"Aftermath" Chpts 24-26

I really enjoyed reading We Were Soldiers and I thought it related well to our lectures. There were numerous examples of leadership throughout the book, on both sides, which helped me to develop my own definition of a leader. To be effective, a leader must gain the respect of their subordinates and maintain that respect by not only talking the talk, but also walking the walk. The leadership of LTC Moore and Crandall stuck out to me as truly exceptional. Both men went above and beyond and I think that made a difference in the Ia Drang.
Hal Moore is plain-and-simple a good leader. I can think of numerous different examples of why his leadership was exemplary. However, the one that stuck out the most to me is how much he took the Warrior Ethos, especially I will never leave a fallen comrade, to heart. In the movie Moore tells his soldiers that they will all come home and in the book you see that he does everything possible to make this a reality. He searches the battle fields himself and even goes back to Albany to find the final soldiers that were MIA. Not only did Moore impress me with his commitment to his soldiers, but he was also committed to their families. I think by going to Jack’s family he showed how much he cared for his soldiers and that he did not take their sacrifices lightly.
The other leader that really stood out to me was Crandall. The thing that amazed me about him was that he never hesitated; Crandall saw the needs of the soldiers on the ground and just got the job done. Throughout the battle he made sure Moore’s men had the supplies and ammunition they needed. When the medevacs refused to land because the LZ was hot, which seems like the most backwards thing to me, Crandall loaded the wounded onto his own Hueys. Crandall utilized transactional leadership many times throughout the battle. He never forced his men to come along on the extra flights; they did it on their own accord in order to work for the greater good. The actions of Crandall at X-Ray made me realize that leadership has to be a truly unselfish action; he could never have been as effective if he had only been thinking of his own well-being.

"Albany" 21-23

“There had been 108 men on the fit-for-duty report the morning we left for Albany, and only eight on the duty report the day after.” This line stuck with me more than any other one in the section; it is a staggering statistic. I cannot imagine losing that many people, or having that many injured, in a single battle. I was appalled when they described the NVA just walking among the American dead and killing the injured. Lt Col Nguyen Huu An mentioned the amount of respect he had for the Americans, but the actions of his men speak otherwise.
Lt. Rescorla is a fine example of transformational leadership at Albany. Upon landing he had a positive attitude which rubbed off on the other soldiers and significantly raised the morale. Rescorla relied on the component of inspirational motivation; he walked among his men and individually pepped them up by telling them what a good job they had done. I don’t think there is any way that transactional leadership would have been effective at Albany because of the number of casualties, the men would not have responded to a system of rewards and punishments when that many of their friends had been killed. Rescorla realizes this and because of his ability to utilize transformational leadership he is a valuable leader during the battle.

"Albany" Chpts 18-20

Two topics really caught my attention during this section. The first is the objective principle of war. This principle says that every military operation must be directed toward a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective. However, Lieutenant Colonel McDade and his troops were not given a clearly defined mission; rather they were just told to walk through the jungle until they arrived at LZ Albany. This caused numerous complications and I think is linked to the heavy number of casualties the battalion took. Had McDade been given a more thorough mission, he would have been more tactical and not allowed his troops to just be lolling around.
This leads to the second issue that caught my attention, command and control. Basically there was none. The soldiers in the companies at the rear of the formation were lounging around and no one was giving orders because their commanders had moved to the front of the formation for a quick meeting. During the battle, the battalion was split up and there were many instances where soldiers were not sure whether they were being fired upon by their soldiers or by the North Vietnamese. McDade was out of contact with his people and unable to report on his accountability to higher, which was problematic because this limited their ability to call for air strikes. The lack of command and control on the side of the Americans had fatal results for the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry.