“Giving It My Best”

When Jim Lane joined the Army in January1964, he had zero expectation of ever seeing combat and was paying scant attention to the stirrings of war in Vietnam. 

“I envisioned myself spending two years at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, with some southern belles all over me,” he says jokingly. 

Instead, just over a year later, he was a 2nd Lieutenant commanding soldiers in the first major battle in Vietnam, a battle widely considered its bloodiest. 

“There was blood everywhere,” he says of his battalion’s landing at the Battle of Ia Drang Valley on November 14, 1965. “There were dead guys everywhere. My troops were green as grass, and so was I.” 

Marco resident Jim Lane was - and is - the type of humble leader who doesn’t ask for respect in words, but commands it through action and courage.  

A native of Jacksonville, Florida, the 82-year-old Lane graduated from high school in 1960 and spent time attending junior college while working as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines at McCoy Air Force Base, an airbase just outside of Orlando that managed both commercial and military flights.It was there that he got to know members of a Special Operations Group stationed at the base who suggested he join the Army. 

“They told me I was OCS material,” he says, referring to the Army’s Officer Candidate School. “I thought, well, if I’m going to get drafted, I might as well choose what the hell I want to do.” 

The only obstacle to his plan was his father, to whom Lane promised he’d get a college degree. “Nobody in my father’s family had ever finished college. Nobody,” he says.“So, I said,well, if I go into the Army, they’ll help me finish college. My dad put me on the bus to basic training and cried and cried.” 

At age 21, Lane completed his basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where he was made a squad leader. He passed his OCS training, as well as Airborne and Ranger training, the latter of which he said was “tough as sh*t.” 

In July 1965, Lane boarded the WWII merchant ship the Maurice Rose for a 45-day voyage to Vietnam as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army’s B Company, Second Battalion, 7th Cavalry. 

Through his training, on board the ship and in Vietnam, Lane grew close to Rick Rescorla, a British mercenary fighter who died in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 and was credited with helping usher thousands of people to safety in his role as a corporate security officer for Morgan Stanley before he perished in the towers. 

“Rick was a godsend to me,” Lane says.“He was a close friend. He kept telling me to use my head, have common sense, make good decisions, and no matter what the order is, do it the way you think it should be done.” 

It proved to be valuable advice for what was ahead for Lane. 

By November, conflict in the region began to ratchet up dramatically, and the Army’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry regiment of 450 soldiers was deployed to the Ia Drang Valley region in South Vietnam to engage in combat with three regiments of 2,000 highly trained People’s Army of Vietnam fighters, who outnumbered the U.S. forces by an estimated 15 to one. 

The battle did not go well for the U.S., which suffered more than 200 fatalities. Quoting one of his commanders at the time, Lane said, “Up in the Ia Drang, they’re getting their asses kicked.” Lane’s 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry was called in as reinforcement. 

“As we approached, you could see a big cloud of smoke, and you could smell the gunfire,” says Lane, who at that point had never fired his rifle in battle. “People always ask me if I was scared and I say no, I wasn’t scared. I just knew I had to do something andthat I had to do it right. I was going to give it my best. That was it. And if it worked, it worked.” 

Fierce fighting ensued, and within a day, the commander of Company C was killed. Lane was made commander at age 23, a battlefield promotion given to him by Lt. Col. Hal Moore. Moore was made famous by the film “We Were Soldiers,” a fictionalized movie starring Mel Gibson and based on Moore’s book recounting the battle. 

After three days of fighting, much of it literally hand-to-hand combat, Lane was wounded in a barrage of hand grenade explosions. “I was on a hilltop, and all of a sudden, hand grenades just started coming in left and right,” he says. “I said,‘This looks like a baseball field.’” 

Several soldiers from another unit were killed, and Lane suffered significant shrapnel wounds to his legs, his scars still visible to this day. He was airlifted to the Philippines, then Okinawa, before being sent back to the U.S., where he finished out his Army service training Rangers as a 1st Lieutenant. 

As his discharge approached, a major approached him and tried to convince him to stay in the Army, assuring him a long and successful career. “I told him I’d made a promise to my father that I would graduate from college,” Lane said. So, he left the Army and earned his college degree from Loyola University in New Orleans in 1970, ten years after graduating from high school. 

“My dad was there babbling like a baby,” Lane says. “Tears were running down his eyes. He gave me my college ring. It was the proudest moment of his life.” 

Lane went on to have a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry, ultimately creating his own company, which he ran for 12 years before retiring and moving to Marco with his wife of 35 years, Litha Berger. 

For his courage and sacrifice on the battlefield, Lane was awarded the Silver Star, the Vietnamese Cross for Gallantry and Valor, and a Purple Heart.  

“I look back, and the only thing I can tell you from the bottom of my heart is that God knew something I didn’t know,” Lane says. “He just said, ‘do what you think is best and be good at it.’”