it's only -- x-ray is only six miles from the cambodian border and the river runs into cambodia. i think that khmer rouge, all though the threat has been diminished in years, was certainly praent when we went back there many 1993. and we spent is night on that battlefield. and this was pretty sporty. there's the molten yard situation, where unfortunately, the hanoi government is almost wiping out the northern yard tribes. sending them away from their an

ze an zest steral and it's a tragedy not understood in the western world. i'm sure you're very familiar with all of that. >> yes, sir. there were tribes people there on the morning you came in on the 14th? >> oh, indeed, there were, yeah. >> did they quickly disburse? >> i never personally saw any molton yards but there were molton yarder villages to the north of us on the river. you got to have water. that's primarily the where the molton yards were. when we went back in '93, there were a few molton yards

materializ materialized. and also, when we went back in 1997, we saw a few molton yards. along the river. >> could you describe sergeant major -- >> i believe in destiny. i believe in fate. and i think it was moulton yard. and i think it was my destiny to get linked up with sergeant major plumber. when i took command of them in fort benning, georgia, in june of 1964, and i met up with

sergeant major plumly, 6'2", about my age, master parachutist, like me. he had five combat jumps. four in world war ii and one in korea. and he and i believed exactly the same principles. tough training, fair and square on all your men, tough discipline. if somebody screwed up, take the necessary action but don't overreact. because what you want to do is retrain them so that that won't happen again. sergeant major plumly and i were a team. and i told sergeant major plumly that he had unlimited access to

me at any time. he could accompany me anywhere i went if he wanted to. if he didn't have something else to do. i wanted one of his principal duties to improve the o'professionalism of a the noncommissioned officers. and promotions of soldiers in the racks in those days was determined by quotas which came down from higher headquarters. like i might get a quota for two soldiers to be promoted to three stripe buck sergeant. and two soldiers to be promoted to staff sergeant. and i turned it all over to

sergeant major plumly and he organized the committee of all the first sergeants, the five first sergeants in the battalion and whenever we would get those quotas to come down, they would meet. and they knew the soldiers better than i did, better than the officers. and they were determined which soldiers would get those stripes. and he would come into me with a recommendation. i always approved anything he recommended. i trusted him totally. and in battle, he could accompany me anywhere he wanted. if he felt that was where he needed to be.

i had dinner with him recently and he and i sort of laughed a little bit over why we were not killed? >> those three days? >> the whole tour of vietnam. >> and in previous or just this time. >> vietnam. you could get killed in a helicopter crash in the united states but the chances of getting killed in battle are a hell of a lot better. sergeant major plumber is a national treasure. we went into vietnam together and we flew out together on the freedom bird. on the same day. and ironically, we were in a battle near a special forces

camp my replacement, a colonel, had arrived two weeks earlier and i didn't want to lose command of my brigade. i knew how to fight that enemy and i knew the terrain and i knew the do's and don'ts. here's a guy, fresh out of america. his socks were still clean. he didn't know nothing about that enemy. and i refused to let him take command of the brigade. and i got by with it for a while and then a battalion -- a company got surrounded down here

the special forces camp, the 101st airborne division and i heard about this and i asked the system division commander of operations, why don't you send my brigade down there to take the pressure off a couple of those companies and save them from being wiped out? so we went -- they were sent down. and this was my last battle in vietnam and it lasted for about, oh, it took us about a week or so. and finally, the division commander, joe norton, he showed up and said, you've got to turn over your brigade. your replacement has been here now for over two weeks. so i turned over the brigade.

and i flew back out, me and sergeant major. we packed up our duffle bag and flew down to saigon spent the night in saigon. the next day we were put in a jeep and headed out to thompson newt airport to get on the freedom bird. to go back to america. and we got the tom sob airport and it was bg being mortared. after all we had been through we thought, this is ironic to get killed or wounded in a mortar attack in saigon. so they sent us back to saigon and we were delayed on the airplane for two days and got on the airplane the next day. came home together.

plumly is a piece of work. he doesn't give interviews. he avoids the press. but he is -- he and i are dead loyal to one another and he lives just my side of fort benning. sergeant-major plumley. and over the years, long gone by, my wife and i would go over to fort benning on occasion to visit my troopers at the cemetery. and her parents were very -- she's the daughter of a colonel.

and on occasion, we'd visit. we'd sit down in this kitchen. we'll visit the sergeant-major, in the kitchen with his wife. and she'd always have a pumpkin pie, hot coffee. and we'd sit there and talk about old times. tell war stories. some of them were true. and we visited the cemetery. i lost my wife a year and a half ago. that's where she is. so if you want to introduce sergeant-major plumley, i don't think you would succeed. you have to learn about it from guyses like me and joe galloway and others because he refuses all interviews.

>> that's one of the reasons i'm asking. >> he won't agree to an interview. so galloway and i are in the process of writing a sequel to our book. and we wanted to have a chapter in there on sergeant-major plumley. and me told joe flat out, you're welcome in my home at any time. but i'm not going to give you an interview. if he won't interview with joe galloway or me he's not going to talk to nobody. >> that's true. tell me about joe galloway. >> joe galloway is another person who i was destined by a higher power to meet.

i first let on the night of november, 1965, when my battalion was ordered to join the campaign being fought by the units in the central highlands. after the attack. so my battalion was sent down to patrol to the east of the special forces camp. to attempt to gain contact with any enemy in the area and i thought that was kind of stupid because the enemy had been

defeated in its siege of the special forces camp. and had obviously retreated to the west. i couldn't understand why we were being ordered to patrol to the east. joe joined us. he and i -- i was marching with a company that day. during which we crossed the stream up to our necks in the central highlands, 3,000 feet, a coal stream. and we were the night all soaking wet. and joe stayed on the ground with us. instead of hopping back on a hughy for hot chow. >> and that was unusual? >> for a reporter? hell yeah. he rolled up on the in his

poncho with the rest of us and i liked that. and we patrolled around for another couple or three days. and around the special forces camp and made little or no contact. and then a got a message from the brigade commander, colonel jim brown, to prepare to assault into the edran gechlt valley the next morning with the mission being to find and kill the enemy. so i went back to my field command post which was outside

the gates and if you've been there, you've probably seen the fort remains. we had a couple tented pitched in that old french port. and i issued the ops order and the warning order. and the next morning we assaulted into x-ray. and we were in a terrible fight all that day. the operations officer, matt dillon, who i think you interviewed, he was overhead in my command chopper. and i landed, i was the first guy on the ground. i landed with the assault company. my training vietnam was to jooin

join in the battle and not to be a hero and not to be hunting for a medal. but if you're in the lead helicopter, if you have to divert to an alternate landing zone and i had one selected. also, you can make a quick area reconnaissance. going in to get an idea of the terrain. and if it's a hot lz, you're on the ground to take care of it. and if it's a cold lz, you have time to walk around and rig a reconnaissance of the terrain. and get an idea of the battlefield where you might make contact. >> was bruce -- >> bruce was the pilot in the -- he was a pilot. lieutenant john mills was his co-pilot and me and the

sergeant-major and my two radio operators and my intelligence officer, cap payne entertain messker, who was killed within two hours, about three hours, really. and mr. nick, a vietnamese interpreter. we were in the lead helicopter of b-company, the assault company. the as you know from reading the book. we had a hell of a fight that day. it was a cliffhanger. and probably only had about 200 of my 450 or so men on the ground when we were attacked by two battalions of enemy, 800 to 1,000 enemy. i'll go into the details of that later if you want me to, but it

was a cliffhanger all that afternoon. my men fought magnificently. we lost a lot of troopers. finally, things quieted down a little bit and we established a command post behind an ant hill which was about the size of a small pickup truck. six or seven feet high, termite hill. and that was my field aid station. at about 7:00, i had dillon overhead in my command chopper along with minor ward air controller, charlie hastings, lieutenant hastings. my fire support coordinator and the bank of radios and they

relay it back to the brigade commander. the helicopter officers could control all that movement. dillon had been on the ground with me, i would have been penalized because who would have done all that stuff? anyhow, i told dillon late in the day, i said, come on in and i want you to bring charlie hastings and bring my fire support coordinator and jerry whiteside, the captain of artillery. and come on in. and he said on the radio, that reporter galloway, wants to come in. and i remembered joe from the camps. and i said, well, if you got room on your last chopper coming in and he's crazy enough to want

to come into here, bring him in. and so he did. and joe, you get from him the story of him coming into but, like i said earlier i think we were destined to meet by fate. 23-year-old kid reporter, half my age, and he landed and he stayed with us for the rest of the fight. i was -- in vietnam and korea, we didn't have many reporters. i thought the outpostwar -- i

fought the outpostwar. we didn't have a lot of reporters joining us. hell, now they're everywhere. and i was a strong believer in freedom of the press. and i told my public information officer, when i was a brigade commander and when i was a battalion commander i didn't have a public information officer. but i let it be known that i welcomed the news media to join me and my troopers in the field. and i gave them two instructions. do not interfere with operations. and do not put out any public information which would help the enemy. in other words, don't reveal my plans, where i'm going to be moving. and i never had any reason to oh

in vietnam, to regret that. and i told my troops that if a news media person, a tv or photographer or journalist, like joe, or a photographer, if they want to talk to you, take your picture, it's up to you. the only guidance is two things. number one, tell the truth as you see the truth from your level. and number two, do not speak above your level. if you're a squad leader don't talk like you're the platoon leader. if you're a rifleman in the ranks, don't talk like you're the squad leader. and if you're hall moore, the brigade commander, don't talk

like you're can division commander. and felt so strongly that the american people deserved to know what the hell was going on in vietnam. what their sons and brothers and husbands were doing over there. i'll tell you what, every time we had an operation, we were surrounded by the news media. i liked that, too, because my men got publicity back home. >> did you have any rules about not photographing your dead troopers? >> not photographing dead troopers? >> yes, sir. >> i can't recall putting out any specific order on that. but i also cannot recall any

time in vietnam that at any time i was questioned about photographers taking photographs of dead troopers. i can't recall of any -- we had an army moving team in x-ray that came in early the next -- early the second day and maybe you've seen that battlefield footage. i'm sure they captured some sequences of some of my dead being carried into the clearing station. but i can't think of any such photographs that were publicized. pub sides. that's the first time i've ever

been asked what question. i'm trying to think back and i have a lot of stuff sent to me from the u.s. after we hat battles. newspaper clippings. i can't remember. i'm trying hard to think of it. >> there are some pictures from x-ray, by peter arnet. >> peter arnet. yeah. he was in there with us. and peter gave me -- peter gave me a couple of other pictures of me, one of me standing over a dead north vietnamese with my rifle and bayonet and the third day when we had a counterattack. but he didn't give to me any pictures of just a dead american trooper. that's the first i heard of

that. but to answer your question, no, i didn't put out any instructions on that. i think a lot of that is common sense on the part of the photographer. >> you would think so. >> i would think a photographer, who would take a news media photographer who would take a still photograph of a dead trooper with a name tag, i think that's bad form, considering people back home. >> yes, sir. what was your attitude toward the press in vietnam? was it different? >> what it what? >> was it different than most others? >> i don't know. but i'll tell you this, the army public affairs officer, years ago, he asked me for permission to publish in his instructions

when he briefed commanders, of the brigade or division commanders, he took an excerpt from my book. i'll show it to you if you want to open it up, if i can find it. you might want to cut the movie while i search for this. >> joe galloway and i were really in on the birth of embedded reporters in the vietnam wars. when you talk to joe he'll tell you about that. >> in the book and as depicted in the movie, you instructed him to let the american know this? to tell the truth. >> exactly. >> and with me, joe galloway, was he different as a reporter? >> first, he stayed on the

ground with us. but he was in the battle at x-ray until we were pulled out of there. and he didn't go back to placu to do his reports. peter arnet, neil shehan but he and a flock of out journalists who came in at the end of the battle, they milled around interviewing troopers and then they got on the bird and went out. joe went out, also, but the battle was over. and he had to get his copy into upi. you'll find that somewhere. i'll try to look it up for you. >> what is it like to be