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The Lyon County Museum is hosting an Open House for veterans, current military, and their spouses on Tuesday from 1:30 to 4 p.m. to open the new Vietnam War exhibit. Vietnam veterans who helped with the exhibit will share comments at 2 p.m. Please join us for this special event.
We have been learning about Porter's Dan Dybsetter and his Vietnam service. Dan graduated Canby High School in 1963, graduated from SMSU in 1968, and was immediately drafted into the Army. The Army trained him as an Infantryman and deployed him to Vietnam in March 1969.
The Army assigned Dan to an infantry battalion of the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta. His first month there was quiet. That ended in May 1969.
Dan's company did a lot of combat patrolling. He described his platoon's patrol tactics.
"You'd spend the day -- we called it 'Humping the Boonies.' You'd be looking for VC. It was a game of cat and mouse. We were supposed to be the cat, but most of the time we felt like the mouse. Late in the afternoon you would halt to heat up C-rations. Whenever you stopped, you set up a perimeter. Shortly before dark, we would send out the Recon squad. The platoon leader or platoon sergeant and three guys would pick a place for the night ambush. They would move in a big circle. That way the VC didn't know where this night ambush would be. When they got back, you would wait until it was getting dark, then pick up and move."
The night was not a rest time because the platoon set up their ambush.
"Once you got into this night ambush position, they would set a perimeter. Usually, you'd have three men in a position. You'd put out your Claymores (command-detonated mines) and get set up. Starting at nine o'clock one person at each position had to be awake. Your watch would last an hour. That meant you were awake for an hour; slept for two hours; and then your turn would come around again to sit up for the next hour."
Dan explained that sleep was difficult even when not on watch.
"In the delta we didn't dig foxholes because if you dug a foxhole, you were underwater. (Dan chuckled) You'd just lay on the ground. Mosquitoes were bad, so you'd wrap a towel around your face. All of the sudden one night it started raining and I was in the field with just a towel. (During) the rainy season, it rained every day; sometimes multiple times a day. It could be a long night, laying there in the rain. We learned to carry a poncho. I remember laying in the rain and wherever you laid, you made a little depression. As soon as you'd go to sleep you'd move a little and soon (Dan chuckled) the water would come running in. If you laid still, after a while that puddle would warm to your body temperature and, if you are tired enough, you could sleep."
Each morning the platoon started again.
"At six o'clock everybody got up. That meant you slept six hours, interrupted three times during the night. You'd have something to eat. You'd pick up your Claymores; the machine gunners would give the machine gun ammunition back to the guys to carry; and you'd start moving again."
Dan first experienced combat during an early May patrol.
"Early in May our Recon squad set out to find the night ambush position. They hadn't gone 100 meters and they ran into an ambush. The platoon sergeant took a round in the head and went down. The guy next to him took a round in the steel pot that went between the helmet liner and the steel pot and out the back. It knocked him down and felt like getting hit by a sledge hammer. The platoon sergeant's radioman took one that smashed his arm. After a brief firefight, the VC broke off. The platoon sergeant was dead before they dusted him off. The dust-off -- that's the medevac chopper -- came in the dark. That pilot came in through the trees, his rotor blades just about touching the branches. He set down; picked up the wounded; loaded the dead bodies; and off he went. All of the sudden your perspective changes."
Dan's platoon was still in the field.
"The next morning we were going back to base camp. After we went a ways, a sniper started shooting at us. Everybody dove for cover. We set up an M-60 and started shooting back until he quit shooting. We had jumped into a canal to get down. (A guy) two men in front of me climbed out of the canal. He walked on the wrong side of a bush and it cost him his life. It was booby-trapped. The grenade went off right under his feet. He landed in the canal. One guy in front of me was a Black kid, Nelson. We were half-blown into this canal and he said, 'I'm hit! I'm hit!' Nelson had a piece of shrapnel in his arm so I bandaged him. Our medic took a lot of shrapnel. I crawled over to him; took his medic's bag; and started patching him up as best I could. I think he survived, but he was bleeding all over the place. I didn't get touched."
He explained how that incident changed his position in the platoon.
"They needed replacements for these guys that got hit. The llatoon leader said, 'Dybsetter, do you want to try carrying the radio?'"