On this Memorial Day, I often think of an old friend of mine, Danny Little, who died at Dak Seang, Kon Tum province, Vietnam, April 23, 1970. Here is his story.
Danny was in DET A-204 (2ND MSFC), B CO, 5TH SF. Stationed at Dak Seang, an isolated SF camp next to the Ho Chi Minh trail. On April 1, 1970, the camp was attacked by thousands of NVA and the battle lasted until May. The fighting was intense, as the area around the camp was continually plastered by napalm, B52 Arc Light bombing, etc.
I grew up with Danny at church in Abilene, Texas. He was 4 years older than me. His mother, Alice, used to keep us neighborhood kids (picture that old show "Leave it to Beaver") at her house while our parents worked, back when we were all preschoolers, and kept us in the church nursery on Sundays. Alice was a wonderful woman, always jolly and with a big, warm smile. She reminded me of Kate Smith. She just exuded warmth and love. Alice and my mother were close friends most of their lives.
Anyway, Danny dug a "foxhole" in the back yard and us kids would play "Army" in it and "shoot at the enemy" with our cap guns. Those were the days. We just played and played and played (no computers back then!!), day after day, sometimes getting so dirty Alice would lock the doors to keep us from coming in the house.
Danny was a combat medic, and had a promising career as a doctor lined up after Vietnam. He was over there on his THIRD tour of duty and was due to come home. I'm not sure if it was just a break, or if he was completely finished. Alice was just beside herself. She got his room all fixed up with new curtains and bedspreads, and his brother Jimmy set up his stereo and a stack of all the latest rock and roll albums. They got a car for him to drive, and even a pretty girl for him to run around with!! Everybody was just on pins and needles, especially Alice. She was so happy and excited, she couldn't stand it. She must have called everybody in Abilene and told them "Danny's coming home!!! Danny's coming home!!!"
And then suddenly, one night about 3 a.m., Alice woke up and sat bolt upright in bed, sweating. She knew, from pure mother's instinct, that something had happened to Danny. It had.
In Vietnam, Danny had been fighting at Special Forces Base (SFB) Dak Seang. Dak Seang had been under continuous enemy attack for several weeks, and was surround by over 10,000 NVA troops. But Danny's time was up, and he was scheduled to be choppered to an air base in another province to fly home. He was there in his civilian clothes, waiting for the helicopter to take him to the main airport. A radio was playing in the room, and over the radio he heard that his old company was in trouble back at Dak Seang. Well, Danny was Danny, and he couldn't stand the thought of going home while his buddies were fighting and dying. So instead of going home, he put his combat gear back on and somehow talked the helicopter pilot into taking him back to Dak Seang.
At one point soon after, the area Danny was in was overrun by hundreds of NVA. According to a Montagnard who survived, Danny was quickly sprayed with small arms fire and went down, as the whole area was overrun, making it impossible to recover his body.
I'll never forget my mother's facial expression when she learned that Danny was MIA. A week or two later, she learned that he was "dead with no remains." What happened was, that area had been plastered with napalm, which killed many of the enemy, but also immolated Danny's remains; nothing was left of him but ashes. Since he was never actually found or recovered, he was considered MIA, and is still on many MIA rosters.
Alice never got over it. It just destroyed her. She always told everybody she was going to travel to Vietnam some day and "see what Danny died for."
My wife and I traveled to Abilene about the year 2000, and visited Alice while we were there. I could hardly recognize her. She was a small, meek woman. The jolly Kate Smith smile was gone from her face, and she barely talked above a whisper, and in a very slow, sad manner, almost as if it were difficult for her to speak. A picture of Danny in his Marine uniform and a collection of his medals was on the wall by her chair. Even 30 years later, she was a changed person, a sad, quiet, heartbroken little woman. Alice died in 2003. She never made it to Vietnam.
Danny's big brother, Jimmy, was deeply shaken by it as well, and named his son after Danny, in his honor. Jimmy passed away a few years ago.
Like many great battle areas in Vietnam, Dak Seang is barely recognizable today. The airstrip is now part of a road, while the camp itself is a plantation of big rubber trees. There are now quite a few stories about Dak Seang online, just Google it.
Alice and her husband Willis ("Willie") are buried under one of those double bronze markers in Elmwood cemetery in Abilene. Even though he was lost to the ages in Vietnam, they have him engraved on the marker between their names, so he will be memorialized with them forever.
https://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=61853448&PIpi=95856659
