Thank you -- to veterans past and present....

By Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON- It is that time of year and soldiers
no longer young willsoon gather in the nation's capital
to observe the 40th anniversary of a series of battles in
the mountains of Vietnam that marked the true dawn
of America's war in that country.

For the veterans of the 1st Cavalry Division's bloody
battles with North Vietnam's Peoples Army regulars
in the Ia Drang Valley and the Pleiku Campaign this is
always a bitter-sweet time. We come together every
Veterans Day weekend to remember 305 of our brothers
who died that long-ago November in 1965.

Each year the numbers shrink as the passage of the
years gathers morefriends. Last week we buried
Command Sgt. Maj. (ret.) James Scott of 2nd Battalion
7th U.S. Cavalry at the Post Cemetery at Fort Benning,Ga.

He was a three-war man--landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day,
fought in Korea and Vietnam. Four Purple Hearts. A
Distinguished Service Cross. Two Silver Stars.

He had a dry sense of humor and his friendly competition
with Command Sgt Maj. Basil L. Plumley of 1st Battalion
7th Cavalry had gone on nearly half a century. Those two
bet a case of beer on the boat to Vietnam: The winner being
the one who got shot first in this new war.

Scott won, or lost depending how you look at it, but claimed
Plumley never paid off on the case of beer. Plumley said Scott
was a notorious cheapskate and just wanted to collect twice or
three times on that case of beer. What a crew to go to war with.

The leader of the Band of Brothers, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Hal Moore,
will turn 84 early next year and has begun easing off on a
schedule that would kill a younger person.

Last spring he delivered what he said was his farewell address
to the 4,000 cadets at West Point. He told them that they would
hear many teachers and trainers talk about the principles of
leadership at West Point and in their first years as young officers.

But he said no one would talk to them about what he considered
the most important of those principles: Love.

The cadets and the academy professors were stunned. Love is
not a trait they associate with leadership in combat, or life in the
military. But the old soldier who is an icon at the military academy
where he graduated with the Class of 1945 told them they must
love their soldiers and think of them and care for them day and
night, through good times and the worst times.

If you demonstrate your loyalty to and love for your troops,
he said, it will be returned a hundred-fold. Take care of your
soldiers not because someone tells you that you must, Moore
said. Do it because you love them.

Even the youngest of the soldiers who fought in the Ia Drang
is now near 60. All are conscious of the relentless advance of
the years; all keenly aware that 40 years after they fought
the big opening act of the Vietnam War our nation is engaged
in another war that bears some chilling similarities to the one
that stole their youth and divided their country so long ago.

But for a few days politics will be set aside as the old soldiers and
their children and grandchildren, and the families of many of our
fallen brothers, gather for a dose of fellowship and memories more
easily shared with and understood by comrades who stood beside
us.

On Veterans Day the Cavalry veterans in their black Stetson hats
will kick off the official ceremonies at The Vietnam Veterans
Memorial by marching, two by two, down the length of The
Wall as a bagpiper skirls the Cavalry anthem-an old Irish
drinking song titled Garry Owen --and when we pass
Panel 3-East we will salute those who fell in battle so long ago.

We who have known war and can never forget it pray that one
day, someday, there will be peace; that one day the treasure
nations waste on killing the young shall instead be invested in
educating them; that one day there will come a Veterans Day
and a Memorial Day when there are no more war veterans
left alive to march.

I will remember the words from Laurence Binyon's World
War I poem For the Fallen:

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder Newspapers