A North Vietnamese regular Army battalion had come across the border from their privileged sanctuary in supposedly neutral Cambodia in the week before June 17, 1967 and ambushed two Green Beret patrols, killing perhaps as many as six of our Special Forces soldiers. I had been at Dak To for almost four months attempting to recruit native Montagnards to go into the jungle areas to our west on spy missions. I was under cover with a false name and wore infantry brass instead of my Army Intelligence identification. My commanding officer in Saigon 280 miles to our south radioed me that he was evacuating me from the camp by air at 9:30AM on June 17 because of the heavy enemy presence in our area. At night every two hours an American Special Forces soldier had a two hour shift for alert in our inner perimeter. My turn came up that morning at 4AM. After my two hour shift I would have breakfast, pack my duffle bag and be on the airstrip to leave.
Elements of the communist unit had moved quickly through the jungle to set up mortar and rocket positions on the high ground to the south of our camp. A heavy barrage began at 4:30. I began literally to grab men to man our own mortars to return fire and send up flares in the event the enemy also conducted a ground attack. I was on a radio conversation with the camp commander, who was in an underground bunker, when I was violently thrown down on my stomach. I felt no pain, but yelled out, "My legs, my legs, Oh God, I'm dead!" Green Beret combat medic SGT St. Lawrence got to me fast and, not having his medic kit, used his fingers to clamp down on my femoral arteries to stop my bleeding. I was taken on a litter downstairs to the bunker of Green Beret combat medic Jimmy Hill, where he began to work on stopping my bleeding. Jimmy told me later, "You were alert and oriented, however, you were in shock from massive blood loss. You kept telling me to help the others, even though you had traumatic injuries to both your legs. Your blood pressure was dropping, veins were collapsing, weak pulse. I started the IV, injected you with morphine and loosely applied tourniquets in the event the bleeding might start again. At that time you told me your real name and asked me to contact your wife and parents, because you 'knew' you were going to die. I told you, 'not today...because (having just gotten in country) you are my first casualty to treat.'" He said, "There was a third One in the bunker with us."After a couple of hours our nine wounded and two Killed in Action were removed by Medevac choppers to Pleiku Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH).
My left leg was amputated below the knee and the right one, fractured in five places, was casted. I woke up Sunday night and the chaplain at my bedside said the hospital had run out of my A-neg blood and made a call to the airbase and Green Beret camp to call men in to donate a total of twenty five pints of blood. I returned to Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio and my right leg was also amputated there. My wife Jackie had been notified by telegram that was delivered to her parent's door, where she was living, while I was in Vietnam. When she answered the door, the delivery man asked if there was someone else at home with her. She said, "Is he alive, is he alive?" He said, "Ma'am, I do not know." Her mother quickly came to the door and the family doctor came to give her a sedative. The telegram indicated I was "VSI." She called a contact at the Pentagon and asked what that meant. The man said, "It means Very Seriously Injured and he could die at any time." Not the best of news! Jackie pursued in her questioning, but, the man said he had to leave to go to lunch!
I did live by the grace of God! Fourteen weeks in a closed psychiatric ward, seven years of psychiatric treatment and anti-depressants and twenty surgeries later, I emerged in the mid-1970s relatively well-recovered. However, the mid-June period every year and especially every June 17 are very emotional. All of us wounded combatants remember our "Alive Day." This in 2025 is my 58th one. I have been blessed to live, father two daughters, and become remarried to Linda. My Army wife Jackie suffered immeasurably. Jackie and I are on very good terms and pray together for our two daughters and two grandchildren. In accordance with Psalm 27:13, "I have confidence still, having witnessed the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living," that my Lord has seen me through the ultimate trials and tribulations that a human may experience. I survived and live on three days before my 83rd birthday! I am not buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
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