Mr. Galloway, a 24-year-old reporter for United Press International, went on to witness and participate in the first major battle of the Vietnam War, in which an outmanned American battalion fought off three North Vietnamese army regiments while taking heavy casualties. He carried an M16 rifle alongside his notebook and cameras, and in the heat of battle, he charged into the fray to pull an Army private out of the flames of a napalm blast. [Washington Post]
He was the only civilian awarded a medal of valor by the Army for combat action in the Vietnam War. [NY Times]
With Lt. Gen Harold G. Moore, he wrote an account of the battle, We Were Soldiers Once… and Young, which was adapted into the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers.
Remembering Vietnam War Correspondent Joe Galloway [NPR]
Journalist Joe Galloway, chronicler of Vietnam War, dies: [AP]
In 2002, Knight Ridder asked Galloway to return to reporting after a stint as an adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell to bolster its Washington bureau’s coverage of the Bush administration’s case for ousting Saddam Hussein.
Galloway did that by contributing, often anonymously, to his colleagues’ stories and by writing a column that often was critical of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who were bent on invading Iraq.
John Walcott, Galloway’s longtime editor and friend, recounted how an exasperated Rumsfeld finally asked Joe to meet with him alone in his office. When Joe arrived, he was greeted by Rumsfeld — and a group of other high-ranking Pentagon officials.
“Good,” Galloway reported when he returned to the Knight Ridder office. “I had ’em surrounded.”
According to Walcott, Galloway then described how after Rumsfeld accused him of relying on retired officers and officials, he had told the group that most of his sources were on active duty, and that some of them “might even be in this room.”
Asked by his colleagues if that was true, Galloway replied, “No, but it was fun watching ’em sweat like whores in church.”