He Didn’t Want To Go To War, But He Went And Led Men (David Dargo)

Send us Fan MailA seven-acre childhood with backyard goalposts, glass oil jars at a full-service station, and pickup baseball games—Dave’s life started in motion and never really stopped. That momentum carried him from Delta Airlines to a draft notice, from Fort Jackson’s mess hall floor to a First Cav helicopter banking into a hot landing zone. What follows isn’t a highlight reel; it’s an unvarnished account of what it means to walk point, carry the radio that gives away your position, and learn to sleep in a hole you dug an hour earlier.We take you from the first blast of heat in Bien Hoa to the nightly circle where claymores guard the dark. Dave explains how squads hunted trails, why the M79’s arc is a gamble under jungle canopy, and how a Cobra can miss and send danger running straight toward you. He remembers Cambodia’s rubber trees, a friend shot through the heart at a shallow stream, and a firebase fight so violent a helicopter blade took a pilot’s life yards away. Morning revealed sixty enemy dead, eight Americans lost, and a bulldozer flown in to cut a mass grave—then the order came to move out.Between firefights, survival was practical: iodine tablets in crater water, twenty-five days without a shower, and letters from home kept dry in an M60 ammo can. A chaplain’s Communion under ponchos. Sports clippings about the Tigers. The quiet rituals that hold a young man together. When Dave finally caught the freedom bird, Fort Dix offered a steak dinner and a warning to hide the uniform. He didn’t. He had done what was asked. Back home he said almost nothing for fifty years, building a marriage, raising daughters, working decades at Delta, and later caring for a granddaughter with the same determination that once kept him alive.This is a rare, plainspoken oral history of Vietnam and its long shadow—rich in detail and humanity. If you value honest veteran stories, small-unit tactics, First Cavalry history, and the difference between friends and buddies, you’ll find something here that stays. Listen, share with someone who needs it, and if it resonates, leave a review so more people can hear voices like Dave’s. Support the showwww.veteransarchives.org