James Dorsey

Our Thoughts and Remembrances

Image courtesy of Lil Doc's

From Steve Brownell:

I just received a copy of Lancer. Good work David and Gary! The notice about our second KIA, SSGT James Dorsey, really caught my attention. Old memories began flooding back, and suddenly I was in the UH-1again. This account may not be one hundred per cent accurate, but it is what I recall happened that day. The aircraft was, I believe, number 647. SSGT Dorsey was a very experienced crew chief. Of those I had flown with, he was by far the most conscientious; a real professional. Romer was the pilot and O'Herron was the gunner. In the back were about six infantrymen. There were two LZs, a lower and an upper one. The hill had been fairly well cleared by an artillery strike prior to the start of the insertion. Our mission was to insert troops onto a hilltop in the A Shau Valley. Five Ghost Rider aircraft and five Lancers were involved. We were flying trail in the Lancer flight.

The approach to the upper LZ was going well. The area was a steep slope with a few shattered trees from the artillery. As we started to come to a hover, and just as the troops were about to jump out of the aircraft, there was a very loud noise. Instantly everything was in slow motion. The rotor blades hit the ground and disintegrated; the windshields were completely shattered. My seat was thrown forward, so far that all I had to do was unbuckle the seatbelt and shoulder harness, and I fell forward onto the ground.
There was a great deal of small arms fire, much of it from our machine gun rounds cooking off. #647 had been a good aircraft, but it no longer existed; it was reduced to a pile of burning metal. The only distinguishable parts were the transmission and the rotor head. I was grabbed by a wonderful medic. He immediately gave me morphine, and bandaged an arm frag wound. I was told that Romer and O'Herron were okay, but the best crew chief in Vietnam, Dorsey, was dead. I never learned how many, if any, of the troops in the back survived. The infantry already on the ground told me a B-40 antitank rocket, fired from the tree line, impacted directly at the crew chief's seat. It was 1500 hours and the area was deemed too active with NVA to risk further troop insertions that day.

We had about thirty infantrymen with us on the hill, I heard that a couple of aircraft were shot up and crashed in the lower LZ prior to our 'arrival.' I recall Warrant Officers Geniia, Searcy, and Gouch being with us. As evening approached, and at the recommendation of the infantry who were dividing their time between shooting and digging foxholes, we aviators began furiously digging holes in which to hide. Air strikes and artillery were being fired all around us. I will never forget the whistling sound of the shrapnel zooming through the trees above our heads. F-4 fighters were screaming overhead, their undersides streaked with hydraulic fluid, dropping bombs in the tree line around our position. The hole digging exercise was beneficial; those holes saved our lives. I spent most of the night cowering at the bottom of my hole, with my, chicken plate' on top of me.

The contact with the NVA quieted down as the sun set. Darkness brought the ability to distinguish between friendly orange tracers and the unfriendly green ones. Whenever the shooting would subside, it was eerily quiet. We had numerous incoming mortar attacks and testing of our perimeter defenses as the night progressed. One of the mortar rounds made a direct hit into one of our holes, killing a downed aviator.

The only good part of the night was the arrival of the C-47 gunship. It circled our hilltop most of the night, protecting us from the NVA, who seemed to be all around us. The gunship would shoot a continuous stream of tracers in wavy lines all around our position. This was very reassuring, because no enemy troops could advance on our position under the withering fire of that wonderful mini gun. Just before daylight the gunship left us, left us alone in a dreadful silence. The time until dawn seemed to last forever. Without question. this was the longest night of my life.

Morning brought renewed fighting on our perimeter, with more air and artillery strikes around the area. One of the few trees that had survived the night, had a crude ladder and lookout platform built on top. It reminded me of a child's tree house. The NVA had been using the tree as a lookout before our arrival.

As the day dragged on, I developed a great appreciation for the difficult life of those infantrymen. We would bring them out into the Remembrances of war and drop them off, where they would proceed to literally fight for their life’s day and night. As the afternoon wore on, our unit was running out of food and water, and more importantly, ammunition. I started to dread the idea of another night in my hole. My arm was growing stiff, but the medic kept me pumped up on morphine, so pain was minimal. We had a number of wounded who desperately needed evacuation. I was the least injured.

Finally, one of our helicopters got into the area, hovered and took aboard four or five of the seriously wounded, during a 'mad minute' where everyone fired into the tree line to keep our neighbor's heads down. Shortly after, another helicopter was able to approach, and I was loaded with the remaining wounded. My diary states that, "...tears of 'joy marked our departure." I soon found out that the pilots who rescued us had turned off their radios and ignored the circling helicopters that had every level of high-ranking officer trying to command the operation. They had risked their lives to save ours, we were delivered to the Camp Evans surgical Site. I was on my way to recovery. I was out of commission for about six weeks.

I believe the above described operation was the initial assault on FSB Airborne. SSGT James Dorsey lost his life thirty some years ago on this hill, but he has never been far from my memory He was a great soldier and leader, an example to all his, fellow crew chiefs.

From Russ Balisok:

In April '69 no day was like any other.  We had just become operational and after flying our first combat assault at Cam Lo, and having lost A.W. Smith, I was in a bit of shock, tempered by the adventure of learning our new area of operations, and the ambition of doing our job.  The call for four Lancer aircraft came the evening of the 25th.  I learned that A Company had lost two or more aircraft as they approached an LZ above the A Shau valley.  They didn't have enough aircraft for their mission, which was to complete the assault, and that infantrymen and aviators from A Company had spent the night in the LZ and that matters were tenuous.

We lifted off for our first trip to the A Shau - Ever.  We were not given coordinates, nor any other destination, but instead told to follow the A Co. Flight.  We lost sight of them crossing the mountains into the A Shau but found them with some patience and some luck.  We landed and were briefed; a flight of 10, including our 4 Lancer aircraft and 6 from A Co. were to ferry troops from a lower LZ on the side the mountain to a higher LZ.  The distance was only a half mile or so, and why they needed 10 aircraft, I had no idea, but I was new and was trying to do what we were told.

Initially, the insertion went without incident.  The LZ was strewn with trees and there was no place to sit down.  A warrant officer named Searcy from A Co. who had been shot down the day before and was apparently uninjured guided us in with arm signals and smiles.  I had made his acquaintance back in Ft. Carson and knew him to be a bright, easy to like guy.  I can still see him smiling with his crew cut blond hair.

Perhaps on the third sortie into the LZ, I was about 300 feet overhead the LZ, about 300 feet executing a circling approach and watching Brownell's aircraft hovering in the LZ when I saw an orange gray explosion.  The aircraft seemed to come apart in slow motion.

Now came the hard part.  Lt. Col. Honeycutt's orders (he was the "air mission commander") were that no one would come out of the LZ, including pilots.  We had been ordered not to pick up survivors, not even WO Searcy.  It wasn't until the next day when I learned that Sergeant Dorsey had been killed in the explosion, caused by an RPG which apparently impacted on his chest protector.  And it wasn't until then that I learned that WO Seacy had been killed by small arms fire.

Sergeant Dorsey was in my platoon.  I had contact with him at Ft. Carson, and I learned that he had enlisted in the army as a means of bettering his life and his family.  He was certainly the most ambitious (in every good sense of the word) and very bright.  He had been consistently promoted ahead of his peers, and I suspect, by example, showed other enlisted men how to soldier.

April 26, 1969 was the most difficult of my life, and that still holds true today. 

Sergeant Dorsey was killed, Brownell and his crew spent the night on the LZ, even though Steve was wounded, and Searcy was needlessly exposed to danger and killed.  Not until I began sharing with fellow Lancers could I begin to tell this story.  I made Captain on 27 March, turned age 23 on 25 April and was helpless to influence the events that day.

I have often wondered how Dorsey's family fared.

From Bruce Nesmith:

I remember Jim Dorsey as a quiet person. I remember him mostly from Ft. Carson where he was one of the early arrivals.  I bunked next to him in our first barracks at Carson when we were a flight platoon with no aircraft, and a company in name only.

He was older than most of us and always seemed self-confident and sure of himself.  Dorsey was well spoken, and a religious man.  He read his bible regularly and attended church on Sunday while the rest of us were fighting hangovers.

Jim was a career soldier.  He had acquired his Sergeant's stripes the hard way - not as an instant E-5 out of school.  I don't know how long he had been in the Army, but he had re-upped for huey school as a step up in his career - I don't know what he was before.  He wasn't a hero type, just a solid professional.  A quiet leader and role model, he provided me with an example of what was possible.  He was without a doubt the best soldier in our group in the early days.  He helped those of us new to the army to understand the system without putting us down or blowing a lot of smoke.

His goal was to come home to his family.  He told me that his move to aviation (with its guaranteed Vietnam tour) was a fast track to promotion, and that a promotion and flight pay would allow him to better support his family.  He was dedicated to his wife and kids - wife pregnant or a newborn just as we shipped out, I think.  I usually remember him lying on his bunk in the barracks at Carson reading letters from his wife and showing pictures of his family to us.

He didn't participate in the general hell raising with the rest of us, but he had a good sense of humor and put up with our wild antics in the barracks without complaint.  That's not to say that he would not participate in the horse play or take a drink - he did and would; but he was more mature and reserved about it.

Jim Dorsey's loss was a shock to me as he was the first of the original CE group that I knew well to be KIA, and the first that I was close to.