Visit Rescorla Memorial
Visit Rescorla Memorial
US Army PFC Ira Rolston sounding the bugle found by Rescorla during the Battle of Ia Drang.
He saw a flash of dirty brass amid the blood and entrails oozing from a dying Vietnamese soldier’s torso and reached out to grab it. It was a bugle, that most basic of brass instruments used by armed forces around the world for centuries.
This particular bugle was dented in spots and engraved with elaborate French lettering, over which Vietnamese characters had been scratched.
It was November of 1965, and Cyril Richard “Rick” Rescorla was knee-deep in the horrific Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam when he found his combat zone keepsake.
Historians agree the bugle was a Clairon d’Ordonnance, mostly likely brought to the elephant-grass covered highlands of central Vietnam by French forces during the First Indochina War in the late ’40s and early ’50s. Somehow it came into the possession of the People’s Army of Vietnam soldiers, and from them to Rescorla and the American Army.
The Valley of Death
The Battle of Ia Drang took place over a span of five days and hundreds of men were killed, in heinous ways, on both sides. Those who survived describe the carnage in almost apocalyptic terms as one battalion after another was ambushed by the People’s Army of Vietnam, known as PAVN.
“About 100 of [PAVN soldiers] jumped up and made for our lines, and all hell broke loose. The people in that sector opened up with everything they had. Then a couple of our Skyraiders came in. One of them dropped a lot of stuff that shimmered in the sun like green confetti. It looked like a ticker-tape parade, but when the things hit the ground, the little pieces exploded. They were anti-personnel charges. Every one of [the PAVN soldiers] was killed,” recalled Private First Class Jack P. Smith in his account of the battle published in the January 28, 1967 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. “Another group on the other side almost made it to the lines. There weren’t enough GIs there, and they couldn’t shoot them down fast enough. A plane dropped some napalm bombs just in front of the line. I couldn’t see the [PAVN soldiers] but I could hear them scream as they burned. A hundred men dead, just like that.”
At the end of the battle, 93 percent of Smith’s company had been killed.
The Warrior
But the casualties on the American side would have been much higher if not for the incredible combat actions of platoon leader Rescorla.
Lieutenant General Hal Moore, in his book on the Battle of Ia Drang named We Were Soldiers Once … and Young, called Rescorla “the best platoon leader I ever saw.”
“He became a legend in the unit for his behavior in combat, and his face became an American icon when a young reporter named Peter Arnett snapped his photo,” said Major Robert L. Bateman in the June 2002 issue of Vietnam Magazine.
In an account published by the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Sipe-Peterson Post 44 of the American Legion, Rescorla is described as a soldier in possession of unparalleled courage.
“American troops were encircled that first night at a landing zone they called X-Ray, and one company was virtually wiped out in a hellish firefight. The next day, Rescorla’s company was ordered to replace it on the perimeter at the foot of the Chu Pong mountain ridge. In a later letter to Moore and Galloway, Rescorla recalled that when he arrived – after a U.S. fighter jet had mistakenly dropped napalm on his men – he found corpses scattered everywhere from the night before, including an American with his hands still clenched around a North Vietnamese soldier’s throat. “Are your men up for this? Do you feel they can hold?” asked Myron Diduryk, his commander. “If they break through us, sir, you’ll be the first to know,” Rescorla replied. That night, Rescorla risked sniper fire to study the terrain from the enemy viewpoint. He ordered his men to dig new foxholes 50 yards back, lay booby traps, reposition their machine guns and artillery. After midnight, he sang a slow Cornish mining tune, “Going Up Cambourne Hill, Coming Down.””
Six degrees of separation
Martinez’s Jay Archibald remembers the moment when Rescorla and his men limped back to the division base camp after the Battle of Ia Drang.
“I saw this truck with a bunch of guys in the back, no canopy, and what sounded like a trumpet blaring by someone who doesn’t have the chops to play,” said Archibald during a recent discussion about his connection to Rescorla. “He discovered the bugle on the battlefield and said ‘what a trophy.’ It became a talisman for the men. Being a trumpet player, I turned to my friend and said, ‘I would give both my arms or maybe just one arm just to play that bugle.’”
Archibald and Rescorla were assigned to the same division, but Archibald had the good fortune to be drafted as a musician and assigned to an Army band.
“I knew I needed to stay out of the infantry, and I had played trumpet in the high school band,” said Archibald, who was deployed to Vietnam from 1964-1966. His assignment was to entertain the troops and the band “got around quite a bit. The General liked us, liked the band and we had anything we wanted. [Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara would come through and we’d have smart new uniforms while the troops in the field wore old fatigues. We felt quite embarrassed.”
Archibald was retelling his Vietnam experiences and his personal encounter with Rescorla in connection to a brand new opera the San Francisco Opera Company premiered this month.
In a further twist, Archibald is married to Janet Popesco Archibald, who has played oboe and English horn in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra for the past 20 years.
When Rescorla’s Bravo Company came back to base camp after Ia Drang, only five of his men were wounded.
“He did an extraordinary job. He knew where the [PAVN] were and he snookered them,” said Archibald.
For his combat heroics, Rescorla earned a Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
A life fit for an opera
Heart of a Soldier tells the life story of Rick Rescorla, from his childhood in Cornwall, England to fighting for the British Army in Rhodesia to moving to America in order to join the US Army and fight in Vietnam, which he saw as a “just war.”
After Vietnam, he received a law degree, taught at a university and then went into the security industry.
Rescorla died in the September 11, 2001 attacks after single-handedly saving the lives of 2,700 people.
As Vice President of Security for Morgan-Stanley/Dean-Witter, the largest employer at World Trade Center, Rescorla immediately evacuated 20 floors of the South Tower when the first hijacked plane crashed into the North Tower, despite commands from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – the governmental agency that built and operated the World Trade Center – to stay in place.
When the second plane crashed in floors 77 through 85 of the South Tower, all of his charges were safely out. Rescorla went back in the building to conduct a final sweep, ensure nobody was left behind. The building then collapsed and his body was never recovered.
By Greta Mart
A climactic scene in the upcoming Vietnam War movie "We Were Soldiers" — the story of an especially gruesome, 34-day battle in 1965 — shows a soldier triumphantly recapturing a French army bugle from the North Vietnamese.
The character was not given a name, but veterans of the Ia Drang campaign at a preview screening quickly recalled the real-life warrior behind the inspiring image.
"I looked at the guy next to me," said retired Lt. James L. Lane of Florida, who served as a platoon leader in what became known as the Valley of Death, "and we both immediately said the same thing.
"Rescorla."
Cyril Richard "Rick" Rescorla — a native of Great Britain who joined the British paratroopers as a teenager, immigrated to the United States in his mid-20s to fight communism and later settled with his first wife and two children in Morristown — was a hero in two distinct periods of his life, more than three decades apart.
Lt. Rescorla was the platoon leader for Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang. His nickname was "Hardcore." Fellow soldiers credited Rescorla’s instincts, honed in the British military, for their survival.
"I hold him responsible for my being alive," Lane said.
More than 10 North Vietnamese soldiers died for every American that was killed in the brutal campaign in the Ia Drang Valley, located in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam.
Nearly 36 years removed from the Valley of Death, on Sept. 11, 2001, Rescorla found himself in the midst of what he prophetically labeled in a 1998 interview "the future warfare" when the North Tower of the World Trade Center was struck by hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 at 8:45 a.m.
In the South Tower, loudspeakers blared reassurances that the building was safe. Workers were instructed to stay in their offices. Rescorla, the vice president for corporate security at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., didn’t buy any of it.
With bullhorn in hand, Rescorla began evacuating approximately 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees who were spread out between the 43rd and 73rd floors of the South Tower. He also ordered the evacuation of 1,000 Morgan Stanley workers in Building Five, located across the plaza.
Both evacuations were well under way when United Airlines Flight 175 struck his tower at 9:05 a.m.
"What we heard that he did would be pretty typical of Rick," Lane said. "You could picture this 62-year-old ex-soldier hustling the troops down the stairs."
When the South Tower collapsed, only six Morgan Stanley employees were still inside, including Rescorla and two security officers under his command.
For more than a week, Rescorla’s extended family — including his second wife, Susan; first wife, Betsy; and his two children with Betsy — clung to the hope that he would once again emerge from a tight spot.
"If there was an inch of safe space, he’d find it," Rescorla’s 23-year-old daughter, Kim, said four days after the attacks.
But, along with thousands of other grieving families, the Rescorlas eventually came to accept that their loved one was gone. They were joined in their mourning by his many friends and comrades from Vietnam.
Joseph L. Galloway met Rescorla in the Ia Drang while covering the conflict for the news agency United Press International. The movie is based on the 1992 bestseller he co-authored with retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, "We Were Soldiers Once … And Young."
In the movie, Moore, who commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry in the Ia Drang, is played by Mel Gibson. Galloway is played by Barry Pepper.
Galloway, now a consultant for Secretary of State Colin Powell, said Rescorla began preparing for another terrorist attack shortly after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
New evacuation plans were drawn up. All Morgan Stanley employees — from secretaries to top corporate officials — were required to participate in regular fire drills, Galloway said. Rescorla would order the drills without notice, four times each year.
"They called them ‘Rick’s fire drills.’ They all laughed about it. But they’re all alive because of it," Galloway said.
Morgan Stanley officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Rescorla’s heroism was the chief topic at the annual Ia Drang reunion in Arlington, Va., in November. Independent filmmaker Robert Edwards of Manhattan — whose father, Capt. Robert H. Edwards, served with Rescorla in the Valley of Death — showed a videotaped interview he conducted in 1998 with Rescorla at his 44th floor World Trade Center office.
In the interview, Rescorla made statements that proved to be eerily prophetic. Portions of the tape will be broadcast next month on "Dateline NBC," according to Galloway.
"He started out talking about Ia Drang, and then he segued into terrorism. He called it the future warfare," Edwards recounted.
"He said there would be fighting in the homeland, in cities such as Los Angeles, and that instead of large military operations we’d be hunting down terrorists in small teams."
Galloway was among those mesmerized by Rescorla’s foresight.
"It just made the hair stand up on the back of our heads," Galloway said. "He more or less discussed in detail the sort of war we were in, and didn’t know."
Kim Rescorla said her father often expressed concern about the nation’s domestic vulnerabilities.
"I remember he specifically mentioned anthrax," she said.
The man who would become an American hero spent his childhood and young adulthood in Great Britain. According to published reports, Rescorla joined the British paratroopers as a teenager and served as an intelligence officer in Cyprus. He later did work for Scotland Yard.
Galloway said Rescorla came to the United States mainly because he wanted to take part in the Vietnam War. "He wanted to fight communism. He didn’t care where," Galloway said.
On the first night of the battle at Ia Drang, U.S. soldiers were vastly outnumbered and trapped at a landing zone. They began the fire fight with 111 men, and within hours only 49 were still alive.
Rescorla’s unit was ordered in as a replacement.
In a letter to Moore and Galloway published in their book, Rescorla described the grisly scene he encountered: "There were American and NVA bodies everywhere … One dead trooper was locked in contact with a dead NVA, hands around the enemy’s throat."
Lane said Rescorla, despite the horror, always remained stoic.
"He appeared fearless," Lane said. "I’m not sure that he was, but he would never let the troops know he was anything other than hardcore. That was, after all, his nickname."
Rescorla was a role model, particularly for the younger soldiers, Lane added.
"He taught everyone, particularly myself, the dos and don’ts — Listen to your superiors, but use your instincts as to how to stay alive," Lane said. A total of 305 Americans died in the Ia Drang Valley. The North Vietnamese death toll was 3,561.
When Rescorla retrieved the bugle, it was a tremendous morale booster for the wearied troops, Galloway said.
"On some long-ago battlefield, perhaps Dien Bien Phu, the victorious Viet Minh had taken it as trophy," wrote Moore and Galloway. "Now, here in the valley of the Ia Drang, in the tall elephant grass, the trophy had changed hands again."
Rescorla kept the bugle until 1991, when he turned it over to the Ia Drang Alumni for use in memorial ceremonies, Galloway said.
For his one tour of duty, Rescorla earned a Silver Star, a Purple Heart and Bronze Stars for Valor and Meritorious Service.
He left active duty in 1967, returned to the United States and became a citizen. Rescorla stayed in the Army Reserves until 1990, retiring at the rank of colonel.
Rescorla was married to Betsy in 1972. Trevor was born in 1976, followed by Kim in 1978.
Galloway said Rescorla earned a master’s degree and a law degree in Oklahoma and went into the private security field.
But there was much more to Rescorla than his warrior image. Reading and writing were among his lifelong passions, along with a love for singing, his daughter said.
"He was a different person to his wife and his kids than to the people he fought with," Kim Rescorla said.
"He was incredibly diverse. He could go from fighting in the military to writing poetry … It could be a rainy day, and we’d be watching a movie, and Dad would put on a musical and be singing and dancing around the house."
In the mid-1980s, Rescorla moved his family to Morristown. He took a job as director of security for Dean Witter, which later merged with Morgan Stanley.
Rescorla stayed in touch with old Army pals such as Galloway, and occasionally attended the annual Ia Drang reunions. But for the most part, the war seemed behind him. His daughter said his medals usually were kept out of sight.
There was some turbulence in Rescorla’s later years. He and Betsy divorced after 22 years of marriage. In 1998, Rescorla was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and at first received a dire prognosis.
Then things picked up again. He met Susan, and their quick courtship led to marriage in February 1999. His cancer went into remission.
Susan Rescorla was visiting her late husband’s relatives in Great Britain last week, Kim Rescorla said, and could not be reached.
On Sept. 15, Susan Rescorla recalled her final conversation with her husband in an interview with the Daily Record. She was at home, watching in horror as the devastation unfolded on television, when her cell phone rang.
It was Rick, remarkably calm. He told her not to cry, that he was helping people leave the building, and that he loved her.
Minutes later, the South Tower collapsed.
His daughter, a second-year law student at Seton Hall, said classmates will often come to her and say they heard or read about her father.
"It’s very therapeutic to reminisce," she said.
Galloway, who last spoke with Rescorla about a year ago, said his legacy is secure.
"He died so that all those people could live," Galloway said.
"I don’t know how you say thanks for that, other than to hold him up and honor him for that."
Copyright 2006 Joe Galloway
The word "hero" has been so debased and over-used in our modern society that it is almost meaningless when applied to the real thing.
This past week, here at the U.S. Army home of the infantry, several hundred people gathered for the dedication of a larger-than-life bronze statue of a real American hero named Rick Rescorla.
The statue is iconic: the young infantry 2nd lieutenant platoon leader leading the way in combat, his M-16 rifle with bayonet attached ready for use. It is based largely on the photograph on the cover of the book "We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young," written by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and me, which tells the story of the deadly battles in the Ia Drang Valley in the dawn of the Vietnam War.
Rescorla was a hero of the battles of Landing Zone X-Ray and Landing Zone Albany. He earned a Silver Star, the third highest military medal for heroism, for his sterling leadership of a platoon of Bravo Company 2nd Battalion 7th U.S. Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in those battles in November of 1965.
But that statue in the home and headquarters and training ground for the mud-foot infantry was the result of unvarnished heroism long after the British-born Rescorla left the Army, became an American citizen and retired from the Army Reserve with the rank of colonel.
The statue of the young Rescorla was born out of what he did as an older, heavier civilian vice president for security for Morgan Stanley in New York City. The brokerage firm occupied 22 floors of the south tower in the World Trade Center.
Ever since the failed terrorist truck bombing in 1993 in the basement of that building, Rescorla was convinced that the terrorists would come back to finish the job. He urged Morgan Stanley to build its own low-rise high-security headquarters across the river in New Jersey where most of its employees lived. Not possible, he was told, because the firm had a long-term lease on those 22 floors.
Rescorla fought for the time and money needed for half a dozen surprise full evacuation drills each year. And, yes, he knew how much it cost to pull a couple thousand stockbrokers off their telephones. He knew and didn't care.
On September 11, 2001, Rescorla stood at the window of his office on the 66th floor and watched the tower across the way burn. The Port Authority Police squawk box on the wall urged everyone in the other buildings of the Trade Center to remain at their desks and not panic. You are safe, the reassuring voice said.
Rescorla responded with a curt word: "Bull--!" He grabbed his bullhorn and moved floor by floor ordering Morgan Stanley's 2,700 workers to evacuate immediately. They knew where to go and how to do that, thanks to Rick. Two by two, the old buddy system, they began the long walk down the stairs to the street.
Halfway down the second hijacked airliner plowed into their building. The building shook and swayed to the impact. Smoke began filling the stairwells. People were frightened. Rick Rescorla used his bullhorn again. This time he sang to the evacuees, just as he sang to his soldiers on a long night in Vietnam. He sang "God Bless America." He sang the songs of the British Army in the Zulu Wars. He sang the old Welsh miner songs.
He got them all out and headed for safety down the streets away from the World Trade Center. Four of his own security people were still up clearing the Morgan Stanley floors so Rick Rescorla turned and headed back up the stairs with New York City firemen. None of them made it out alive and neither did Rick Rescorla.
His widow, Susan, spearheaded the drive to raise $100,000 to create that bronze image of her hero and ours. Eventually it will occupy a spot on the Walk of Heroes in a new $76 million Infantry Museum being built at the gates of Fort Benning. More than 500 people turned out to see it unveiled outside the Infantry Museum on the old Army post.
Among them were plenty of other real American heroes. There were three recipients of the Medal of Honor for heroism above and beyond the call of duty. Scores of veterans of America's wars of the past half-century and more. Also, Gen. Moore and his sidekick Sgt. Maj. Basil L. Plumley.
As I sat there looking at the statue of Rick my mind carried me back 40 years to that terrible November in Vietnam and the words of the young Rescorla as he and his battle-weary soldiers strode into the surrounded position at LZ Albany to rescue their decimated battalion: "Good, Good, Good! I hope they hit us with everything they got tonight -- we'll wipe them up."
You want a definition of the word hero? In my dictionary it says simply: Rick Rescorla.
By Rob Jennings, Daily Record
Statue at Fort Benning memorializing Rick Rescorla helps world know a true hero, speakers say
Susan Rescorla said she was amazed at the turnout Saturday for the unveiling of a statue at Fort Benning honoring her late husband, Ia Drang Valley and 9/11 hero Rick Rescorla.
"I thought maybe 80 would show up," she laughed as a crowd of almost 500 begged her for autographs and asked her to pose alongside the statue, which is located directly in front of the National Infantry Museum.
Oh, sure retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Knight Ridder columnist Joe Galloway, authors of the definitive book about Ia Drang, the famed 1965 Vietnam battle, were there.
So, too, were three Medal of Honor winners, including Ia Drang hero Walter Marm.
But it was Susan Rescorla who 1st Cavalry Division veterans wanted to hug and have their picture taken with.
Most had known Rescorla the soldier, who retired as a colonel.
Fewer had known Rescorla, the vice president of security for Morgan Stanley in New York, who led more than 2,700 people out of the South Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
But all knew the story of the man Moore called "the best combat platoon leader I ever served with." His radioman at Ia Drang, in the battle at Landing Zone X-Ray, was Sam Fantino.
"If you Google Rick's name, it will show up more than 10,000 times in different articles," Fantino said. "If you do mine, it shows up twice... both times in articles about Rick."
Hundreds of motorcyclists, representing clubs like Rolling Thunder, Vietnam Vets and 'Nam Knights, came from all over the country to honor Rescorla.
Arty Muller, one of the men in black leather with 1st Cavalry and Vietnam insignia, pointed out that America has lost the true meaning of the word "hero." He wasn't the only one to drive home that point. So did Medal of Honor recipient Allen Lynch.
"We need to challenge people who use the word to describe athletes, entertainers and even survivors. They're not heroes. Rick Rescorla was a hero."
It was Susan Rescorla's second visit to Fort Benning in a year. Earlier, an Al Reid portrait of Rescorla became a permanent part of the museum's collection.
"There was never any question as where to put the statue of Rick," she said. "It was here he went to OCS and from here that he left for Vietnam."
Galloway met Rescorla at the 1965 battle at Ia Drang. It is Rescorla, carrying a rifle with a fixed bayonet, who is pictured on the cover of Galloway and Moore's best-selling Vietnam War book, "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young." But it was Rescorla's 9/11 courage that had Galloway excited.
"If he hadn't done his job the way he did, the death toll at the Trade Center would probably be twice what it is today." Rescorla, an Officer Candidate School Hall of Famer, led Morgan Stanley employees to safety after terrorists crashed a plane into the World Trade Center. "He made one last sweep, as he'd learned at Ia Drang, and was determined not to leave a single soldier behind," said his widow. Six Morgan Stanley security men died that day, including their chief, Rescorla.
Rescorla was born in Cornwall, England, and served in the British Army before immigrating to the United States and enlisting in the Army here. After Vietnam, where he served with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, Rescorla became a U.S. citizen. "Rick was proud to call himself an American," Susan Rescorla said. "And I'm proud that he was, too."
The Herald, By: MICK WALSH Staff Writer