Hal Moore was a warrior.

While his valor awards speak for themselves, his dedication to his troopers provides additional insight into his character.

At the end of his tour of duty in Vietnam, he wrote home:

“Dearest Julie –

Please try not to get upset but the 3rd Bde is in a fight again. Charlie Daniel (Hal’s replacement) is here… frankly honey as much as I want to be home, I want to take my men – especially my old hands – through this one. I would forever be plagued with my consience if I left in the middle of a fight and turned over these men to a new commander strange to this war here. Too deadly a game.

I told the General I wanted to finish it with them.

I don’t know when we will finish this one. It should be a week – two weeks. Please stay calm. Please try to understand. I will soon be home and this will all be past. Don’t judge me that I don’t lover you and my family. I have fought with these men now too long to take the easy way out. I could never face one of them again and above all I would think of myself as lacking integrity and loyalty. I could not comfortably live with that on my mind.”

And what was Hal doing? Did he hang back in the CP? Larry Gwin, in his book “Baptism” tells us the rest of the story:

“In that morning, after as sleeping soundly as I slept in a year, I remember seeing Colonel Moore, the brigade commander. He was coming with us, on the ground. He was going to participate in the attack. …I picked a spot behind some boulders, I remember, along with my RTO’s and Doc Ambrose, and lay down and waited for the artillery barrage to begin. I could look down the line and see men finding positions, Captain Davison, Colonel Moore, Jim Kelly, and all of our people finding whatever cover they could against the possibility of a short round. And there we waited. After the barrage, we were simply going to stand up and charge across the open field to our front, charge the bunkers in the trench line in the woods across the way, charge across a hundred meters of open ground.”

This is the definition of Warrior Ethos.

Want more? Fort Benning is where the Army trains soldiers to be paratroopers.

Hal Moore tested parachutes for several years and survived multiple malfunctions.