Joe Galloway At Angel Fire for Memorial Day

Memorial Day speaker Galloway: ‘War correspondents are not heros
Sangre de Cristo Chronicle
By Ellen Miller-Goins
Staff writer
Published:
Thursday, May 22, 2014

ANGEL FIRE — War correspondents are sometimes lost to history. Perhaps their name becomes nothing more than a forgotten byline on a forgotten news story. Perhaps, like so many of their brethren, they die alongside the soldiers whose stories they came to tell.

This is not the case with Joe Galloway, a journalist whose career spanned many decades — and several wars — before he retired from his last regular “beat” in 2010. Galloway, 72, is so well-known among veterans and others he is frequently asked to be a guest speaker at Memorial Day and Veterans Day Events nationwide. This year he will be keynote speaker during the annual Memorial Day Ceremony at Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park, 11 a.m., Monday, May 26.

“I’m excited to see the memorial in Angel Fire and to see Angel Fire,” Galloway said during a recent telephone interview with the Sangre de Cristo Chronicle. “I’ve had many invitations over the years. This time I was determined to do it.”

For the uninitiated who may be wondering why a journalist is being tapped to speak to — and on behalf of — veterans, consider that Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway “the finest combat correspondent of our generation — a soldier’s reporter and a soldier’s friend.”

He is the only civilian to be awarded a Bronze Star by the Army for his actions rescuing wounded soldiers under fire in the Ia Drang Valley during the Vietnam War. War correspondents are there to be a witness, Galloway has said, but “there are some events that are so overwhelming that you cannot simply be a witness. You get caught in a situation where that’s not enough… you must stop and render aid.”
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