The Ia Drang battlefield was marked by large dirt anthills of varying sizes and a dry creek bed that wound through the field. The anthills, made of hard baked earth and home to ants and termites, provided strong defensive positions, and Lieutenant Colonel Moore used one for his battlefield command post during the fighting at Landing Zone X-Ray. The dry creek bed also played a pivotal role, serving as a defensive position for American forces and as an avenue of approach for North Vietnamese troops trying to penetrate American lines. During the fighting, machinegun crewman Mr. Bill Beck made several trips for ammunition and on one trip saw an American soldier taking cover behind an anthill while North Vietnamese soldiers were doing the same on the opposite side, with neither aware of the other. Beck tried to warn the American soldier, then fired his .45 automatic pistol at the Vietnamese soldiers to draw them off and alert the American. Years later, he painted a watercolor from memory of that anthill, and in 1993 he returned to the battlefield, found and photographed the same anthill, and discovered at home that the photograph matched his watercolor perfectly.
