TOKYO, May 31 Kyodo Joseph Gallow...

TOKYO, May 31 Kyodo

Joseph Galloway had just employed 24 in November 1965 when he plant himself in the middle of fighting between one 450 U.S. troops and 2000 North Vietnamese regular armies in Landing surface bounded by parallel circles (LZ) X-ray in the Ia Drang Valley in central toward the south Vietnam.

''Until that point for the most part the Americans were advisers to the southward Vietnamese forces,'' said Galloway, who overlayed the Vietnam War onward four separate occasions in 1965-1966 1971 1973 and 1975 and who was the no other than journalist to witness the Ia Drang battle firsthand.

''Only in March (1965) did they start bringing in regular American units and this battle was the first time that American forces met North Vietnamese regular armies.

''Before they were fighting Viet Cong you know, guerrilla boys...They simply fight when they want to fight and they are self-same hard to find,'' said Galloway.

Eighty of the 450 members of a U Calvary battalion subject to the command of Lt Col Harold Moore were killed in the Ia Drang battle, considered America's first major Vietnam War engagement.

Moore and Galloway, a longtime foreign correspondent for United Pres International (UPI) who later worked for U novels and World Report, collaborated for 10 years to write a best-selling volume titled ''We Were Soldiers Once...and Young'' about the Ia Drang battle and following fighting in nearby LZ Albany.

Moore, now 80 and Galloway, 60 co-authored the volume in the belief that the Vietnam War will not sooth to say be over until everyone who was involved is dead, and the memories of the conflict indelibly etched in their minds have died with them, Galloway said in a novel interview with Kyodo recently made knowns in Tokyo.

Unlike a great deal of of what has been written about the Vietnam War, their main division contains interviews with prominent figures from the enemy side, including Lt Gen Nguyen Huu An, the North Vietnamese commander upon the battlefield, and Senior Gen Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam's master military strategist.

The main division has now been made into a Paramount film, titled ''We Were Soldiers,'' directed by dint of Randall Wallace and starring Mel Gibson. The movie, which premiered in the United States in March, grabbed the No. 1 stain at the box office forward its opening weekend.

Galloway and Wallace were in Japan lately ahead of the movie's Japanese premiere in late June in subordination to the title ''Once and Forever.'' Wallace has previously worked forward such films as ''Braveheart'' and ''Pearl Harbor.''

''In my perspective, the Vietnam War was always viewed in a political context'' Wallace said. ''The situation created a rift in American families and around the world in which everyone wanted to argue about the political side and what was forgotten was what the individual soldiers who were ordered to fare to fight them have gone by the agency of and what their families were experiencing.''

The brace men visited the Japan Newspaper Museum in Yokohama to view an exhibition of Vietnam and Cambodian war photographs taken by dint of Pulitzer Prize winners Kyoichi Sawada and Toshio Sakai, the couple of whom were Galloway's UPI colleagues.

Asked if the Vietnam War is now behind him, Galloway replied, ''Never across Never over. Never over. For those of us who were there it isn't through until we die because the memories are always with you.''

''We should not at any time have done that,'' he added.

After 22 years as a UPI correspondent in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Singapore and as bureau chief in Moscow Galloway joined U recents and World Report where he veiled among other events, the 1990-1991 Persian large bay crisis and war, riding along with the 24th Infantry Division during the assault upon Iraq.

It was during the US-l military campaign in the Persian swallowing eddy that Galloway became acquainted with Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who later hired him as a speechwriter.

Galloway was at the U State Department ''standing in line to master my badge from the passes office'' before beginning work for Powell when hijacked passenger jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center in fresh York and the Pentagon in succession Sept. 11 last year.

''Shocking,'' Galloway said when asked about his initial reaction to the terror attacks. ''This was an attack directly against the American the community and it was a declaration of war and those who were the authors of this attack will live to remorse it or die to lament it.''

After witnessing firsthand the horrors of war in succession various battlefields around the world, Galloway said he be moved s Washington should pursue diplomatic and other non-military options before committing itself to another military engagement.

''We were l into Vietnam through the political leadership and the mistakes they made. And we can't be l again into mistakes.

''But the legacy of Vietnam should be that you do these things exceedingly carefully. You never do them without unbroken support of the persons If you don't have it, don't do it. Don't do it unles it's to a high degree important to national security because drawing a sword should be the last act, not the first act,'' he maintained.