Harold G. Moore - Hal Moore on Leadership

Copyright 2017 Mike Guardia, Harold G. Moore III, Stephen Moore, Julie Orlowski, Cecile Rainey and David Moore

Photographs contained herein copyright the Moore family unless otherwise noted. Vietnam images taken by Art Zich and Joseph L. Galloway reprinted with permission.

US Army photographs are public domain.

From We Are Soldiers Still by Lt. General H.G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway. Used by permission of HarperCollins. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to HarperCollins for permission.

From Hal Moore:A Soldier Once And Always by Mike Guardia. Used by permission of Casemate Publishers. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Casemate Publishers for permission.

Published by Magnum Books

PO Box 1661

Maple Grove, MN 55311

ISBN-13: 978-1548305109

ISBN-10: 1548305103

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any part of this book in any form by any means including digitized forms that can be encoded, stored, and retrieved from any media including computer disks, CD-ROM, computer databases, and network servers without permission of the publisher except for quotes and small passages included in book reviews. Copies of this book may be purchased for educational, business or promotional use.

For Marie, Melanie,

and the serving and retired members of the US Armed Forces

Also by Mike Guardia:

American Guerilla

Shadow Commander

Hal Moore: A Soldier Onceand Always

The Fires of Babylon

Also by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore:

We Were Soldiers Onceand Young

We Are Soldiers Still

All of ones life is a learning experience

Ive learned a lot of lessons along the way. Im still learning.

For many years, Ive been giving talks on Leadership with the theme Values in Action. These are values, principles, lessons Ive learned, mistakes, successes, and my thoughts on leadership from watching, studying and reading about leaders in actiongood leaders, mediocre leaders, bad leaders. Ive talked to military, athletic teams, business and student audiences and what I say has been well received.

This book is not an autobiography. Its not a how to book on military leadership, the chapters include selected periods in my life. Covered will be leaders, leadership, and experiences which made life-long impressions on me; and lessons learnedmost of which have application in all fields of endeavor.

HAROLD G. MOORE

Lt. General, USA-Ret.

January 2002

With those words scrawled in longhand on a yellow legal pad, our father began writing the history of his life as a leader. 13,226 words later, he had created seven chapters of an amazingly detailed, candid draft tracing his evolution as a leader across different phases of his life. Our mother, the only person who could read his handwriting with precision, painstakingly typed each word into Microsoft Word; saved on the old Dell computer our brother, Steve Moore gave them in 1997.

Sadly, that is where the documents lay for years as life got in the way. The heart shattering early death of our mother at age 75 in 2004 and the need to finish the sequel to We Were Soldiers Once And Young moved this project to the back burner.

Unlike old soldiers who fade away, computers just die. Steve had the task of recovering the files and, in doing so, discovered the bones of this book. Recognizing it as a treasure, the familys challenge was to find an accomplished writer who could take the project across the finish line. Enter Mike Guardia, an internationally recognized author and military historian who has been nominated twice for the Army Historical Foundations Distinguished Book Award as well as being a finalist for the International Book Award in the Military category.

Mikes introduction to Dad was the movie, We Were Soldiers , which he saw on opening night in 2002. We Were Soldiers was remarkable to him because it was the first film he had seen to portray a Vietnam veteran in a positive light. For years, his generation had grown up on Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Casualties of War all of which portrayed the Vietnam veteran as malicious, mentally unstable, or a misfit in modern society. We Were Soldiers, however, had no political agenda. It was an honest and intimate portrayal of the men who fought valiantly in Southeast Asia.

In the years following the films release, he read Dads books We Were Soldiers Onceand Young, We Are Soldiers Still and was surprised to learn that no one had written Dads biography. After extensive vetting by the family, Mike started to work on that project with full access to Dad and unrestricted use of his personal archives including a wealth of personal papers, speeches, photographs, government documents, and war trophies. The resulting work, Hal Moore: A Soldier Onceand Always , was released in late 2013 and received critical acclaim.

There was no better person to finish the job and the family is grateful to him for taking on the challenge.

-The Moore Family

T he men of 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry were standing strong in the face of enemy fire. They had been on Landing Zone X-Ray for only a few hours and already their worst scenario was coming to pass: the Americans were outnumbered, understrength, and one of their platoons had been cut off and its leadership killed. To make matters worse, the friendly reinforcements were tied to the helicopters timelinea 20-minute round trip. Meanwhile, their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harold G. Hal Moore kept his wits about him as he set up his command post at a nearby termite mound. Trying his best to ignore the gunshots, screams, and the bullets whipping past his head, he calmly called for artillery suppression on the menacing North Vietnamese. This would be the first major battle between the United States Army and the Peoples Army of North Vietnamand would go down in history as one of the bloodiest engagements of the Vietnam War. But this battle was not the first leadership challenge that Hal Moore had facednor would it be his last.

Hal Moore led his life by a set of principlesa code developed through years of experience, trial-and-error, and the study of leaders of every stripe. In a career spanning more than thirty years, Moores life touched upon many historical events: the Occupation of Japan, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the re-fashioning of the US Army into an all-volunteer force. At each juncture, he learned critical lessons and had opportunities to affect change through measured responses. Hal Moore on Leadership offers a comprehensive guide to the principles that helped shape Moores success both on and off the battlefield. They are strategies for the outnumbered, outgunned, and seemingly hopeless. They apply to any leader in any organization. These lessons and principles are nothing theoretical or scientific. They are simply rules of thumb learned and practiced by a man who spent his entire adult life leading others and perfecting his art of leadership.