Goofs

Colonel Moore is almost bayoneted by an NVA soldier wearing glasses, but turns and shoots the man in the head at the last second. Later, when the soldiers are checking the body of the dead NVA soldier, there is only slight blood on the right side of his head and no bullet hole at all.

When Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An tells his soldiers about their final attack, the Vietnamese quote doesn't match the subtitle. If you listen carefully, you can hear it is exactly the same dialogue as when Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An is sitting on the grass, speaking to himself.

In the scene just following the ambush of first platoon's patrol, Moore's flashlight is shot and all the glass is gone. In a moment, after a scene cut, there is a piece of glass there.

Moore is shown wearing a 2ID patch in the beginning of the movie and continues until deploying. The patch is still on his sleeve as he says goodbye to his family but when reporting for deployment that same evening he now has the 1CD patch.

Contrary to what's shown in the movie, Lieutenant Henry Herrick and 2nd Platoon did not recklessly charge after a lone NVA soldier, but were in fact ordered to advance out to the flank by Captain John Herren and did so in a disciplined manner. However, he encountered a group of retreating PAVN soldiers and followed them, losing contact with the rest of the company and leaving the flank exposed. At one point, when coming to the clearing shown in the film, Herrick stopped and radioed back on whether or not he should continue through it or go around it, which was when he and his men were attacked by the NVA.

It was also Herrick's platoon that inflicted the first casualties on the NVA in said attack, not the other way around as shown in the movie.

In the beginning, the French Group Mobile 100 is ambushed and killed to the last man. In reality, the group was ambushed several times and in all of them, they were able to escape, though only after suffering severe casualties. Furthermore, although a Viet Minh officer is shown giving an order to execute all prisoners, about 800 men were taken as POWs.

SPOILER. The air strikes that supported the bayonet charge (to clear the area around the landing zone toward the end) were done by fixed-wing A-1E Skyraider aircraft rather than the Huey helicopters flown by Snake Crandall and Too Tall Freeman. It would have been impossible for the ground crews to change the configuration of the Hueys from "Slick" (troop carrier) to "Hog" (gunship) and back in the time frame depicted, especially with the nearly nonstop flying that Crandall and Freemen did.

According to Harold Moore in his book "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young" on pages 323-325 he states it is true that The Yellow Cab Company was used to deliver death telegrams and his wife did something about it until the military got its act together. What is not correct is that Mrs. Moore was the one delivering the telegrams. She followed the cabs and then tried to provide comfort to the families.

The conversation between SGM Plumley and Joe Galloway regarding his status as a non-combatant did not take place as shown in the film. The conversation actually took place more than a week earlier, and it was between Joe Galloway and an Army Special Forces Officer, Major (later Colonel) Charles Beckwith. Joe Galloway arrived with in the Ia Drang with an M-16.

In the final battle scene, an NVA soldier is manning a German MG34 machine gun. Although used extensively during WW2, the MG34 was captured from the Germans and used by many combatants, notably French and Russian and saw service life in the PAVN, Korean People's Army and Viet Cong.

Greg Kinnear's character, Major Bruce Crandall, and Mark McCracken's character, Captain Ed Freeman, are helicopter pilots; and wear the branch insignia US Army Corps of Engineers. This is not incorrect. Army Aviation did not exist as a branch from 1947, when the US Air Force separated from the Army, to 1983 when a new Army Aviation Branch was created wearing the old Army Air Force branch insignia. From 1947 to 1983, Army aviators were trained in and designated as belonging to other branches prior to entering flight training, and wore their basic branch insignia even when assigned to flying duties.

When Joe Galloway helps defend the aid post, as he aims his M16 it can appear that there is no round chambered, since the bolt is in the forward position. However, the M16 fires from the closed-bolt position, so when a round is chambered, the bolt will be forward.

When Barry Pepper's character Joe Galloway puts his camera down and picks up a rifle to help defend the position, he places the camera on the ground at the base of a small tree. Later, when he goes to retrieve the camera and start taking photographs again, the camera is hanging from a tree branch. However, a fair amount of time passed and significant activity took place around that area, so anyone could have moved the camera and its changed location is consistent with this. Additionally, one of the deleted scenes on the DVD/Blu-ray of the film shows Galloway picking up his camera and hanging it from the branch, which is why it changes position.

Not all of Vietnam's terrain is "is incredibly dense". There ARE areas without "a lot of tropical vegetation due to the hot humid climate that is found throughout Vietnam", particularly the Central Highlands where the Battle of Ia Drang took place, with elevations of up to 2,400 feet allowing for more temperate vegetation. Lt Gen Harold G. Moore, the central figure of the film played by Mel Gibson and the co-author of the book upon which the film is based, scouted several locations around the world before deciding on the hills of Fort Hunter Liggett, California as the terrain best matching that of the Ia Drang Valley. Photographs taken during the battle by Joe Galloway, the war correspondent played by Barry Pepper and the other co-author of the original book, show the terrain of Landing Zone X-ray as being open and surrounded by thinly wooded forest.

At the night scene where Moore is seen praying to a body, the body bag can be seen breathing.

When Moore and his soldiers capture a North Vietnamese Army deserter and ask him where his friends are, he supposedly says this is a base camp for the whole division; four thousand men (which was in the script). While in translation the words about the base camp are correct, the Vietnamese word (muoi ngan) he says is actually ten thousand, not four thousand.

As is extremely common among actors who were raised as protestants and would hear the word "calvary" in church, the word cavalry (a type of military unit) is mispronounced by some actors in this film as "calvary", which was the site of the crucifixion.

Jimmy Nakayama Says to Galloway "I have a baby born today" However Nakayama's Daughter was born on the 7th of November not the 15th of November when the scene takes place.

In the final battle scene, several UH1 ("Huey") helicopters are shown firing Gatling guns and rockets into the battle. While many Hueys were unofficially modified by the ground crews to carry weaponry early in the Viet Nam conflict, the officially armed Huey, the UH1-C, actually wasn't introduced until mid-1966, several months after the battle at Ia Drang. Earlier Huey versions, which often did have door gunners, lacked the power and other modifications necessary to carry the types of weaponry shown in the movie. So, it is very unlikely that any Hueys involved in this battle would have had heavy guns or rockets.

In the scene where the soldiers are celebrating being sent to war, the Sam Moore and Dave Prater Jr. song "Hold On, I'm Coming" is playing at the party. This song was actually not released until five months after the battle of La Trang, in March 1966.

Joe Galloway's Nikon camera shown throughout the movie is a model "F Photomic FTN", first sold in Sept. 1968, but it was November 14, 1965 at 10:48 a.m., when Lt. Col. Hal Moore and his young troopers touched down at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang.

At about 9:24 in the film SGT Savage is wearing the crossed rifles and blue brass backgrounds of an infantryman but is missing his blue cord which the Sergeant Major in the same scene has.

During the opening scene of the attack on the French unit, the NVA regulars charge the French. But despite the fact that many of them are carrying the 7.62mm Soviet SKS rifle with fold-back bayonet attachment, almost none of them use any bayonet at all during the charge except the soldier that kills the French officer with his bayonet. This makes no sense when charging with an infantry rifle, because once the breech of a rifle is empty, then it's almost completely useless at close quarters except as a very unwieldy club. This is why bayonets were invented in the first place.

When helicopters are landing or taking off, the sound effects are that of turbine engine RPM being increased or decreased as during engine start-up and shutdown on the ground. RPM is relatively constant during takeoff and landing. (This seems to be a common mistake in many films using helicopter sound effects.)

When Lt Col Moore is speaking to his men in the helicopter bay the echo happens before he starts speaking.

In the opening moments, the narrator tells us that the French GM100 was ambushed at/near the same spot where the Americans are about to fight. In fact, the French forces were ambushed some 100 km northeast from the Ia Drang valley.

Both John Geoghegan and Henry Herrick are shown wearing the US Army Good Conduct Medal. Geoghegan and Herrick were both Lieutenants with no prior enlisted experience. The Good Conduct Medal is only awarded to enlisted personnel (NCOs and junior enlisted men), and (at the time of filming) only after four years of (good) service. Neither Geoghegan nor Herrick would have been eligible for the Good Conduct Medal.

However, this isn't a character mistake. No character in the film make a mistake here. It is a factual error.

Early in the film, LTC Moore is shown signing a typewritten will in his home, alone (late at night). However, the will would not have been valid because the signature wasn't witnessed. Had the will been completely in his handwriting it might have been valid in many states.

LTC Moore and his officers are shown assembling at Fort Benning's 250 foot towers. This is an odd place for them to assemble considering that the only buildings adjacent to that field are training units attached to the US Army Infantry School, specifically the barracks for the students attending the US Army Airborne School and the barracks for the US Army Officer Candidate School (Infantry Officer Candidate School at the time of the movie). LTC Moore and his officers would have had to walk several miles out of their way to assemble at that location.