“We all have a story to tell”….or so said one of my Pastors many years ago. I thought at the time, ‘Not me.’ But truth is, everyone of us has a life story to tell, and if we don’t tell it, it will die with us. So today, I want to tell you mine. I promise it won’t be too long.
I was born 13 January, 1945….a Twin with 3-older brothers. We were raised on a dairy farm in Sidney, Montana…11 miles from the North Dakota border. At 17, I escaped and went to Dana College, in Blair, Nebraska. I never knew life could be so good. No cows to milk; chores to do; could sleep till 8:00 or later. Wow! 4-years later, I graduated from Dana on 29 May, 1966. My draft board back in Sidney took note of that, and changed my differed status to draftable on my graduation day….a Sunday. I was given 2-weeks to find a service, or they would find one for me.
I had already tried the Air Force, Navy and Marines. Two of the three said I was too blind for their service; the Marines wondered if I was in trouble with the law. The Army noted that I made it through the door, so my eyesight must be nearly perfect. As a college graduate, with a degree in business, I was told I’d likely get into finance, or quartermaster….certainly not the Infantry. I went in under the College- Opt plan….make it through Basic, AIT, and OCS and I’d be commissioned a 2LT and have a 2-year obligation. So, I signed on the doted line and they sent me off to Ft. Dix, NJ. Up to then, I hadn’t even heard of NJ, wasn’t even sure where it was. I soon discovered that Basic, was Infantry Basic, so I asked, what I was doing going through Infantry Basic training? I was told, Everyone goes through this. 8-weeks later, I was sent to Advanced Infantry Training (AIT). Again, I was told, nearly everyone goes through this. 8-weeks after that, I was off to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for you guessed it, Infantry Officer Candidate School (OCS). When I questioned being sent to the “Home of the Infantry,” I was told that come commissioning time, I would likely be commissioned in something other than Infantry. 24 weeks and 1-day later, I was commissioned a 2LT of Infantry.
I have to tell you, OCS was not fun. TAC officers screamed at us day and night; we did hundreds of push-ups daily and a lot of weird stuff. 12 weeks into the 24 week program, 3-of us were called down to the Company Commander’s office. I wondered, why me? We lined up outside of the CO’s office, standing at attention, with our backs to the wall. The first guy went in; he came out 30 minutes later and had been kicked out of OCS. The second guy went in, and 30 minutes later he too had been kicked out. You have to understand, that to be kicked out of OCS meant that you immediately went back to being a PVT, E-1 and in most cases, shipped off to Vietnam. I’m the third guy. What do you think I was thinking, having been standing outside that office for 60-minutes. I was scared….really scared. What am I going to tell my brothers; what will they think???? I prayed hard during those 60- minutes and promised God a lot of things.
When I finally got into the CO’s office, he simply stated, “Dynneson, you’ve been goofing off around here, thinking you can hide in the weeds and just get by. If you want to be an officer, you’re going to have to show me something. Now get the hell out of here, and get with it.”
Wow!!!! I stayed up that whole night….took my books to the latrine and studied the next days assignments. I also thanked God…..a LOT, and promised to do as He led me. The days following, I found that I could lead; that I could get my squad or platoon to do as I commanded, and that it was fun. 12 weeks later I was commissioned a 2LT of Infantry.
From Ft. Benning 7 of us were sent to Ft. Lewis, Washington. The opposite end of the country from Benning, we were so happy to just leave OCS behind and try our 2 LT wings. My first assignment was as a training officer for an AIT unit at Lewis, training recruits as I had been trained less than a year earlier. 4-months later, 2 of us were sent to the other side of Lewis to form an Infantry battalion for deployment to Vietnam. Within weeks, we were full strength. I was given a full platoon, (43 men) with all the authorized grades. My Platoon Sgt. was a grizziled old drill Sgt that while having only one lung, had volunteered for Vietnam because he thought he could save lives. My Company Commander was an ex-Green Beret Captain, who had taken 5-bullets to his legs on his first tour and was now going back for a second tour, knowing that he’d probably be promoted out of his job early on. He was gung ho; Airborne, Ranger, and Green Beret qualified. He was smart and also very demanding. In the field, he didn’t need to use the radio…..he’d just scream DYNNESON!!!!… when he saw me screwing up or needed my attention. We trained hard, and long. We had Thanksgiving day off and Christmas Day off….and that was it. The rest of the time we were in the field, digging our own fox holes and weathering the rain, snow, and ice that fell. The CO had a tent with a heater, which we all envied. He often told us that when we got to be a CO we could have one too. Until then, back to our foxholes.
End of March, 1968 we were given a 2-week leave to say our goodbyes. On 8 April ’68, we boarded a Continental Airlines 707 for Vietnam, via, Hawaii and Clark Field, the Philippians. We arrived in Saigon at 0700 hours on the 10th, but had to circle the airport for awhile because the airfield was being rocketed. When we did land, the plane kept it’s engines on, and we were hustled off as fast as they could. I remember seeing GI’s on top of bunkers, their shirts off, and drinking beer……at 0700. What kind of war is this???? We had our weapons, but no ammo.
After a couple of weeks of in-country training, we were finally sent out on a Search and Destroy mission. I had gone on a recon the day before and thought I knew what we were in for. It looked a whole lot different when we landed the next day. We continued to get these kind of missions in the weeks that followed. It wasn’t long however, before we were making contact and getting our first casualties. I will never forget my first encounter with the enemy. It was night, and we had just finished digging in when we started taking fire. I was scared, and hugged the ground, thinking my buttons were awfully thick. Moments later, my CO came on the radio, and ‘Calmly’ told me to move my platoon to the flank of the enemy and then pour on the fire. He had never been that calm in training; it really jolted me. I quickly did as he said, as we had been trained to do, and we took care of those who were shooting at us.
On 22 May ’68, with 1-year in grade, I was promoted to 1st Lt. It was pretty automatic, and I actually promoted myself by taking out a black greece pencil and coloring my butter bar, black. A week or two later, I was ordered in by the Battalion Commander to be his S-2, Intell Officer. I knew nothing about being an S-2; my only claim to fame was that I out ranked the other Lt’s in the battalion by days or hours. A week later I was given an additional title of S-5, Psyops and Civil Affairs….THE S-5 had gone home on a pre-planned emergency leave and never came back. Again, no training for either job. So I called myself the S-7. Every night I had to give an Intel briefing and during the day I roamed around our Area of Operation looking for opportunities to do some good. One of the most distasteful duties was paying repatriation and rent fees. If our troops accidently shot a Vietnamese, we paid the family $400. If we killed a water buffalo the fee was $4,000. We also had to pay rent for the dry land we had our fire base on. Owned by a Frenchman, that bill was $4,000 a month, and he made sure we paid it.
On 3 June ’68, my old Platoon came under a very heavy attack by the NVA. I was in the Command and Control helicopter with my Battalion Commander, circling overhead, and listening as the battle raged. Led by my old Platoon Sgt, they were in the thick of it and I was stuck in that helicopter, unable to help. I begged to be let down to lead my platoon, but the CO said he needed me more where I was. That day four of my men were killed. It was the longest day of my life.
On 9 June ’68, we prepared to go on a huge operation into War Zone D. The Brigade Chaplain showed up that afternoon to spend the night in our foxholes; he always showed up when the Shit was about to hit the fan. But that all changed the next day: On 10 June, at noon, General Abrams took over from General Westmorland. At 1:00 PM, one hour later, our orders were changed and 18-heavy lift helicopters suddenly appeared and we were air lifted south, instead of north, and ending up in a southern perimeter of Saigon. Our new mission was to prevent the rocket attacks on Saigon….another God-thing…going north would have meant death to many of us.
On 24 June ’68, my old Company Commander, recently promoted to Major and given the job of S-3 for a sister battalion, was killed when his Chopper went down in the Mekong River. It was also his 29th birthday. I was devastated. I cried and cried, and cried. He had taught me so much. Before going to Vietnam he had told us, “You’ll always be able to get replacements for the men you lose, but you’ll never be able to replace them to their wives, brothers, sisters, or parents……so you’d better take care of your men.” It was advice that stuck with me, forever.
On August 19, my best friend from OCS and Ft. Lewis days, was critically wounded when in a fire fight, our own gunships fired rockets too close and he took one that went right through him. The battalion XO let me take a chopper to 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon to see him. When I arrived they were changing his many dressings: I COULD SEE RIGHT THROUGH HIM….he had a hole big enough to stick my fist through his body. How he lived, only God knows. Yet, there he was joking with the nurses who were changing him. He would spend the next 3-4 years getting surgery after surgery and to this day, still suffers mightily.
Shortly after that, the platoon leader that had replaced me was killed in action. I begged to get my platoon back, and the Battalion XO finally agreed. My first night out, we were hit with a mortar attack and I got some shrapnel in my arm; a medic pulled most of it out and bandaged me. I swore him to secrecy but somehow, the old XO found out. He told me later that he was tempted to pull me in again, but decided to give me another chance.
We continued to go on operations south and west of Saigon for the next few months. One of the recurring missions was a search and destroy in the Pineapple Plantation next to the Cambodian boarder. We always lost people in that place. After my first mission there, we were flying back when my helicopter suddenly went down. None of us were hurt, but it wasn’t exactly friendly territory. Gunships and a rescue chopper were soon on station, and we made it back. Two months later, I was wounded in that same plantation. It was a ‘hot LZ’, meaning we were being shot at as we flew in. The chopper didn’t land; it just came to a moving hover. The door gunner grabbed me and threw me out, while I was on the radio. My RTO flew out after me……not a good way to start the day. 5 of us were hit that day. As I left my platoon, 12 of the original 43 were still in the field. The rest had been killed or wounded.
That night, the 5 of us held wheel chair races in the hallway. None of us would ever go back to the bush again. Weeks later, we were evac’d to Japan, and after a month, back to the states for more surgery and rehab. 3-months later, I was released from the hospital and moved to Ft. Carson, Colorado.
At Carson, I had just a few more obligatory months to serve, but decided to extend a year in order to command a company. I wanted to know if I could lead as well as I had been led; I found out I could. A few months later, I was given a 2nd Company to command and found success again. It was a lot of fun.
In June ’70 my service obligation was up and I left the Army, getting a job with Dun and Bradstreet in Denver. 7-months later, I received a 3 X 5 card in the mail stating the Army was having a Selective Recall to Active Duty, would I be interested. By then, I knew I didn’t like what I was doing with D & B, so I put an X in the box saying I was interested and two months later got orders for Ft. Riley, Kansas. As I left D&B I finally had enough nerve to ask my future wife for a date. She figured, what the heck….a free meal. I figured, if she said no, I would never have to see her again. Fortunately, she said yes, and 2 ½ years later, after much pleading from me, we were married.
I stayed in the Army until 31 August 1992, serving a total of 26 years and 18 days. From OCS on, I never doubted God’s hand in my life and His guardian angels. I survived Vietnam in 1968, the bloodiest year of the war, when 87% of my fellow platoon leaders were either killed or severely wounded. Over a career I went down in 3-helecopter crashes, but never got a scratch. None of that was by chance or accident. Jesus walked with me then, and still does now. I was spared, and I know it. I have a deep sense of obligation to serve Him and do what my fellow soldiers never got the chance to do….live a life worthy of being spared. It’s my daily prayer. Some days I fail miserably, but I have those moments where I know, he has let me be His hands and feet, and those are worth all the times where I fail.
That’s my story. Thank you for being here today and listening