2Y  DAVID C. COLLINS

During my time on Nui Ba Den, I had the privilege of collaborating with some outstanding men from the various signal units. They came from all social classes and each of them had special qualities. David Collins was one of those men. Instead of an Army career, he had chosen the Air Force and wound up as a generator mechanic stationed in Thailand.

One of my jobs as the signal officer on Nui Ba Den was to ensure that the various signal units could complete their missions. One of those units was a U.S. Air Force sensor relay team which would retransmit signals originating from the Ho Chi Minh trail to a CIA site in Thailand. On the morning of the June 16, 1969, attack, the Air Force’s main generator quit and all attempts to restart it failed. The team’s calls to obtain another generator went nowhere, so I gave them another possibility: find me an Air Force generator mechanic and I would arrange the transportation needed to get him up the mountain. They found a mechanic in Saigon, and he volunteered to help his old team out.

David Collins was that mechanic, and after serving his time in Vietnam he was waiting in Saigon for a flight home the next morning. When he heard about the predicament his former team members had met, he at once volunteered to help them out and postponed his trip home. I warned him about the dangers involved and how he could be stranded on the mountain if the weather changed. He wanted to try it, so I reconnoitered a Chinook helicopter from 1st Brigade and got him and his repair tools up to the mountain. Once on the mountain, he went to work on the generator and had the relay site back online in two hours. Unfortunately for David, the winds suddenly changed direction and the mountain became entombed by dense clouds; David was forced to spend the night with us.

The Sapper attack started around 2:00 am, and during the madness of those first few moments David left the safety of his bunker and was killed by one of the enemy Sappers. His body was found slumped backward over a small boulder with four bullet holes in his chest, and it was obvious he had died instantly.

Even after fifty years, David’s death still haunts me for I know that I played a role in his death. If I had not been so “Gung Ho” about my mission on the mountain, he would have caught that Freedom Bird home the next day.

David was an outstanding soldier who put his country and its mission ahead of his own life, and I have never forgotten him or what he did for his country that night.