Free We Were Soldiers Once...and Young by Harold G. Moore;Joseph L. Galloway Page B

the Chu Pong area it is swift and deep, and during the monsoon it is a raging torrent. It flows to the west, on into Cambodia, where eventually it empties into the Mekong River and returns to Vietnam far south in the delta.
    The soldiers commanded by Brigadier General Chu Huy Man had been training for more than eighteen months. When they joined the People's Army, each recruit was issued two khaki shirts, two pairs of khaki trousers, a sewing kit, and a pair of
    "Ho Chi Minh" sandals cut from used truck tires. Those uniforms were expected to last for five years.
    Basic training lasted thirteen weeks, six days a week, 6:00 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. The instructors emphasized weapons and tactics, the hows of warfare, while the political commissars had time set aside each day to lecture on the whys of this war. The recruits were reminded constantly that their fathers had beaten the French colonialists; now it was their duty to defeat the American imperialists. They were imbued with Ho Chi Minh's dictum: "Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence."
    After basic training, some were selected for six months of NCO school and would emerge as new corporals. For the rest, advanced infantry training included familiarization with all weapons, the use of explosives, ambush tactics, reconnaissance tactics, adjusting mortar fire, and patrol tactics. In June of 1964, Man's soldiers moved up into the mountains of North Vietnam, terrain similar to that in the Western Highlands of South Vietnam. Here physical conditioning was emphasized; they scaled steep slopes while wearing rucksacks loaded with fifty to sixty pounds of rocks. Their advanced training now also focused on the art of camouflage. They got rudimentary instruction in antiaircraft defenses: Fire on full automatic straight in front of the aircraft's line of flight, so that the helicopter or airplane will fly into a wall of bullets.
    When the time came for them to begin the arduous two month journey down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, General Man's regiments broke down into battalions for security purposes, each moving separately and at least three days ahead of the next. Each soldier carried four pounds of rice--seven days' rations--plus another eight pounds of foodstuffs that were expected to last him the whole trip: two pounds of salt; two pounds of wheat flour; and four pounds of salt pork. One man in every squad carried the aluminum cookpot that the squad's rice would be boiled in.
    Each man also carried fifty antimalaria pills, one for each day on the trail, and a hundred vitamin Bj tabs to be taken at the rate of three per week. Despite the pills, virtually every man who walked the trail contracted malaria and, on average, three or four soldiers of each 160-man company would die on the journey. Malaria, diarrhea, accidents, poisonous snakes, and American air raids all took their toll.
    Along the route the men passed construction crews; many of the workers were young girls, who were employed by the thousands in improving the network of trails and the campsites that were situated every nine miles along the route. Each camp, which could shelter a company of troops, consisted of a series of crude bamboo huts dispersed along a half-mile of trail to make a smaller target for the warplanes. Each man carried a light canvas hammock to string up in the huts at night. Each also carried a long rectangular piece of green plastic for a makeshift poncho. The nights on the trail were cold, the days comfortable. Man's soldiers marched nine miles each day, the distance between the rest camps where they spent each night. Every fourth day they stayed in camp, taking the day off to rest up, wash their clothes, and tend to minor medical problems.
    Porters pushed bicycles, modified with one long pole tied to the frame and rising three feet above the saddle and another long steering pole tied to the left handlebar. Bundles containing more than 350 pounds of rice or ammunition or medical