We have been learning about Mike Davis and his Vietnam service. Mike graduated from Sanborn High School in 1967 and was drafted in 1969. He completed his training and the Army deployed him to Vietnam in April 1970.

Mike began his tour at Phu Bai Air Base in the north before the Army reassigned him to the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. He spent months patrolling under miserable conditions before surgery on a herniated stomach muscle put him out of action. He returned to an abandoned base camp and hitched a ride out on a departing truck.

“I jumped on this truck and asked, ‘Where did everybody go?’ They said, ‘Qui Nhon,’ which is another big, base camp. I caught up with some people there. About 80% of the guys got transferred to other units.”

The Army reassigned Mike to the Americal Division.

“From Qui Nhon they sent me up to Chu Lai, the base camp for the Americal Division. From there I took a chopper to LZ (Landing Zone) Stinson.”

Mike described his new home and mission for his first weeks with the 1st Battalion of the 52nd Infantry Regiment.

“(LZ Stinson) had maybe a hundred people. It had artillery; a battery of 105s, a couple of 155s, and also mortars. Because of my injury I didn’t have to go to the bush. I pulled tower guard about twelve hours a day. It was just day-after-day of not much going on.” (Mike chuckled)

Once medically cleared for field duty, Mike began patrolling with his new company, but his status had changed.

“I had more experience. I had been around a while, so I started becoming a short-timer, rather than a new guy. So, it worked the other way, where I wouldn’t talk to the new guys.”

He described their areas of operation.

“LZ Stinson was the beginning of the foothills of the mountains. There were a few miles of lowlands, which was all rice paddies, so there were a lot of villages. Mostly the patrols I went on were back into the mountains. We took choppers.”

Troops from another Americal battalion had committed large-scale killings of Vietnamese civilians at the village My Lai 4 in the spring of 1968. The incident only came to public awareness in November 1970. Mike described the frustrations of patrolling in the lowlands around LZ Stinson in the operational shadow of the My Lai killings.

“These lowlands are full of South Vietnamese and Viet Cong. You don’t know who you can trust and who you can’t. The My Lai thing messed things up for us in the lowlands. They sent us out there until we got shot at or hit a booby trap. It was very frustrating. You cross rice paddies and get pinned down by sniper fire. You call for support – artillery or mortars. They call back and say, ‘We can’t help you out. That is a friendly village.’ And we go, ‘Yeah, right. Come out here and tell us how friendly it is.’ (Mike laughed) So, we just waited in the water and buffalo [manure] all day in 120 degrees and at night we’d make a run for it, hoping we don’t trip a booby trap getting out.”

Most of Mike’s patrolling was in the highlands to the west where there were few villages and greater freedom to call in artillery. He described his last combat patrol in the highlands, two weeks in a notorious place the troops called “Happy Valley.”

“We worked off one hill quite a bit; a lot of patrols in daytime and nighttime listening posts and observation posts. One day I was walking around the hill taking pictures. I didn’t even have my rifle. I heard a bird coming in, so they popped smoke. As soon as I took a picture of this chopper, they started throwing mortars at us and opened up with small arms fire. All I had was my camera, so I low-crawled head-first into my foxhole and came up with my ’16. I was pretty scared. I was a short-timer and going to home soon, so I didn’t need any more of that. I figured, if they were so bold to come at us during the day, (Mike chuckled) we were in for some pretty long nights.”

He remembered those long nights.

“Almost every night you could hear them walking around. Sometimes they’d move by you and try the other side of the hill. If it sounded like they were getting close, you’d wake your partner and roll grenades down the hill. I had an M-79 grenade launcher. We’d cleared the trees a few feet out ahead of us, so the ’79 round would go off just a few meters in front of us. You had to stay down.”

Mike’s final days in the field passed and it was time to go home.

“Sometimes when you get on a bird to go back, the guys will tell the pilot it’s the last run. Then the pilots will give you a ground-level flight. (Mike laughed) I remember that about my last chopper ride. (Mike chuckled) I got the high-level ride, not the ground-level. I went back to Chu Lai; spent a couple days processing; and then went to Danang.”

Mike was heading home, but he was bringing extra baggage with him.

Please visit our new exhibit, The Vietnam War and Lyon County, at the Lyon County Museum to learn more about the experiences of our area Vietnam veterans. If you would like to share Vietnam experiences or help with the exhibit, please contact the museum at 537-6580.