The defining moment of the Vietnam war when the American dream of a quick victory died - hard.

Vietnam. November 1965. 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, are dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley and immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion is chopped to pieces in a similarly brutal manner. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constitute one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War and set the tone of the conflict to come.Now a major motion picture starring Mel Gibson