William Dennis on the Vietnam memorial wall

I was researching an article on “googling,” the practice of using the Google.com search engine to find all the Web sites than mention ones name. I found 6,550 sites with my name. One was a listing for “William R. Dennis” on the Virtual Wall.

I was curious, so I e-mailed the man who posted the article, a man named Wade Kane.

He e-mailed me back and I explained what I was doing. This is his reply:

“In that case I will tell you a little more about him. When I first met him he was about 19, and I was 21. We both wanted to fly as crewmembers on our units Chinooks (for my units website see: http://www.snowhill.com/~ketchamj/

“We both got assigned instead doing miscellaneous details at our base camp at An Khe. This would have been July 1967. He was so mad about not getting to fly that he said “If they ever want me to fly I wouldn’t do it now.” I argued that if he got the chance to fly, he would. Well we both got to fly. We started as gunners (on the left front gun of the hook). Later we moved up to crewchief, which was the right gunner. The gunner cleaned the guns and helped with maintenance on the chinook.

” The crewchief helped the flight engineer on aircraft maintenance. On the web page he is listed as a Flight engineer, but I don’t think he was af FE yet. Anyhow while flying as a gunner in Jan or Feb of 68 up at Phu Bai, a enemy bullet passed close enought to his arm to leave a welt, but not break the skin. At the time he commented “if anything like that EVER happens again, I am going to quit flying”.

“He was killed 19 April 1968 on the first day of the air assualt by the 1st Air Cav into the A Shau Valley (the next year the 101st would go in to the same valley, and their fight is known as the Hamburger Hill ordeal).

“The first day our battalion lost 5 chinooks. My company lost two of them. A Flying Crane was also shot down, and well as some Hueys. The other Chinook my company lost was fortunately sitting on a LZ (later known as firebases), when it was hit in the aft pylon probably by an RPG, and the whole aft rotor came off. No one was injured. The hook (chinook) Dennis was on was seen by a Command and Control Huey to explode at about 2000 feet AGL (Above Ground Level), roll inverted, hit the jungle, explode again.

” As there was lots of bad guys on the ground, and the Cav was busy securing LZ Tiger, there was no way to try to look for survivors. The pilots recollection was of suddenly being upside down on the ground, unstrapping and crawling out of the burning hook. (By the way when a hook caught fire in the air, the flames ALWAYS blew aft to front inside. The pilots cabin is sort of separated from the cargo cabin). They could hear NVA infantry, and E&E (escape and evaded) for a day or two, and following the sound of chainsaws, made their way into LZ Tiger. They returned briefly to the unit, and then left. I don’t know if they were sent to another unit or to the states. I have never doubted that Dennis died that that, and pretty quickly. That he continued to fly after the near miss, showed bravery on his part. He was the only black crewchief my unit had.

“19 April 68 my Chinook was down for maintenance so I didn’t fly. May have saved my life. When I went to schools for maintenance of helicopters in the Army there seemed to be a lot more concern about how shiny the barracks floor was rather that what we learned about maintenance. Someone had stripped off a stud that held an oil filter on the combining transmission of my hook. Any Civilian Aircraft Mechanic could have fixed that in 30 minutes. As it was we had to wait till we had a slow day, and there was a hook available to fly to DaNang to pick up a spare tranmission. “For the want of a nail a rider was lost”.

“Still bothers me that my friends died that day, and I didn’t even fly. On the web page about Dennis, it lists him incorrectly as born in Mexico. He was born in Pittsburg PA, I think. Gonzales, who I didn’t know as well was Mexican. (Americans all tho. When the bad guys are trying to kill you, everyone is just an American, skin color isn’t exactly a factor.)

“Currently I am an activated Air National Guardsman.”

Wade Kane

Moments later, he sent a follow-up message:

“One final note. The A Shau was way different than anything we had done before. My first four months we worked out of An Khe, and we might get shot at with a rifle. In Oct of 67 we moved up to Chu Lai, and worked up the Que Son Valley, and occassional would be fired on by a twin .50. We went into the A Shau from Phu Bai. Take off, and go into the “soup” at a couple of hundred feet. Fly over to the A Shau between cloud layers, and then find a “hole” and decend into the valley. The NVA had radar guided 37mm cannons. Guys reported flak bursts at 8000 feet. Me I was the unMagnet Ass of the world. My hook only took one 30 hit all year. “

Wade Kane

All I want to say is that I thank those brave men and women who served in Vietnam.

vietnam vets,william dennis