Dave Dillard - Rooster Crow in the Jungle

 

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon and I heard a rooster crow. Now, it's not unusual to hear a rooster crow at 4:30 in the afternoon, I grew up on a farm. Rooster crow most anytime it wants to. But you see where I was, I shouldn't be hearing a rooster crow because chickens don't live in the jungle. [audience chuckle] And that's where I was with 80 other men in an airborne infantry company, about 80 paratroopers out there chasing North Vietnamese army regulars who had just swept across the border of Cambodia and made their way into Saigon and took part in a battle that would be later known as the Tet Offensive of 1968. 

 

Since the offensive was put down and these men were sent backpacking into the jungle, we were out there to find them and try and catch them before they went back across the border. And we knew that the Vietnamese were notorious for carrying their livestock with them to feed their army and to hear a rooster crow meant that we could be very close. It was March of 1968, and I was 18 years old. I was a radio telephone operator. That's an RTO for my company commander, the captain. We called him the old man, but he wasn't very old. He was only about 25 himself. But my job was to stay with him. I was his ears, I was his mouth, I was his confidant. I was his bodyguard and sometimes his cook. 

 

But I would always be right there with him when were on a mission, and we were on a mission. And we were very, very deep in the jungle, very dense jungle. In some places, triple canopy and it becomes so horrendously humid and hot that it's very difficult, and it takes a lot of water and we were in need constantly. And so, when you come across a clearing in the jungle that's large enough to take on a helicopter, then you take advantage of that commodity and you resupply. And that's what we did. Well, that's where I heard that rooster crow. And we decided-- the commander decided that it was time to move away from that clearing. When my phone, my radio lit up with a call from the point. They said, “We just saw a man carrying two buckets of water. He dropped the water and he disappeared into the jungle.”

 

I thought, a man carrying two buckets of water and I heard a rooster crow. And I thought this could be a very serious situation. The people reported back that they had movement up front and that we were very close to possibly making contact and we should be prepared. I heard then a short volley of what I thought was M16 fire. And that was followed by an eruption, an absolute firestorm, a withering firestorm of hail of bullets and explosions that I never could have imagined. What we didn't know is that we had just made contact with a reinforced regiment of North Vietnamese regular infantry that numbered somewhere between 1500 and 2000 enemy soldiers and we were in serious trouble. 

 

Of course, the reports came back immediately that we had serious numbers of casualties. And the old man, he bolted. He went right straight up to the column, right up to the front and I was right on his tail and that's where I saw the carnage. We had taken five men down, killed and about 20 wounded in 15 minutes. And it was necessary for me, the RTO, to get into action. We needed to medevac these people. We needed to get them out. The old man looked at me and he said, “Go back down that trail. Take that radio and get those engineers to open up a little clearing. We're too far from where we resupplied to make it back. It's getting dark. Get these men out of here.”

 

So, I did exactly that. I went down the trail and we got the engineers busy. And in no time at all they had blown an area almost big enough to accommodate a helicopter. And soon we had the first chopper there, he was not able to land, but he was hovering low enough where I thought we could probably get that first man in. They threw off all their gurneys and that was great because we started loading up the wounded. And I had the first man with a helper on the back and extending up to try and get him on his helicopter and I could not reach. He could not get low enough. And also, I was hearing a sound that was coming and hitting the side of that helicopter. It was being hit by small arms ammunition from AK47 fire coming from way deeper in the jungle. 

 

And I could not risk losing that machine and having it fall right where we are. We had to abort. We waved off the helicopter and it went away. I turned around and got back to my radio and I tried to call up headquarters and give them the idea of a report on our condition and what was going on. And I looked around and about that time I saw this black streak come across in front of my eyes and it landed about 15 feet in front of me. One of the engineers said, “What was that?” He had seen it. And at that time, it exploded and it completely engulfed me and the rest in fire. I was blown back about 10 feet and all I could think as I went back is, this is how it ends. 

 

But I got conscious and I came to and I looked at my body and I was okay, except my head. My head was full of this ring, this intense ring. And I felt my ears and I looked at my hands and my ears were bleeding. And then I realized it. I was deaf. I couldn't hear a thing. I was in this game, this life-threatening game, and I was benched. I couldn't take part. What was I going to do? And I looked and I couldn't hear. And I saw the chaos and the confusion going on, more wounded pouring in and people there I could do nothing. And I started to sink into this despair and then all of a sudden, I felt the hands on my shoulder and turned me around and it was the old man. 

 

And he looked at me and he had me sit down and he said, “Just take it easy. I could read his lips and the way he was treating me. And I sat down and I waited. And he busily started directing the people with all of these wounded and organizing it to go back down the trail. And so, they started down the trail. The North Vietnamese had already cut us off. They had encircled us on that side. And they set up an ambush on that trail. And when our new people, the leads in that column, reached into their kill zone, they initiated that ambush. And there were more dead, more wounded. And now they started flooding back and darkness was upon us. And the darker it got, the more we understood that were in very serious situation. 

 

As the darkness fell and the troops came running, coming back in from down the trail, the old man had all of them circle up inside this little small perimeter that we had was no more than 35 meters across. And in the middle, we put all of the wounded. At this point, we were up to around 30 plus wounded. And we had all the wounded in there, he collected all the grenades. And the word came out, we have to observe night fire discipline. That is when we do not use our direct fire weapons, our M16s or our heavy machine guns, because the flash depressors on the front as they are fired will give away your position. Our only hope to survive this situation was to stay concealed. And we did. 

 

We threw all the grenades in the middle and we started throwing them out in different directions. The enemy had no idea where we were exactly. And it was-- it was that which was keeping us concealed. But they kept probing us, they kept probing us, and they kept trying to get us to shoot. They would shoot their AK47s and they were so close that we could see the faces of those people as they fired. But we held. We used our discipline and we held. And we did not return fire. And it was an amazing situation that I was in because as my hearing came back, I began to realize that we had more issues than just the enemy out there finding us, because our wounded were making all this noise and the medics were working feverishly to try and keep them quiet. 

 

I must tell you that during that night I saw acts of heroism done by men that never had a desire to be a hero. They were amazing. And as we continued to go forward in this evening, we had support from the air. We did have support from the Air Force and their fighters, and we had artillery. But we were very much alone in the middle of this. About 4 o' clock in the morning, we figured that maybe they've cut it off. We had no more people probing us. So, we took that opportunity to bring in one helicopter. We had been able to enlarge our perimeter a little more, and we were able to get that helicopter in. It landed and we were able to get all as many as we could on top in that first helicopter and by golly, it took off and off it went. 

 

And we were amazed. In came the second and the third. And by 5:30 in the morning, all were gone. And by first light, in came another company, an American company that relieved us. We had made it. We had survived. But your feeling of joy and that flooding of knowing that you survived soon will pass, because we have a daunting task ahead of us. It is at this point that we need to go out and find and identify those Americans that had lost their lives, those friends with broken bodies. And we did. We went out and found them. There were 10 of them. We wrapped them in ponchos and we put them in the middle of the perimeter, right where we had the wounded not but a few hours before. 

 

And when they were all collected, and while were waiting for those helicopters to come and pick them up, the tears flowed. Now it was over. And we could let that emotion come back into ourselves. And the tears by every man. It was a very hard thing to imagine. But the helicopter came, we loaded them, and off they went for their last ride back to the United States and to their families. It's not over. Every infantryman-- every infantryman knows that there's always one more job that must be accomplished. We have to go out and find the enemy dead. And we need to go through their pockets and their pouches and their packs, and we need to collect intelligence material, which we rarely found. No, I will tell you what we found. We found letters from home. We found diaries. And always, always pictures. 

 

Pictures of their wives, pictures of their moms and dads, pictures of their families, pictures of their children, pictures of their farms, pictures of their pets and their animals at home. And you look at those, and if you're a human being at all, you have to say to yourself, “My God, they're the same as us.” And we are all caught up, just small people, in this meat grinder called war. And this is the only thing that we have, that we must survive this to tell the story. Well, the company survived to fight another day. And this was the ending. The old man, the old man, he was decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor. That's Paul Bucha. 

 

And many people have come to me over the years and they said, “Dave, you know, he won the Medal of Honor.” He was RTO you were the man. You were right with him, what did you get? And I always answered the same way. I got life. I got to go home. I got to see my mom and my dad again. I saw my brothers and my sisters. I got an education. I got married. I got children. I've got a ranch in East Texas. I've got a pond. I got ducks, I got geese. [audience chuckle] I got horses and I've got chickens. And when my old rooster decides to crow at 4:30 in the afternoon, that takes me back to a different time and a different place and a situation that changed my life. Thank you.