Mr. Joe Galloway
A native Texan, Joseph L. Galloway joined United Press International as a reporter in 1961. During 22 years with UPI, he served in news bureaus in Kansas City, Topeka, Tokyo, and Saigon, and was Chief of Bureau in Jakarta, New Delhi, Singapore, Moscow, and Los Angeles.
Mr. Galloway served a 16-month tour as a war correspondent in Vietnam beginning in April of 1965 shortly after the first American combat troops landed on China Beach in Danang. He returned to Vietnam on three other tours in 1971, 1973, and again in 1975 when he covered the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam.
In addition to Vietnam duty, Mr. Galloway covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War and half a dozen other regional conflicts during 15 years of foreign service. Mr. Galloway joined U.S. News & World Report as West Coast editor in 1982. He later became a senior writer based at the magazine's Washington, D.C., headquarters. In 1990-91, Mr. Galloway returned to duty as a war correspondent in the Persian Gulf and accompanied the Army's 24th Mech Infantry Division on its tank charge through the western Iraq desert. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf who has known him in two wars calls Mr. Galloway "the finest combat correspondent of our generation—a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend." He later joined McClatchy Newspapers as Senior Military Corresondent. He is now semi-retired, though still writing a weekly column, and has recently issued, along with LTG. Hal Moore, a sequel to "We Were Soldiers Once….and Young". "We Are Soldiers Still" was published in the fall of 2008 by HarperCollins and received critical acclaim.
Mr. Galloway received the 1991 National Magazine Award for an Oct. 29, 1990, U.S. News cover story marking the 25th anniversary of the first major battle of the Vietnam War, and the 1992 News Media Award of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States for his coverage of the Persian Gulf War. In 1999, he received the President's Award for the Arts of the Vietnam Veterans of America. In 2000, he was decorated with the U.S. Army Infantry Association's Order of St. Maurice, the patron saint of the Infantry. Mr. Galloway is co-author of two books: Triumph Without Victory: The History of the Persian Gulf War, published in 1992 by Times Books—and the New York Times bestseller "We Were Soldiers Once and Young" (WWSOAY) published in late 1992 by Random House.
During the course of researching WWSOAY, Mr. Galloway returned to Vietnam three times for interviews, including several with Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap. "We Were Soldiers Once…and Young", written with Army Lt. Gen. Hal Moore is a detailed accounting of the Ia Drang Campaign, the first major clash between American and North Vietnamese regular troops in November 1965, and the bloodiest of any battle fought during the entire war. Moore commanded one of the battalions in the Ia Drang, and Galloway, then a 24-year-old reporter, was on the ground throughout the action. The book is the basis for the movie, We Were Soldiers, which stars Mel Gibson with Barry Pepper playing the role of Mr. Galloway, and Greg Kinnear as Maj. Bruce Crandall.
On May 1, 1998, the Army awarded Mr. Galloway a belated Bronze Star with V for rescuing a badly wounded soldier under heavy fire in the Ia Drang Valley on 15 November 1965. His is the only such medal of valor awarded to a civilian by the Army during the Vietnam War. In addition to Kingfisher, Mr. Galloway is a member of the BOA of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, 1st Cavalry Division Association, and the National Infantry Museum Foundation. He is also on the BOD of the non-profit organizations No Greater Love and the Museum of America's Wars. Today, Mr. Galloway writes a nationally sydicated newspaper column and resides on the Texas coast.