Biography of Joseph L. Galloway - Military Correspondent

DATE CHANGE: Joseph Galloway is scheduled to be interviewed on GallantFew's The New American Veteran on December 14th, 2011.  Set your calendar and be sure to tune in as we talk about Joe's career.  I will select a couple of callers to ask Joe a question after the 15 minute mark of the show.  Here's his biography:

BIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY – MILITARY CORRESPONDENT

             Joseph L. Galloway, one of America’s premier war and foreign correspondents for half a century, recently retired as the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers. Before that he held an assignment as a special consultant to General Colin Powell at the State Department.

            Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent 22 years as a foreign and war correspondent and bureau chief for United Press International, and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and senior writer for U.S. News & World Report magazine. He joined Knight Ridder in the fall of 2002.

During the course of 15 years of foreign postings—including assignments in Japan,  Indonesia, India, Singapore and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow in the former Soviet Union--Galloway served four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War and half a dozen other combat operations.

 In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert Storm, riding with the 24^th Infantry Division (Mech) in the assault into Iraq. Galloway also covered the Haiti incursion and made trips to Iraq to cover the current war in 2003 and 2005-2006.

            Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf called Galloway “the finest combat correspondent of our generation---a soldier’s reporter and a soldier’s friend.”

            He is co-author, with Lt. Gen. (ret) Hal G. Moore, of the national bestseller “We Were Soldiers Once-And Young” which has been made into a critically acclaimed movie, “We Were Soldiers”, starring Mel Gibson. “We Were Soldiers Once-And Young” is presently in print in six different languages and more than 1.2 million copies have been sold.

Galloway also co-authored “Triumph Without Victory: The History of the Persian Gulf War” for Times Books, and he and Gen. Moore in 2008 published their sequel to We Were Soldiers, a work titled: We Are Soldiers Still:  A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam.

            Last year Military History magazine polled 50 leading historians to choose the Ten Greatest Books Ever Written on War. We Were Soldiers Once…and Young was among those ten books.

            On May 1, 1998, Galloway was decorated with a Bronze Star Medal with V for rescuing wounded soldiers under fire in the Ia Drang Valley, in November 1965. His is the only medial of valor the U.S. Army awarded to a civilian for actions during the Vietnam War.

            Galloway received the National Magazine Award in 1991 for a U.S. News cover article on the 25^th anniversary of the Ia Drang Battles, and the National News Media Award of the U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1992 for coverage of the Gulf War. In 2000, he received the President’s Award for the Arts of the Vietnam Veterans Association of America. In 2001, he received the BG Robert L. Denig Award for Distinguished Service presented by the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association. In 2005, he received the Abraham Lincoln Award of the Union League Club of Philadelphia, and the John Reagan (Tex) McCrary Award of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

            Galloway is a member of the boards of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the nonprofit organization No Greater Love founded to assist the victims of war, the 1^st Cavalry Division Association, the National Infantry Foundation, the School of Social Studies of The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., the Museum of America’s Wars and the Military Reporters and Editors Association.

            Galloway is the recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from Norwich University and Mount St. Mary’s College.

            He has lived in his native South Texas since retiring from Knight Ridder in 2006.  His two sons, Lee and Joshua, live in Corpus Christi, TX. He has two stepdaughters, Alison and Abigail Rudel, and a stepson, Lex Rudel, from a second marriage.