Dave Dillard was born and raised on a small farm in Williams, located in Northern California’s Sacramento Valley. Joining the U.S. Army in 1966 at 17, he volunteered to become a U.S. Paratrooper before high school graduation. He had been elected homecoming king and played in his final football game just days before.
He served for eight years, which included two combat tours in Vietnam with the 101st and then the 173rd Airborne Brigade. After, he attended school at San Francisco State University to study theatre arts and became a performing artist. He made Livingston his home 20-plus years ago.
Dillard recently received his medals for serving during the Vietnam War after almost 60 years. Why did it take so long to be recognized?
“I think a lot had to do with being an enlisted man, not an officer, at the time,” Dillard said of the delay. “When I think about it, it just took time for that to come to happen. I’m blessed that it did. (United States Representative) Morgan Luttrell was very instrumental, and Morgan was a friend of ours – the veterans. Of course, with his background, he still works very diligently for some of the new research that’s being done and products that they’re going to use that would have never been thought about. It was a humbling experience to get those medals, and then the 101st rolled out the red carpet for me and my family, and I got to know so many of them.”
Dillard’s captain, Paul Bucha, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his role during the Vietnam War. Dillard was his radio telephone operator.
“If you know what a radio operator does, then you know I was right beside him when he was going through the paces. It was a marvel experience. Then, for us to continue our relationship for 40 years, we’ve been helping veterans.”
For the past 30 years Dillard has been a veterans’ advocate, helping those who served in combat process their claims with Veteran’s Affairs. He also has participated in Fisher House, which provides a place for families to stay while the veteran is in the VA Hospital.
“We have two Fisher houses down in Houston now, but we started with one, and now we have over 100 globally. We’re all over the world. I worked with (Bucha) on that project right up until he passed away.”
Dillard said he mainly works with combat veterans who don’t have the time to put structure into claims. Dillard knows what the Veterans Affairs wants, and can coach many through the process.
He has a soft spot for combat veterans particularly, being one himself.
“I arrived in 1967, just in time for the Tet Offensive of 1968. You have to understand that in the Tet Offensive in 1968, there were weeks that went by where we would have 1,000 men killed. I was an infantry man. I lived in the jungle. The numbers of us that were actually in the jungle was about 11-to-1, something like that, in support. So, there may have been 35,000 committed to that job. When you’re looking at it and that’s your job, you realize you’re losing 1,000 men, then it really touches home.”
It was March of 1968, Dillard and more than 80 other U.S. paratroopers were in dense jungle chasing North Vietnamese Army regulars that had just taken part in the Tet Offensive. Dillard was 18 years of age at the time.
“You’re stressed in so many different ways. You’re at a level of where everything that you’ve been trained to do had to kick in. As the firefights started, it was like having somebody turn on this wind that blew by you with this amazing amount of firepower. You didn’t know they were that close to begin with.”
What Dillard’s group also didn’t know is that they had made contact with a reinforced regiment of infantry of somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 soldiers. They had five casualties and around 20 others that were wounded in just 15 minutes.
Needing to get the wounded out, they had to open a clearing for helicopters to transport. A helicopter threw off gurneys as it hovered. They tried to extend the first soldier up, but could not reach, and the helicopter could not get low enough. As the helicopter began to take AK-47 fire, it was waived off. As Dillard returned to his radio for a report, a dark streak caught his eye, landing 15 feet in front of him.
The grenade exploded, engulfing Dillard and others in fire. He was blown back 10 feet, losing his hearing with bleeding ears for a while.
The paratroopers were directed to turn back down the trail, but the North Vietnamese had set up an ambush. They were surrounded. The result was more casualties and more wounded. Both their chances and the day had turned dark.
“Darkness became our friend, because we were able to come in and draw into a tight circle, what was left of us. It was only about 89, I think, to begin with in the beginning of the fight. Then, you’ve got wounded, which we can’t evacuate, so we pull all our wounded in. Half of you are wounded.
“The whole thing was they couldn’t tell exactly where we were. They would fire in a direction and at one time during the night, it was like (points to something 50 feet away), and he started firing his AK. The flash – I could see his face. They wanted us to light him up. If we had done that, I wouldn’t be here.
“The (U.S.) helicopter comes in around midnight or so and drops the grenades. (The North Vietnamese) are just smoking this helicopter. They’re smoking him and he veers, and as he does, whoever’s throwing the grenades out pitched the grenades outside of our perimeter. Now, we’ve got another problem. That became an issue.
“Luckily, they knew about where there was gunship support (armed aircraft providing assistance to ground troops) and they kept firing over in that area. They never did find those grenades. We found them the next morning.
“We were just like a little piece out in the middle of this jungle that the enemy couldn’t quite nail down.”
They circled into the perimeter with all the wounded in the middle. Orders came in to observe night fire discipline. No one could use weapons or communication that would give away their position.
“Instead of using our direct-fire weapons – anything with a muzzle blast, our machine guns, our M16s – we just started throwing grenades. I don’t know how many grenades I threw that night. I really couldn’t tell you, but we kept throwing grenades and at one point, they came in to resupply us with more grenades and rounds for our M79s. It’s a break-action 40-millimeter grenade launcher. You can’t really (hear where it is fired) from, so we could get away with shooting those.”
Around 4 a.m., the enemy had stopped probing. Dillard’s group was able to bring in a helicopter. By 5:30 a.m., the wounded were gone. Another U.S. company came in at first light and relieved them. The paratroopers then searched to find 10 Americans that had given their life that night.
Even his return to the states wasn’t a pleasant experience. It was the same for many Vietnam veterans.
“That’s the way it was. We knew it. We had to hide. I mean, I got out and I spent eight years, two combat tours in Vietnam. So 18, maybe 19 months in the jungle. I come back and I’m told, ‘Well, it’s probably not a good idea to wear your uniform. You should probably wear your civilian clothes when you get on the airplane.’
“Their favorite call was, ‘They are a bunch of baby killers.’ They go into that and they take one minute thing from an incredible drawn out war and everyone’s thrown into that same bucket.
“Hollywood – do you realize what they did to us? Go back to the 1970s and watch any show, even sitcoms. Any drama series. In a drama series, how did they portray the Vietnam veteran? He had a field jacket on, and he had dungarees, looked (bad) and he was on drugs. That’s how it was. Or, they are on a tower in Austin shooting people, so you can’t trust them. We kind of got branded. And so, a vast majority of my friends, you know, went into hiding. How did they hide? They hid in plain sight.
“They went out and became some amazing stories. The whole fabric of the American society was loaded with them, and we had to keep quiet.”
Dillard also did his best to hide in plain sight. He went on to work in theater around different areas of Northern California. He also taught elementary school.
Finally recognized in a positive light, he was honored two months ago at Fort Campbell, Ky., 58 years and two days after he was wounded. He was awarded a Bronze Star Medal with two oak leaf clusters (signifying a total of three Bronze Stars), a Purple Heart, and Air Medal.
In the past, he has also received medals for Army Commendation, Good Conduct, National Defense Service, Vietnam Service Medal with one bronze star and one silver service star, Combat Infantryman Badge first award and the Parachutist Badge.
