself. The soles would come right off your shoes."
The major health danger, aside from the enemy, was getting jungle rot on your feet. "We didn't have the jungle boots that some had. We just had the regular boots. If you got them soaked, they stayed wet for a long time. You'd take your socks off at night, but they never got dry."
Bungum said he was on the verge of getting the jungle rot on several occasions, but managed to avoid it. "When your toes got those deep wrinkles, it was time to give them some air."
The battalion had been in several minor skirmishes with the enemy through the middle of November. There was the constant threat of snipers. "It was mainly harassment. That sniper might be the same guy you said 'hi' to when you walked through a village that day. It was such a mixed up thing. We tried to be friendly to the villagers, but you couldn't trust them."

There was no indication as the battalion got ready to move out that this mission to the Ia Drang Valley was any different. "Maybe some of the brass knew, but there was no indication to us lower guys. At least, I didn't know what was coming."
The Ia Drang Valley, later called the Valley of Death, was in South Vietnam's Central Highlands, not far from the Cambodian border and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The part of the valley where the mission was planned descended down from the Chu Pong Massif, a small mountain that was home to thousands of North Vietnamese Army troops.
The First Battalion was moved from An Khe to Plei Me, a base closer to Landing Zone X-Ray, their ultimate destination. The troopers would be brought in on 16 helicopters, meaning only about 80 or 90 men could be brought in at a time. Since those first troops would be alone until the helicopters could get back and get more soldiers, it was imperative that the travel time be kept as short as possible.
Bungum's Company B was the first to land, and the soldiers fanned out to create a perimeter and find out if there were any of the enemy about. It was about 10:45 in the morning and all was peaceful at first.
What Lt. Col. Harold Moore and the First Battalion didn't know was that they had landed in the middle of a North Vietnamese Army staging area, and they were surrounded by several thousand well-trained and well-armed troops. Up to that point in the war, the U.S. had only faced VC guerrillas and not army regulars from North Vietnam.
The other companies were landed over the next hour or so and Bungum and his mates could hear a fire fight in the distance. "A Company was starting to get hit, and they wanted us over there to help them out. It was close to noon. I had just got my C-rations opened up and we had to leave."
Bungum's platoon took a position on A Company's right flank. It was at this point that things took a major turn for the worse for the platoon.
The Second Platoon leader was Lt. Henry Herrick who some have called aggressive or overly aggressive. Bungum's evaluation is not so kind. "He was a glory hunter. He always wanted to have the most kills. That didn't set very good with the men."
In fact, not long before, Lt. Herrick had come looking for his company at the base at An Khe, but to a man they were gone. They had all crossed over the road to where the helicopters were based, and each one of them was trying to volunteer as a door gunner. Though door gunners had the shortest life expectancy of anybody in Vietnam, it was the only way a soldier could transfer out of a unit.
"They wouldn't let us be door gunners, but that tells you a lot about our lieutenant if everybody was trying to be a helicopter door gunner so they wouldn't have to be in the platoon any more."
As the men hunkered down on A Company's flank, the lieutenant spotted an enemy soldier fleeing through the grass and trees. Lt. Herrick jumped up and ordered his men to follow in pursuit of the North Vietnamese soldier.
Several of the senior men in the platoon tried to discourage Herrick, but he would have none of it. "We all felt this was going to get us into a trap. That's how the  enemy operated."
The men created a wedge formation following their officer. Bungum was the second man back on the left. The men fanned out on either side, with the two M-60 machine gunners forming the end of the "V" formation. As they got about a hundred yards from the U.S. perimeter, they started to pick up fire. "They were getting behind us, and we knew it was time to stop, but he said, 'Let's keep on going.' Well, they got all the way around us."

Soon they were overwhelmed by enemy fire. The platoon had been strung out for about 50 yards, and the machine gunners stood their ground to the rear and allowed the rest of men time to gather at a higher point, later called "the knoll."
In a matter of minutes, though, Herrick was dead. Both machine gunners were killed and one of the M-60s and its ammunition was taken by the North Vietnamese. Others were being mowed down by a savage North Vietnamese assault.
Crawling through the grass, Bungum came across Sgt. Palmer, the second in command of the platoon. He was badly wounded. "He was hit in the head, and he had a bandage around his head, but it was on the wrong side. I was trying to help him get the bandage on the right side when a VC stood up just a little ways away with one of our grenades in his hand. One of our guys unloaded his whole clip into the guy, but he still managed to throw that grenade."
The grenade landed on the near side of Palmer, shielding Bungum from the blast and killing the sergeant instantly. Part of the shrapnel hit Bungum in the knee, and he picked it out with his hand.
"You know, earlier I had been talking to Palmer, and he said, 'Tomorrow is my birthday, and I'll be 40 years old. I don't think I'll live to see that day.' I told him, 'Sarge, that's no kind of attitude to have.' But here it was, an hour later, and he was gone."
Another soldier near Bungum suddenly rose up from the cover of the grass and said, "We've got to get out of here."
"He didn't take one step, and he was gone."
The platoon, what was left of it, found itself pinned down on the small knoll perhaps 125 yards from the American perimeter.
Bungum was a grenadier and his weapon was an M79 grenade launcher. Before the company had moved out for this mission, Bungum had been told he was getting R&R in Bangkok and he should distribute his ammunition among the other grenadiers in the battalion.
"I had 33 rounds and I gave it all away. Then, at the last minute, they said I was going with and I should go around and get all my ammo back. Well, I was only able to get 18 rounds back. I went in short on ammo."
The 18 rounds were soon used up as the attack on what became known as the "lost platoon" continued in full force. "I had to look around for something else to shoot." He tried three M-16s that turned out to be jammed, and finally found one that worked.
By this time, there were only eight men out of the 29 in the platoon that were not wounded or dead. They formed a perimeter roughly shaped like a football. Bungum and another soldier, Pfc. Richard Clark, were on the top end of the ball facing the mountain that was home to the North Vietnamese regulars.
The wounded and most of the dead were gathered inside the perimeter, and the medic, Spec 5 Charles Lose, was doing his best to tend to their needs. There were 13 wounded, and Lose was given credit for keeping those men alive through the siege. Many of the wounded manned their M-16s throughout the battle.
The grass was about 10 inches high, and the soldiers were afforded some protection if they could stay hidden in the grass.
Particularly unnerving to the Americans was the fearlessness of the North Vietnamese. "They would just stand up, with their AK-47s strapped to their back, and we would mow them down. It seemed like they were laughing at us. After a while, it starts to work on you."
As the afternoon wore on, the platoon was subject to sporadic attacks. "Three times, our bunch tried to get up to us, but they got beaten back each time. As our guys would get closer, the Vietnamese that were in between us would slip out of the way, and we'd end up shooting at each other. Then they'd slip right back in again. They had our M60, so they had a little fire power."
As darkness started to settle in on the lost platoon, they kept hoping a rescue mission would be successful. Then a radio message came in that told them there would be no more rescue attempts that day, and they would have to wait until morning.
"We couldn't believe those words.
"Clark kept asking me if we were going to make it. I said I didn't know, but we needed to pray and pray hard. Making it through the night was a big question mark in all our minds. We all had to keep our cool and bear down."

Because of the haste of their ill-omened attack, the men were without any provisions. "I had two canteens strapped to my belt, but a round must have gone through them because when I went to take a drink, they were both empty." The handle of his entrenching tool was also blown away.
Bungum and Clark, in their position in the perimeter, had stacked M-16 magazines in front of them for protection. "We never did figure out what would happen if a round hit those magazines. I suppose OSHA wouldn't go for that."
Sgt. Ernie Savage, an E-5 who had taken over command of the platoon, had previous training in maps and coordinates. He got on the radio and began calling in an artillery barrage on all four sides of the stranded Americans. The fire was coming from an artillery base called Falcon, about five miles away.
"Savage had them start the artillery high on the hill, and then had them walk it down until they had it where they wanted it." Each barrage was made up of five shells, and the 105mm howitzers would hit on all four sides of the lost platoon and then start over again.
Through the night, the barrage helped keep the enemy at bay. At one point, though, the shells landed almost on top of the platoon, lifting them off the ground and showering them with dirt and branches.
"What had happened was they were firing the cannons so often that the barrels were beginning to glow red hot. They loaded the shells into the howitzers, but they were so hot that the rounds cooked off and went off by themselves. Well that wasn't a very accurate way to shoot, and the shells came in right on us. Savage got on the radio and said, "Yeah, that's right where we want them," but the rest of us hollered at him that it was too close.
"They radioed back that the barrels were just too hot and they were going to have to quit for a while. We didn't like that."
At one point, Savage called for illumination, and gunners obliged him. "It popped open and it was just like a yard light. The trouble was it was descending on a parachute and because it was moving, all the shadows in the trees were moving too. It looked like the enemy was everywhere. The light did seem to get some of them moving, and we were able to fire at them. But when it was done, we found that we'd lost our night vision for a while. Plus, it revealed our position to the enemy. We didn't ask for any more illumination."
There were three attacks during the night. Some of the survivors later said that the North Vietnamese ran right through the lost platoon on at least one occasion, not knowing their position.
Daylight finally began to creep over the valley and in the murky light, the soldiers could see three forms running toward them. "We didn't know if they were ours or theres, but somebody finally shouted that they're not ours, and we got 'em. They were pretty close by then."
With the daylight came air support, although the members of the lost platoon were a little nervous wondering how the jets would be able to know precisely where they were. "You just can't imagine the fire power of those Gatling guns. They would just cut big trees down like nothing. But when they started firing they were hitting on the other side of us. They knew exactly where we were."
At about 3 p.m., about 26 hours after they had been separated from the battalion, and 26 hours since they'd had any food, water or sleep, a rescue party broke through.
"Lt. Duncan was the first guy there. We yelled at him to get down, but he said, 'No, you guys get up. We're getting you out of here. Let's go.' None of us would get up. We couldn't believe it. We thought they were nuts."
Duncan gave Bungum his canteen, and the group headed off. "I remember stumbling over a dead VC and fell down ending up face to face with another dead one with his eyes wide open."
The men were taken back to the command post where Col. Moore had set up his headquarters next to a large ant hill. Joe Galloway, a UPI reporter who later collaborated with Moore on a book about the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, had also arrived by that time. "He got all of our names and talked to us as we went by."
Bungum and two others were loaded into a chopper and taken back to the base at Pleiku where they had their first meal in two days. After that, Bungum was put on another chopper that brought him back to the home base at An Khe.
"Clark wasn't with me, but I figured he was on another chopper. During the night we had been talking about celebrating a birthday he had coming up," Bungum recalled.
Meanwhile, Savage, Clark and two other unhurt survivors of the Lost Platoon stayed at Landing Zone X-Ray, and then were evacuated to Camp Holloway. Two nights later, they were ordered to do perimeter duty at Catecka Tea Plantation, a regimental headquarters.
That night an American howitzer round fell short of its mark and killed Clark, who was sleeping on the perimeter. He had survived the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley only to be killed by friendly fire. It was his 20th birthday.
In the end, the 2nd Platoon lost nine men killed in action and had 13 wounded for a casualty rate of 76 percent. Only seven made it through unscathed. When the battle was over, about 75 North Vietnamese bodies were counted just outside the platoon's perimeter.
Bungum recalls that Gen. Westmoreland came to talk to his battalion. The empty boots of those who had been killed were lined up. "That really got to me. I didn't hear hardly anything Gen. Westmoreland said, except we did a good job. This whole thing was hard to deal with for a long time. I couldn't sleep, and when I did I would wake up and holler. There was sweat pouring off my face."
The Battalion stayed out of action for a few weeks until replacements could be brought in for the losses. In all, the 1st Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry lost 79 killed and 121 wounded in the battle.
There were many more missions to be fought, but none with the intensity of the Ia Drang Valley. "We were up by Bong Son and what they called Happy Valley. We'd take an area and lose some guys and then pull out. And then a couple of weeks later we'd do it all again. I never understood that."
After nine months in Vietnam, Bungum's two-year enlistment in the Army ended, and he was sent to Saigon to be flown home. "While we were waiting for our flight, they took our weapons away from us. We didn't like that too much. We figured as long as we were in Vietnam, we wanted our weapons. And, sure enough, that night they shelled the airport. When our plane left the next morning, it had to swerve on the runway to avoid the bomb holes."
Bungum returned home to Hayfield in April of 1966. "At home, the effects were present for quite some time. Mom said one of my first nights home, I woke up hollering and completely tore the bed apart, ripped the new sheets to shreds."
As time went by, Bungum readapted to civilian life. He married Marcia in 1968. They have three sons, Jason, Shad and Ryan. After many years of farming, Bungum, 58, now drives a semi-truck throughout the Midwest.
The book, We Were Soldiers Once... And Young, came out in 1992 and described the battle of the Ia Drang Valley through the eyes of those who were there. The movie We Were Soldiers, based on the book, came out recently.
Actor Blake Heron plays the part of Spec. 4 Galen Bungum. Bungum received no compensation for the book or the movie, and is not happy that anybody would think he did.
"To this day, I can't figure out why some of us made it out of there and some didn't," Bungum said. "We all prayed as hard, fought as hard, and we were all for each other. I think about that a lot. I feel really fortunate to have survived. So many guys didn't."