George Will: Correction on Ia Drang Battle

April 13, 2003 -- I stand corrected.

Two Sundays ago, I noted that America's wars often begin with difficulties.

I cited the debacle at Bull Run in July 1861, and the Army's unsteady performance in North Africa in 1942.

But I also mentioned the battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in November 1965, the first battle between U.S. and regular North Vietnamese forces.

I thereby implied that the Ia Drang was a defeat. I was at most half right, which is not good enough. I have been corrected by an old friend, Jack Smith.

For years, Jack was an ABCNEWS reporter, including for This Week.Jack's father was Howard K. Smith, an ABCNEWS reporter, including for This Week.

Before Jack was a broadcaster, he was a 19-year-old infantryman in the Ia Drang battle. Even before he was wounded, he was so covered with the blood of comrades that when Jack's position was overrun. A North Vietnamese solider, assuming Jack was dead, used his body as a sandbag, firing a machine gun on top of it.

Jack's company suffered 93 percent casualties — dead and wounded. The Ia Drang battle, re-told in the book that became the movie We Were Soldiers, had two phases.

Only the second, a day-long ambush, involving flawed leadership of green troops, could be called a defeat.

But in the battle's first phase, three days of intense combat, Americans, outnumbered about three to one, destroyed most of a North Vietnamese division, inflicting 10 times more casualties than they suffered.

U.S. officials misconstrued this success as justifying a strategy of attrition.But the American soldiers who fought the battle fought well and won it. It is a privilege to be corrected by someone who was there.

Thank you, Jack Smith. And a salute to all the veterans of that victory in the Ia Drang Valley.