A man that dropped out of high school at 10th grade.  Has received two purple hearts for his service to his country.  A man that has started two of his own small business.  He has his loving wife, three children, and four grandchildren.  A man that has worked very hard for what he has wanted and to accomplish what he has dreamed.  A man that has seen the ugly side of the world and had to fight for his life.  A man that has felt his share of pain and more in his life in many more ways than one.  I get the privilege to call him Grandpa, but to the rest of the world he is known as Dave.

It started on August 8, 1946, the day he was born.  He grew up in the late 40’s, 50’s, and some of the early 60’s.  He had seven other siblings.  The first question I asked him was, what can you tell me about your childhood?  What I meant by that question was what are some of his good, great, or best memories from when he was growing up.  He first told me that he didn’t remember much about his childhood.  Then he got thinking and there were a few things that stuck out to him.  He told me about their family toboggan.  He went on talking about it and said, “You get 4-5 kids on there and go down a big hill.  We made jumps at the bottom out of ice and stuff.  One up there at the top and when we get a good start and when we get to the bottom we’d go sailing.  Then drag it back up to the top of the hill and do it all over again.”  That was one of the few things he told me about.
Next he went on talking about how they would use the neighbor’s tractor and a car hood and go sledding.  He told it like this, “use to take the neighbor’s tractor.  A little Oliver tracker.  Then take an old car hood, you know a nice big old v-shaped car hood not these new flat ones cause they don’t work worth crap.  But these other ones get these big v in there and skip the snow.  Then get a long rope.  Then get out there with the tractor and hook it onto that.  Then you get a going, getting some speed up.  There’s naturally those drifts out there to that you hit.  Then the tractor starts to dig up dirt and throwing snow in piles a little bit as you go.  So you get started going in circles and there is about three of us on this hood.  Got ropes on there, tied on the front of the hood so we can hang on.  So we get going like that the bigger loop out there and he’ll speed it up a little bit to, so you’ll get this loop coming in smaller and smaller but that hood out there is picking up speed going faster and faster, going around and around and faster and faster.  Then that thing is skipping.  I mean this thing is covering some pretty good ground when it hits.  When you break or a snap the string on it or something when you going good and then you’ll wind up zinging across backwards.”  It gets a little confusing sometimes but it is like tying a sled to the back of a four-wheeler and going across the snow.
Then Dave went on to talk about the goodies that his mom would make for him and his siblings when they got home from school.  Like caramel rolls with the good kind of caramel.  He said “they were really, really good.  Then when you put butter on them when they were warm.”  Then he also told me about how she also made a thing like Lefsa.  He said “how you put sugar on it and that’s really good to.”  Then “she knew we were hungry from school and we had to have something to munch on.”  He also talked about their dog Buster.  Buster was a big black dog but he said he was “a gentle giant.” 
Then he talked a little bit more about when he was closer to his teenage years and they would go out into the woods and climb trees.  Not the big trees but the tall and skinny trees.  He said “you can get up there about 30 feet.  You don’t know if it’s going to work, but you start to rock it.  Then you get it to go over, hang on to it as it goes, so you slant in on one side and just keep going till you hit the ground.  If it don’t snap, then you hit the ground pretty fast.  You get that motion going right you go pretty slow.  Is kinda fun because you get those big tall trees to that really, fun to do that.”  That is what he did some other times with his friends. 
In his teenage years he did most of the same things as he did when he was younger.  He did do other activities like he would help the neighbors put the hay in the hay mound.  Then they would go and make tunnels in the hay and crawl around in there.  He said that they had them going every which way, and also that they didn’t use any lanterns or flashlights to crawl around.  They also used them as like a hiding space since they went all around the hay mound.  There would be two piles of hay and they would have a rope on each side.  One of them would go on each rope and try to time it so they almost hit each other, but there were sometimes where they would miss time it and would end up hitting each other.  There would be some times when people would try to duck under and wind up getting nailed hard in the head or upper body.  It didn’t happen much, but it did happen a couple times to a couple of them.
As he got farther into his teenage years he dropped out of high school.  He only went to the end of 10th grade because he thought that he could get along with the schooling that he had.  He then went on into the world and worked.  He worked at a gas station for about a year, and in Dresser at the UFE.  He told me how he worked the two jobs “worked them jobs both at the same time.  Get off the shift of 8 hours at one then go work another 8 hours at the next.  Then come back and do the first one again after you get a little sleep of course.”  He told me why he was working those jobs.  He was trying to save up for a new car.  When one day working at the gas station Ruth Davis (the founder of Davis Auto Body in Turtle Lake) asked him if he wanted a job doing body work.  My grandpa said “I don’t know nothing about that.”  Ruth then said “I’ll teach you.”  My grandpa just said “ok.”  After working for about a year or two, he got his draft notice and had to go join the forces.  Seventeen years old and drafted into the service to fight in the Vietnam War. 
He went straight to boot camp.  He told it like this “boot camp was supposed to last about 12 months but they cut it down to about nine months because of the shortage of bodies and wanted to get people going.  Kept dying of pretty fast and had to keep people going.  Got rid of all the boot camp stuff, got that done.  Then you try and figure out what your emble is.  I wound up being in tank.  So I had to go to different places there in California there to do tank training.  That was shortened up pretty good to, but learn what you can as fast as you can.  You learn it when you don’t really want to.  Sit in and practice through all the stuff, you had to learn all four positions (Driver, Gunner, Loader, and TC which stands for tank commander).  Over in Vietnam I’d stand guard and stuff up there. I’d be sitting there and I’d watch and work on all the switches, looking all over with this and that, so if something pop up I know which one I’d have to hit to get the gun to fire up.”  For him that was just the beginning of his war experience.  It wouldn’t get any better for him in the time he was there.
Some of his stories from over in Vietnam aren’t very pretty or nice.  His first story that he told me was about a time when they were driving through the jungle.  He told it like this “we were going through the jungle there in Hotchymans Trail.  We had three tanks, one after the other and a bunch of grunts behind us.  This is a thick jungle you can’t see sh*t.  But anyways gooks (North Vietnam Army Men) are good at setting up mines, especially pressure mines.  The first one didn’t do nothing to it, because that one rolled over it and pushed it down.  The next one comes and pushes it down a little more.  Then the third one comes by pushes it the rest of the way down so then it explodes.  Just the pressure, the farther it go down the more it is going to go.  So that blowed off the track.  Here we are sitting out in the jungle, just about getting evening and we should be getting the heck out of there.  We wound up patching it together getting it off because we always carry a spare track on the tank.  So we trying to get put back together good enough that way, and we finally did, but it is so thick out there and had the canister round with the 1280 pellets kinda like a big shot gun.  So he told me to put a round out in a jungle out there to open it up.  So I pulled the trigger and it just blasted the trees and leveled everything off in a big v.  If there was anything out there it was dead anyway, so that way we could see for somebody out there and so we could see out in that area.”  Again that was just the first of a few of his stories that he chose to tell me. 
The second story he told was about the time he was on a hill and hit another mine.  This time he talks more about what they did after it and what the gooks usually did after what happens.  He told it like this “we were up on the side hill in the mountains there and three of us up there again one on the side hill a little bit.  I mean it’s really sandy up there and we threw a track.  Was getting late and night time too and we threw the track on the side hill.  Wound up, never did get that one put back on, we just left the darn thing.  The next day we just shot it full of holes with the big 90he rounds to blow it up, cause you knew well that the gooks came back in the night there and set booby trapped it so if a guy got in there they would kill a bunch of Americans again any way.  So we leave it there and sunk a bunch of rounds in it just to disable it kill it.”  That was his second story that he chose to tell me.  He told me a couple more stories and they could have easily been the last for him. 
The next story he told me was a time they were at the beach keeping watch.  He showed me this one on a piece of paper.  He told me the story as he drew it.  There was a river that they would usually stop at.  They would park the tanks pretty close to the water with the tracks facing the river.  The big tank barrel would be facing the water as well and they would be scouting to see if anything was out there.  There were three of them again the rest were doing the same thing as him looking over the river to see if they could see any movement.  He then said “We had to do this for three days’ strait.  One time we got stopped there and it’s pretty sandy there.  We all decided jump off the tank and set up for the day.  Wonder how it happened.  I hadn’t jumped off yet but I seen it.  A couple guys jumped off first, they missed it and I happened to see it from up on top there before I jumped.  There was a cone of a round sitting down there buried in the sand there.  All except the little bit of the top so all you had to do was step on it had that set to go off and kill quite a few people that were close enough there.  We didn’t get it to go off.  We had to get the explosive guys to come in and detonate it.”  That could have very easily been a quick ending for him, but it was a good thing that he saw that before they all got down and had it go off.  Somehow he still wasn’t at the low point of the time over there, and there was more to endure on his end. 
I then asked him if he would like to tell me about the day that he was attacked.  His face was somewhat pale and I could see the pain in his eyes from that day.  The pain that he endured and the pain he could see from the men that were around him.  The pain of having to almost relive that not so good day in his life when I asked him the question.  Grandpa never really looked up at me.  Just staring down at the table and the sharpie that he was messing with.  I could also tell somewhat the same thing when he told me the other stories from above.  It made me sad inside hearing the full story about the day he was attacked.  There was more than one version of the story.  There was a version written by an author that wasn’t at the battle who just looked on it from the stories that he might have heard from other soldiers.  Then there is the way that my grandpa told me which is a little more gruesome, but has much more detail in it than the author about what happened at his tank. 

  I will first tell the story that was told in the Journal: Tanks on the DMZ – 1967.  This article tells the story of the night of May 7th and the morning of May 8th, 1967.  I will just show the two paragraphs that talks about Dave, but there is a lot more about the rest of the night for everyone else.  The attack started at about 2:50a.m.  It goes like this “A second tank commanded by Corporal Charles D. Thatcher happened to be on the northeastern perimeter where the main assault came through the wire.  Cpl Thatcher was asleep underneath his hank when the incoming started.  He stayed put.  To climb out into the open would be suicide.  His gunner, L/Cpl David, took the attacking force under fire with his .30-caliber machine gun.  Suddenly, an anti-tank HEAT round pierced his turret and exploded.  Chocking smoke filled the turret.  David yelled, “Everybody bail out!”  As he was leaning out of the tank commander’s cupola, yelling at Cpl Thatcher to run, another explosion blew him out of the turret.  The blast had mortally wounded the other two crewmen, L/Cpl J. E. Young and PFC J. C. Lester, Jr.  David was hurt bad, but he managed to rise and stagger towards a nearby trench.  Before he could reach safety, a bullet smacked into his leg, knocking him off his feet.  He began crawling towards the trench, dragging his shattered leg when a bullet struck him in his other leg.  Two grunts reached out and pulled David into their bunker.  He was out of the war.”  It was a terrible night that night for a lot of people.  Out of the three tanks there only one was still functioning.  Out of the four people in his tank I believe only two survived that night.  Out of the 12 tankers only one was left unscratched.  In total three of them were killed.  The battle was basically over before noon and they were just hunting down the NVA men that were trapped in the perimeter they set up.  They did win the battle but there was a huge cost that they had to pay.

Next is the story that Dave was willing to tell me.  There is a little bit unhealthier language that he used that I am going to include.  He told it like this “I was sleeping under the gun inside the tank, there isn’t much room but I slept under there anyway.  So then if something was going to go on I can just sit up into my seat real quick, because the gunner seat is right there so I just have to pull myself up into the seat and I am all ready to go.  It was about 2:30 in the morning when sh*t hit the fan there.”  We were interrupted a couple times when I was interviewing him.  He went to tell it again like this “So I was sleeping under the gun, and I told you I always did that.  That night they decided to attack that hill, and I was sleeping under the gun like I always do.  When stuff started flying and whatnot I pulled myself up off the floor and into the seat.  Fired up the gun.  Turning switches on for that.  Then I started shooting out 30caliber out there just hosing it down.  I didn’t get to far, 50 or 75 rounds all it was and we took the round through the side of the tank between me and the TC.  Then went across over there and all you could see was smoke and sparks flying.  I turned around and hollered at them “Turn the fan on,” because there is a fan in there to take out smoke.  I hollered that a couple times and they never answered.  The round went in and killed him right away that was why he didn’t answer or do anything.  So then I decided that TC guy… his guts were hanging out.  I helped push him up out of there first.  I got on the TC hatch there to get out and that is when the fire came up underneath me just hosing me with the flame.  Got so damn hot that when I was trying to get out it was pulling me back down in.  I got a push and finally got myself pushed off flopped off the back on the back of the tank.  Then I rolled off the back hit the ground and pulled myself underneath.  The TC, the guy that went out before me was under there and our other 4th guy was sleeping under there that night.  So told that other guy that “we better get the hell out of here or this thing is going to go up in smoke burning when I left.”  So I get this other guy that was shot in the gut, and rolled him over.  His guts hanging out.  Told the other that he was dead, he wasn’t going to make it out of this.  So we took each other for our own so one went back to the fence line.  Crawled back there; where the grunts have their bunkers right behind that.  So I stand up to jump in and that is when the bullet hit my leg and kinda shot that and knocked me down.  Crawl back up on it again about time ready to jump again then the other bullet went through the other leg.  So then I couldn’t use nothing, had nothing to stand on.  But I flopped back in the trench and just handed myself over and over getting towards the bunker, happen enough to go in the right way where our guys were.  Then they grabbed me and threw me inside and protected me all night.  Give them thanks for that.  Then one of them got shot out standing guard, shooting too and what not.  Hauled him in there too but he was breathing blood, you could hear him gurgling.  He didn’t last very long before he was gone.  So then I laid there all night before it was all over.  Then they come get me out of there and put on the back of the one tank that was still operational yet.  They hauled us over to a chopper coming in over there.  Put me in there with another guy or two and took us back to the medics.”  He then talks about where he went to heal.  To recap he was burned and blown out of his tank.  As he was trying to get to safety he was shot in both legs.  This part wasn’t told in the story but, was stuck in a trench for about six hours with his injuries that he endured.  He would end up receiving two purple hearts for his injuries from in the battle.  One for the tank burns and the other for being shot.  It was a terrible experience for him.  Just hearing it made my guts toss and turn about seeing death, blood, and guts up close and seeing and hearing what he had described.  Hearing not really only his story but some of the others as well like the man that was protecting him that was shot, the TC with his guts, or the 4th guy in his tank who was described more in the first article. 

He got a helicopter ride to the medics, but that was the first part of a long healing process for him that would take him quite a while to recover.  He ended up going to many places to heal and spent a lot of time healing.  I asked him if he could tell me about where he went to heal and about how long it took him to heal from his wounds.  This part continues from after the choppers.  He said “Patched us up good enough in there and stayed there for a little while.  Then flew onto the Philippines stayed there in a little better facilities and patched up some better in there.  Jumped back on a plane and landed in Alaska.  Stopped there just to refuel.  Then we went onto Washington.  Got a room there, isolated in that place there and stayed there for a couple nights.  Something like that couple days’ nights.  Then went down to Great Lakes that is where I stayed.”  He had told me that it took him about a year to heal there in the Great Lakes. 

I asked him if he could tell me about some of his stories or experiences from when he was in the hospital.  He told me a couple of stories.  One that I remember from some other time in the past when he told me.  He had just turned 21 and was still in the hospital.  Some people thought it would be a nice thing to give him two beers.  So he got the beers and he ended up sharing them with the two people next to him, because he knew that had gone through some life changing experience like he did in the war.  I remember him telling me that they would all pass it around having a couple sips each.  It was a nice thing that he did sharing with the men around him.