We Were Soldiers is a 2002 war film written and directed by Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson. Based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young (1992) by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, it dramatizes the Battle of Ia Drang on November 14, 1965. Plot In 1954, the French Army's Group Mobile 100, on patrol during the First Indochina War, is ambushed by Viet Minh forces. Viet Minh commander Nguyen Huu An orders his soldiers to "kill all they send, and they will stop coming". Eleven years later, the United States is fighting the Vietnam War. US Army Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore is chosen to train and lead a battalion. After arriving in Vietnam, he learns that an American base has been attacked and is ordered to take his 400 men after the enemy and eliminate the North Vietnamese attackers; intelligence has no idea of the number of enemy troops. Moore leads a newly-created air cavalry unit into the Ia Drang Valley. After landing, the soldiers capture a North Vietnamese soldier and learn from him that the location they were sent to is actually the base camp for a veteran North Vietnamese army division of 4,000 men. Upon arrival in the area with a platoon of soldiers, 2nd Lt. Henry Herrick spots an enemy scout and runs after him, ordering his reluctant soldiers to follow. The scout lures them into an ambush, which results in several men being killed, including Herrick and his subordinates. The surviving platoon members are surrounded and cut off from the rest of the battalion. Sgt. Savage assumes command, calls in the artillery, and uses the cover of night to keep the Vietnamese from overrunning their defensive position. Meanwhile, with helicopters constantly dropping off units, Moore manages to secure weak points before the North Vietnamese can take advantage of them. Despite being trapped and desperately outnumbered, the main US force manages to hold off the North Vietnamese with artillery, mortars, and helicopter airlifts of supplies and reinforcements. Eventually, Nguyen Huu An, the commander of the North Vietnamese division, orders a large-scale attack on the American position. Back in the United States, Julia Moore has become the leader of the American wives who live on the base. When the Army begins to use taxi drivers to deliver telegrams that notify the next of kin of the soldiers' deaths, Julia personally