Category: This great Nation & Its People
The Navy SEAL Who Went to Ukraine Because He Couldn’t Stop Fighting
Daniel Swift was in his element waging America’s war on terror from Afghanistan to Yemen. After his marriage failed back home, he found a new purpose: killing Russians.
by By Ian Lovett and Brett Forrest
Daniel Swift’s nerves were shot. By the start of 2019, his Navy SEAL colleagues said, he was hardly eating or sleeping.
He had separated from his wife. A court had barred him from seeing his four children, and he was facing legal charges for false imprisonment and domestic battery.
Mr. Swift told fellow SEALs in San Diego, where he was based, that he was planning to go to Africa to fight wildlife poachers. They brushed off the comment, convinced that Mr. Swift, a soldier’s soldier, would never abandon his post.
A week later, he disappeared. Navy investigators searched for him, but Mr. Swift was always a step ahead.
He resurfaced in March of last year when he slipped into a group messaging chat of current and former SEALs. He was now fighting Russians in Ukraine, he texted. He petitioned the group for supplies, and later invited members to join him on the front lines. None did. Some advised him to come home. Others marveled as word of his exploits spread.
Mr. Swift was among thousands of young men who flooded to Kyiv from the West, including American veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many said they were drawn to the cause of a democratic country resisting a larger autocratic one.
But there was another side to Mr. Swift’s quest, as revealed in interviews with his colleagues and a memoir he published online under a pseudonym. Mr. Swift was part of a large group who spent years fighting America’s war on terror and have struggled to settle back into civilian life.
The military has acknowledged the impact on servicemembers and their families, particularly special forces, who suffered the outsized casualties during the later years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Long deployments have pushed up divorce rates, while suicides among special forces spiked to the highest in the military. The government has launched programs to help lessen the psychological burden on spouses as well as troops.
Daniel Glenn, a psychologist who works with veterans at the University of California, Los Angeles, said many tell him that the U.S. military does a great job preparing them to go to war, but not to return from it.
“They’ve been in some of the most intense, dangerous, awful situations. They’re really good at that,” he said. “Comparatively, back in the civilian world, everything feels mundane. It’s hard to have anything that feels like a rush or makes you feel alive.”
Daniel Swift serving in Severodonetsk, Ukraine.
Many of the men who fought with Mr. Swift said this feeling was part of what drew them to Ukraine.
“A lot of people won’t admit it, but lots of people are here because war is fun,” said a 43-year-old U.S. Army veteran. Civilian life, he added, didn’t offer the same camaraderie or sense of purpose: “War is easy in many ways. Your mission is crystal clear. You’re here to take the enemy out.”
‘Viet Dan’
Mr. Swift had wanted to be a Navy SEAL since childhood. After graduating from high school in rural Oregon in 2005, he married his high-school sweetheart and enlisted in the Navy.
Two years later, he enrolled in the SEALs selection program, a grueling process highlighted by “Hell Week,” when candidates train physically for more than 20 hours a day, run more than 200 miles and sleep for about four hours total.
The vast majority of candidates wash out. Mr. Swift, just 20 years old, made it. Soon after, his wife gave birth to their first child.
A teetotaler, Mr. Swift sometimes drove fellow SEALs on bar crawls, though he often stayed in and studied tactics in military manuals.
On deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he won a reputation for dependability, a rare Legion of Merit award and a nickname, “Viet Dan,” inspired by his fondness for action.
“Tough kid, humble, quiet, and a little bit crazy,” said a SEAL who was the third in command of Mr. Swift’s first platoon.
In 2013, when his wife was pregnant with their fourth child, Mr. Swift decided to quit. “I thought maybe God was trying to tell me to settle down and be a family man,” he wrote in his memoir, which he self-published in 2020.
He joined the Washington state police and reveled in time off with his kids, exploring logging roads through the woods, cooking hot dogs and shooting guns.
The new job didn’t suit him, though. Police officers were rewarded for giving out tickets rather than helping people, he wrote in his book. Sitting in his cruiser scanning for speeders, Mr. Swift texted friends in the SEALs and told them he missed life among them, according to Navy comrades.
In 2015, a friend from the SEALs died, and Mr. Swift decided to re-enlist as a fight with Islamic State beckoned. “I wanted my piece of the pie,” he wrote.
In Iraq again, Mr. Swift took on Islamic State militants in city streets. Later, he deployed to Yemen.
Navy SEAL candidates train during ‘Hell Week.’ PHOTO: PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS ABE MCNATT/U.S. NAVY
Most candidates wash out of the SEALs selection program. PHOTO: PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS ABE MCNATT/U.S. NAVY
The overseas missions took a toll on his marriage. In October 2018, shortly after Mr. Swift returned from seven months in Yemen, his relationship with his wife collapsed.
In court documents, Maegan Swift said he’d returned home angry, prone to yelling at her. He disputed this account in his book, but both agreed that one night when they were arguing at home, she threatened to call the police if he prevented her from leaving with the kids.
Mr. Swift went to the bedroom and returned with a pistol.
He said in the book that it was unloaded and that he told her: “See what happens when the cops try and take my children from me.”
Ms. Swift moved the children to her sister’s house while Mr. Swift was traveling. When he returned, a scuffle ensued as he tried to put his younger daughter in his car and Ms. Swift and her sister tried to stop him. Mr. Swift said he was fending off the women as they attacked him; they said he choked Ms. Swift’s sister. The police arrived and arrested him.
Ms. Swift declined to comment for this article.
A Navy psychologist said Mr. Swift had adjustment disorder, a term for difficulty re-entering civilian life, Mr. Swift wrote in his memoir. He dismissed the diagnosis.
Mr. Swift was charged in state court with false imprisonment, child endangerment and domestic battery, which threatened his military career. If convicted of a felony, Mr. Swift would lose his right to carry a gun, and this prospect shook him, according to SEALs who knew him. Being a warrior was nearly all he’d known.
Most of all, he worried about losing his kids, the oldest of whom was the oldest of whom was 11.
Mr. Swift wrote that while the U.S. government has helped veterans cope with war trauma, “what we don’t seem to care about is when they return home to things they’ve been fighting for, only to have them ripped away.”
“I have been face to face with death multiple times, and it has never been more traumatic than having my children taken away,” he wrote.
In the early months of 2019, Mr. Swift disappeared. His passport pinged at immigration control in Mexico, then in Germany, a former SEAL colleague said.
Mr. Swift tried to join the French Foreign Legion, according to another SEAL colleague, but was rejected because the recruiters worried his kids could be a distraction. He ended up in Thailand where he fought kickboxing matches and taught English.
He wrote his memoir, he said, to explain himself to his children. “If you ever want to talk to me just make a Facebook page,” he wrote, addressing his kids. “I look.”
He titled the book “The Fall of a Man.”
No retreat
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year, news reports of the war’s child victims reminded Mr. Swift of his own children and stirred him to action, he later told friends.
He entered Ukraine in early March and joined a platoon running missions behind enemy lines near Kyiv, according to soldiers who fought with him there.
During his first operations, he taped body armor to his chest under a white Fruit of the Loom T-shirt because he arrived without a vest to hold bulletproof plates. His teammates called it the “Dan special.”
Conducting reconnaissance and hunting armored vehicles with a Javelin antitank missile, he soon developed a reputation as highly skilled, methodical and most comfortable in the middle of a firefight, according to men who fought with him.
Adam Thiemann, a former U.S. Army Ranger, recalled one mission, where he and Mr. Swift set off with five others to ambush a Russian barrack. Outside the compound, they surprised a handful of uniformed Russian soldiers and quickly killed them. The Ukrainian commander ordered a retreat. Mr. Swift, who’d been quiet up to that point, was incredulous.
“Retreat?” Mr. Swift said, according to Mr. Thiemann and another team member. “We didn’t even get shot at.”
When Russian troops pulled back from Kyiv at the end of March, many foreign fighters went home, feeling they’d helped fend off the existential threat to Ukraine. Mr. Swift stayed.
His foreign legion team—a unit of Ukraine’s military intelligence, made up of about 20 foreigners and a Ukrainian commander—was dispatched to the city of Mykolaiv in the country’s south.
There, Mr. Swift led the squad on aquatic missions, often using inflatable boats to travel across open sea at night to target Russian positions, according to several soldiers in his unit.
During down time, teammates said, he was quiet and uncommonly disciplined. He didn’t drink or smoke, and worked out obsessively. Even near the front, he’d go out for long solo runs.
Men fighting with Mr. Swift in Ukraine said he would accompany them for shawarma in Mykolaiv, walking around shirtless in jeans and sandals and getting waitresses’ phone numbers. In photos, he rarely smiled; he was more likely to crack a joke during missions, they said.
He told only a few comrades about his life outside the military.
One teammate, a 29-year-old American who goes by the call sign Tex, said Mr. Swift confided in him about his troubles at home.
“He loved his kids,” Tex said. “A lot of things didn’t bother Dan. But the thought of his kids maybe being told who he was and not actually knowing him, that worried him.”
Ukrainian soldiers in the eastern city of Bakhmut in January. PHOTO: EMANUELE SATOLLI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In early June, the team headed to the eastern city of Severodonetsk, which the Russians were flattening with artillery.
The group had earned a reputation for taking on missions that others turned down. As the situation in Severodonetsk grew worse, Mr. Swift joked that if they were surrounded, at least they could shoot in every direction.
On its last trip into the city, the team tried to hit a building where they believed about 10 Russians were hiding. As soon as they fired the first rocket, however, they found themselves under heavy assault. Dozens of Russians were in the building. Mr. Swift ended up trapped in a corner, trading machine-gun fire with a Russian.
The legion team’s Ukrainian commander, Oleksiy Chubashev, was shot through the neck.
With a Russian tank approaching, Mr. Swift laid down covering fire to free a group of pinned-down comrades, who put Capt. Chubashev on a stretcher and carried him out the back of the building.
Mr. Swift joined them outside to help carry the stretcher. A video seen by The Wall Street Journal shows them hauling the body through the city in daylight, without cover, while artillery shells whistle and crash around them.
After about a half a mile in the June heat, an exhausted young soldier dropped his corner of the stretcher.
“Dan just tore into him,” a member of the team from Minnesota recalled. “He never yells. But he screamed, like, ‘What are you saving your energy for?’ ”
Capt. Chubashev died before making it back to base.
The next morning, Mr. Swift sat down beside several teammates who were drinking coffee. He said he was thinking about calling his children.
The men were shocked. They didn’t know he had kids.
Soon after, Ukrainian forces started to retreat from Severodonetsk. Several of the men on Mr. Swift’s team decided they’d had enough. They went home.
‘I’ll walk out’
Mr. Swift, by contrast, began setting up for life in Ukraine. He was looking for an apartment in Kyiv and sorted out a Ukrainian visa for a Thai woman he’d met when he was living there. He spoke of establishing an academy in Ukraine after the war to teach military tactics.
He returned to Mykolaiv, where he again led aquatic missions into Russian-held territory.
In August, Mr. Swift led an attack on a Russian-held village across the Inhulets River. Working with Ukrainian special forces, the team forced the Russians to retreat, calling in a strike on a house full of enemy soldiers and taking seven prisoners.
But they ended up sheltering in a basement under Russian artillery fire. Mr. Swift called the unit’s new Ukrainian commander, asking to pull back, according to team members. The commander said no.
Mr. Swift pulled the team out anyway. In the middle of the night, he and the team medic swam upriver to retrieve a half-inflated boat to bring their comrades and gear back across to Ukrainian-held territory. When they got back to the base, Mr. Swift quit and moved to another foreign legion team.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign legion declined to comment.
By the new year, Ukraine’s hold on Bakhmut, in the eastern Donetsk region, was tenuous. Mr. Swift’s unit, dispatched there, found Ukrainian troops scattered in basements around the city sheltering from withering Russian artillery fire.
“I’m just here in the basement,” Mr. Swift said in a phone call with a former Green Beret, who’d fought with him earlier in the war. “Trying to plan missions that are not going to get us killed.”
Mr. Swift was scheduled to leave Bakhmut later in January and planned to meet the Thai woman in Romania and bring her to Kyiv.
On the night of Jan. 17, Mr. Swift led a small team of Western fighters into a cluster of homes and began clearing them of fighters from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, according to Mr. Swift’s unit commander. As Mr. Swift led his squad between buildings, a Russian soldier fired a rocket-propelled grenade.
A projectile, either shrapnel or a bullet, penetrated Mr. Swift’s helmet and lodged in his brain.
His commander found Mr. Swift lying prone, yet coherent. As the unit hurried to evacuate, Mr. Swift fought to remain lucid and asked for help getting to his feet. “I’ll walk out,” he said.
He lost consciousness and died three days later at a trauma center in Dnipro, a nearby regional capital. He was 35 years old.
A memorial service for Daniel Swift in Lviv, Ukraine. PHOTO: STANISLAV IVANOV/GLOBAL IMAGES UKRAINE/GETTY IMAGES
Mr. Swift died while still a SEAL, though AWOL, in a war to which the U.S. hasn’t committed troops. This has complicated his family’s effort to collect benefits from Washington.
A Navy spokesman said Mr. Swift was considered to be an active deserter at the time of his death, and that “we cannot speculate as to why the former Sailor was in Ukraine.” The Pentagon has yet to make a ruling on the family’s petition.
On Feb. 11, several SEALs attended Mr. Swift’s funeral in Oregon. In a video viewed by the Journal, one by one they punched metal SEAL pins into the surface of his casket, a SEAL ritual to the fallen.
Nikita Nikolaienko contributed to this article.
Field officers of the 761st Tank Battalion – Captain Ivan Harrison, Captain Irvin McHenry, and 2nd Lieutenant James Lightfoot – near Nancy, France. 1944.
On the morning of Dec. 22, 1961, three trucks carrying members of the 3rd Radio Research Unit, their intelligence counterparts in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and an ARVN security detail rolled out the gate of their compound at Tan Son Nhut Air Base on the outskirts of Saigon. This compound was a high-security area surrounded by barbed wire fences. Only people with a legitimate reason for being there and “a need to know” were admitted. The small convoy was embarking on a mission west of Saigon.
When it ended, all but one member in the third truck would be dead. Among the casualties was Spc. 4 James T. “Tom” Davis, age 25, the first American to die in a ground combat action in Vietnam.
TOP SECRET UNIT
Davis grew up in the small town of Livingston, Tennessee, about 100 miles northeast of Nashville. It was a rural area with lots of mountains, streams and woods. According to his family, Davis was an “outdoor person” who spent most of his time fishing, hunting, trapping and roaming the woods. After high school, Davis attended Tennessee Polytechnic Institute but left to enlist in the Army.
When he completed basic training Davis was sent to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for Morse intercept training at the Army Security Agency. Afterward he was selected for radio direction finding school, where the Army sent its most promising ASA students to learn how to locate enemy communications signals.
In early 1961, under increasing pressure from communist guerrillas, the South Vietnamese government requested additional assistance, including military support from the United States. On Saigon’s wish list were equipment, personnel and training to support an intelligence program to monitor the communications of the North Vietnamese-backed Viet Cong.
In response to this request, the U.S. Army sent radio receivers as well as AN/PRD-1 direction finders. Shortly thereafter, the ASA formed the 3rd Radio Research Unit. The term “radio research” was chosen to disguise the unit’s secret connection to the ASA. The troops needed for this deployment were assembled and equipped at Fort Devens within three days after President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the unit on April 27,1961.
The newly formed ASA radio research unit developed plans for two operations. Operation Whitebirch was a 77-man unit established to target Viet Cong communication transmitters. The second operation, Sabertooth, would field a 15-man team to train ARVN communications intelligence operators. The highly skilled, highly trained and highly secret 92-man contigent of the 3rd Radio Research Unit arrived at Tan Son Nhut on May 13, 1961.
It was the first entire Army unit to deploy to Vietnam, although the men who got off the plane wore civilian clothes, a reflection of their secretive assignment. Previously, members of the military arrived as individuals and were placed in units after they were in-country. U.S. personnel in Vietnam in May 1961 were assigned to Military Assistance Advisory Group-Vietnam, formed in November 1955. The U.S. had approximately 3,000 military personnel in Vietnam at the time.
SEARCHING FOR A COMMUNIST TRANSMITTER
For several months during the fall of 1961 intelligence reports indicated a significant increase in enemy troop strength and activity around the town of Duc Hoa in Hau Nghia province, some 15 miles west of Saigon. That area had a history of communist insurgency dating back to French colonial days. By late fall Viet Cong activity had increased significantly. The ARVN command, their American MAAG-V counterparts and U.S. and South Vietnamese intel specialists suspected the Viet Cong had established a battalion headquarters and communication center in the vast expanses southeast of Duc Hoa.
By December, teams from the 3rd Radio Research Unit had begun to make forays into that area searching for a suspected communist transmitter. The most recent mission took place on Dec. 18 when the unit detected very strong radio signals from the suspected transmitter. The radio research troops were confident that they had acquired an accurate “fix” on its location.
Spc. 4 William Bergman, a member of the radio research unit, said in email correspondence with this article’s author, “The sad thing about the ambush is, that four days earlier on Dec. 18, we had obtained a fix on the enemy’s transmitter. On the mission of the 18th, I was in the lead unit, and we had set up just off the edge of the road. When their transmitter came up, it nearly blew out my eardrums.” The transmitter appeared to be sited in vast pineapple fields south of the villages of Cau Xang and Chau Hiep.
Even though the Americans had obtained what they considered accurate and actionable intelligence, ARVN commanders in Saigon ordered yet another mission to reconfirm the transmitter’s location, now designated as Target 627-C. They refused to commit their troops on an operation without another confirmation. Thus on Dec. 22, members of the 3rd Radio Research Unit and their ARVN counterparts set out yet again to confirm the transmitter’s location.
The troops on the mission were divided into three separate radio direction finding teams. Each team consisted of one American, several ARVN radio technicians and a small detachment of ARVN security personnel. While the teams normally operated out of three-quarter-ton trucks, essentially pickup trucks, this time they requested three bigger 2½-ton cargo trucks to carry a larger security group, a response to an ambush earlier that month near Duc Hoa. Only two 2½-ton trucks arrived the morning of Dec. 22.
One team had to use a three-quarter-ton truck—and thus fewer security personnel. That was Davis’ team.
AN ISOLATED LOCATION
Team 1 was headed by Bergman, a radio direction technician who took the front passenger seat in the cab of a 2½-ton truck. In the second large truck was Pvt. Richard Simpson and his team. The three-quarter-ton truck brought up the rear, with Davis in the front passenger seat.
The teams headed to the Cau Xang-Chau Hiep area, about 9 miles west of Saigon in the vicinity of Duc Hoa. The road, Highway 10, was narrow, rough and dusty, but it was the highest elevation for miles in all directions and provided an excellent view. As the three-truck convoy moved west the terrain changed from dry, lightly populated uplands to marshy emptiness as far as the eye could see, spreading south into the Mekong Delta and westward to the Cambodian border. The countryside consisted mostly of rice paddies and reeds, interlaced with hundreds of canals and a few scattered patches of woods. The rest was the old French Thieng Quang pineapple plantation. The three teams were nearing their destination by midmorning with the villages of Cau Xang and Chau Hiep just ahead.
The teams on the Dec. 22 mission had figured out the enemy radio transmission schedules on previous missions and planned to use those schedules to confirm the location of the transmitter. Radio direction finding teams preferred to take bearings from several different directions, but this area’s extensive wetlands and the lack of roads made that impossible. The radio technicians would have to make calculations from only three positions along the same road. The teams established a 3-mile baseline along Highway 10 near Cau Xang and waited for the Viet Cong transmissions to begin.
In the typical process, once the transmissions begin an operator shoots a bearing using a radio direction finder, a receiver that picks up the transmitter’s signal and determines the direction it’s coming from. The operator draws a line on a map from his location outward in the direction of the signal. This process is conducted simultaneously at each of the other two teams’ locations. Once completed, notes are compared. The point at which the three lines intersect should be the location of the enemy transmitter.
A FATAL DECISION
Two teams believed they were at good signal detection points, but “Tom was not satisfied with the quality of his signal and had made a request by radio to Control Net for permission to move to a better location,” Bergman recalled. Davis needed to move quickly, however, because the next transmission was scheduled to take place shortly.
The similar operations conducted by radio research teams in recent weeks had not gone unnoticed by communist forces in the area. The three Dec. 22 teams needed to complete their mission and get out as fast as possible.
The lead truck with Bergman was parked on the north shoulder of the road at an old French fort a hundred feet or so west of the Cau Xang Bridge when Davis’ request for one more transect came over the radio about 11:30 a.m.
Shortly after Davis got the go-ahead, his truck came over the bridge and drove past Bergman’s to get a better location for that last bearing. Bergman watched as Davis proceeded west on the road. About two minutes later, “I saw a black plume rise vertically from the roadbed,” Bergman said. “Then I heard and felt the explosion and the sound of automatic weapons…then silence.”
Bergman’s team raced to help Davis and the 10 ARVN troops in his team. By the time Bergman’s men arrived, the engagement was over, and the enemy had vanished. The sole survivor of the ambush was Davis’ ARVN driver.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
According to the driver’s account, recalled by Bergman, the Viet Cong had set off a remotely detonated mine (later determined to be a Czechoslovakian-made artillery shell) buried in the road. The mine was triggered a little late and exploded just after the truck passed over it. Even so, the explosion disabled the vehicle, which continued down the road about 30 yards, then rolled into a ditch. Intense small-arms fire from Viet Cong ambushers hiding alongside the road ripped into the vehicle. All nine ARVN soldiers in the truck’s cargo area died from the explosion or the subsequent VC gunfire.
Davis survived the explosion unscathed. He grabbed his M1 carbine and scrambled off the truck, taking with him a satchel containing secret communication codes and other classified materials. He immediately threw the satchel into the water to keep it out of enemy hands and returned to the truck as small arms-fire cracked all around him. He pulled his wounded ARVN driver from the vehicle, while still under intense fire, and shoved the man into a culvert to hide him from the Viet Cong.
Davis then ran west on the gravel road, turning and firing his carbine to draw enemy fire toward himself and away from other team members. He ran a short distance, turned and fired on the ambushers again. Davis was hit and fell, some 50 feet or so from the vehicle. The Viet Cong, no longer receiving any return fire, rushed to the wounded Davis. They shot the American in the head, killing him.
According to the driver’s testimony, the attackers searched Davis for anything of value including his watch. However, Davis, an experienced radio direction finder, kept his watch in a breast pocket so it would not interfere with the direction-finding process. The Viet Cong didn’t have time to search his body any further. Bergman’s team and an ARVN relief force were rapidly approaching from the east. The attackers quickly fled.
THE AFTERMATH
A radio call was made to ASA headquarters at Tan Son Nhut. Within an hour an officer from the 3rd Radio Research Unit and a member of the ARVN general staff were dispatched to the ambush scene. Arriving by helicopter, they picked up the wounded driver and retrieved the bodies of Davis and the nine dead ARVN soldiers. All were returned to Saigon on an aircraft that was part of the 57th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter), which had arrived in Vietnam less than two weeks earlier.
On Dec. 11, 1961, the carrier USS Core docked in downtown Saigon with 32 Army Piasecki CH-21 Shawnee helicopters and 400 men belonging to the 57th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter) from Fort Lewis, Washington, and the 8th Transportation Company (Light Helicopter) from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This event was the first major symbol of American combat power in Vietnam and the beginning of a new era of airmobility in the U.S. Army.
The morning following the Dec. 22 ambush, 30 CH-21s of the 8th and 57th Transportation companies were loaded with several hundred troops from ARVN’s elite Airborne Brigade. Using fresh intelligence from Davis’ outfit, the 3rd Radio Research Unit, they headed west to attack the Viet Cong at the Thieng Quang pineapple plantation in Operation Chopper, the first helicopter assault of the Vietnam War.
Already in place along a canal south of the target was an ARVN blocking force to prevent a VC escape. The lead helicopter in the formation was piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Bennie Potts of the 57th Transportation His co-pilot was Capt. Emmett Knight, the operations officer of the 57th and the man responsible for planning the aviation component of the mission. “We were looking for a large sugar mill near the distinctive ‘Y’ intersection with the An Ha and the Kinh Xang canals,” Knight, who retired as a colonel, said in an interview with this article’s author. “From there, we were to bank to the left and begin our descent to the LZ about 5 clicks [kilometers/3 miles] to the south. We flew in at 500 feet and initiated a 500 foot per minute decent.”
The location of a radio transmitter suspected to be part of the Viet Cong command center for the Saigon region had been verified by Davis and the two other radio direction finding teams the previous day and was one of the assault’s targets.
As the choppers headed south along the Kinh Xang canal they flew over portions of the pineapple plantation and passed a huge statue of Buddha sitting only a half-mile south of Cau Xang. Later in the war and for many decades beyond, this would be known as The Lonely Buddha.
The choppers landed about 3 miles south of of Cau Xang. Reports indicated the Viet Cong were completely surprised by the speed with which the ARVN airborne troops surrounded them. The radio transmitter was put out of operation and an unknown number of Viet Cong killed and captured.
Operation Chopper’s success was directly attributed to the Americans of the 3rd Radio Research Unit and their Vietnamese counterparts, who diligently searched for and located the transmitter—for which Davis and nine ARVN soldiers paid the ultimate price.
Davis was buried in his hometown at Livingston’s Good Hope Cemetery on Jan. 3, 1962. On Jan. 10, less than three weeks after his death, the Army Security Agency officially named the 3rd Radio Research Unit’s Tan Son Nhut compound “Davis Station.” V
Mark D. Raab served in Vietnam February 1970-March 1972 as a specialist 4 in the 277th Field Artillery Detachment, 23rd Artillery Group, II Field Force. A student of Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War, he has returned to Vietnam four times beginning in January 1989. He retired as a superintendent of Natural Resources in Howard County, Maryland, in 2015. He lives in Reisterstown, Maryland.
Arsenals and Library of Congress
Retired Army engineer officer Lt. Col. Charles “Sherm” Mills with his M1903 Springfield rifle purchased from the NRA for $14.50. During his assignment to Springfield Arsenal, the “CAL .30” rifle was professionally restored by fellow “Artificers.” Photo: Chip Lohman
First, some history: From the 50-plus weapon and ammunition arsenals created since the birth of our nation, you’ll recognize a few of the names that have been proudly adopted by firearm-related companies, such as Frankford Arsenal (reloading supplies) and gun manufacturers like Springfield Armory, Rock River and Redstone, not to mention the ubiquitous Picatinny Rail.1
Our nation’s firearm manufacturing industry began in 1777 when patriot colonists established “The Arsenal at Springfield.” By the War of 1812, additional federal arsenals had been approved by the Continental Congress, including: Springfield and Harpers Ferry Arsenals that manufactured small arms; Watervliet Arsenal in New York for the production of artillery equipment and ammunition; Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts for artillery gun carriages and small arms and the Frankford, Pa., arsenal that fabricated ammunition. Later, Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois produced artillery recoil mechanisms, followed by the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey for artillery ammunition.
“Arsenals were typically staffed by a small cadre of military personnel and a large number of skilled civilian “artificers.” Although the Ordnance Department was officially tasked with [the]responsibility to design weaponry after 1834, new models of all types were normally brought to the Department by entrepreneurs or commercial companies for testing and evaluation.” From The Arsenal Act: Context and Legislative History by Daniel H. Else.
Springfield Arsenal’s original main building now houses a museum of the largest American gun collection in the world.
Springfield Arsenal: The Nation’s first Ordnance Arsenal is located in the city of Springfield, Mass., and was the main source for the manufacture of United States military firearms from 1777 until its closing in 1968. It was the first federal armory and one of the first factories in the United States dedicated to the manufacture of weapons. Today, the site is preserved as the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, and features the world’s largest collection of historic American firearms.
So how did retired Army Lt. Col. and decorated Vietnam veteran “Sherm” Mills find himself in receipt of orders to close the doors on this iconic institution? During an interview with this modest Dumfries, Va., veteran, his story was told for the first time.
As a Distinguished ROTC graduate of Dartmouth College in 1957, Mills entered the Army with a regular commission, thus bypassing the typical two-year probationary period as a reservist. His first duty assignment was platoon leader and later commanding officer of Delta Company, 91st Combat Engineer Battalion, Camp Dumfries (which would later become Fort Belvoir, Va.). After studying at the Army Engineering Center, Mills’ career included a return to the Center as an instructor in 1969. Mills later put himself through night school at George Washington University to earn a master’s degree in engineering administration.
During two tours in Vietnam, Mills was awarded three Bronze Star medals—one with the V device for heroism; the Air Medal; the Meritorious Unit Commendation and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm, among several other awards earned during his 22-year career. It was after his first tour in Vietnam that then-Capt. Mills received orders to Springfield with the assignment to de-commission the storied arsenal.
Q: So what was your first impression of those orders, Lt. Col. Mills?
A: I thought it sounded interesting, even though I did not yet know the magnitude of the assignment. I was sent to a two-week Post Engineer School en route to Springfield to learn the technical aspects of the job.
Q: Once you reported-in to Springfield Arsenal, who did your team consist of and what was their morale, having learned that the arsenal would be closing?
A: While the entire group exceeded 200 civilian craftsmen, I worked primarily with each of the section heads of various union-organized plumbers, electricians, millwrights (move machinery) and carpenters who worked in 65 buildings spread out over four campuses. (Laughing) I did a lot of walking in those days to supervise the line and keep an eye on the details.
Then Maj. Mills, after his assignment to Springfield Arsenal and return from a second tour in Vietnam.
Springfield Arsenal had been the principle employer for generations of families in the area, so naturally there was some disappointment. However, the Army went to great lengths to retrain and place those employees who chose not to retire. I don’t recall the numbers, but many of the 200 personnel under my watch transferred to other arsenals.
They were a very talented group of tradesmen, and I remember one particularly challenging job for the millwrights was to move a very large piece of machinery and drop it precisely into a narrow area of the shop. Another interesting aspect of the job was that, having been built in the early 1900s, the electricity to power the machinery was a unique 380 volts, rather than the standard 220/440 volts you see today. So that presented some unique maintenance challenges for our electricians.
Q: What was a typical day for you at the arsenal?
A: Every single piece of machinery or tool had a serial number, so that was a large part of the two-year project—accounting for everything; annotating where it was shipped; or whether it was disposed of or sold. We hired a contractor to help move all the equipment, which required detailed coordination. Because most of my crew were union members, there were restrictions on workload, scheduling and so-on. So organizing the equipment moves to make efficient use of people’s time was a large part of our planning effort. I submitted weekly reports to my boss and worked closely with the transportation officer once we had the machines inventoried and ready for shipment.
Aerial view of one of the four Springfield Arsenal campuses that then-Capt. Mills was tasked with transitioning.
Each day began with a campus-wide bugle call for reveille and ended with evening taps. So, despite the large number of civilian employees, the arsenal retained certain military traditions. Once reveille and the morning flag raising were completed, my day began with a one-minute walk from my quarters to my office—not a very long commute! Amidst the daily planning and inventory tasks, we continued to manufacture items such as M14 stocks and barrels. And of course we had to keep everything running, so I organized a system of work orders to keep up with breakages and repairs while everything else was going on. I also had the collateral duty of safety officer with two full-time inspectors overseeing the operation. The bottom line for my job was: keep track of everything, and keep it running until it was shipped, sold or scrapped.
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Following his assignment, Mills was promoted to major. This extract from his efficiency report while assigned to the arsenal helps explain the promotion.
He has personally supervised and coordinated this effort which required that much detailed information be furnished as to stock numbers, nomenclature, condition code, availability dates, age of equipment, etc. … Captain Mills presents a trim, sharp military appearance and sets a fine example for the employees who work under his supervision by his fine personal appearance, his aggressive direction of the Post Engineer activities and his firm but amiable approach to getting a job done in a timely manner … .
As Mills reminisced about the two years spent at Springfield Arsenal, he recalled occasional, brief meetings with a distinguished staff member whose name you may recognize. Mills spoke respectfully about this consultant—a Mr. John Garand2—of whom Mills said, “He was a very nice gentleman who lived in the Springfield area and was helping with the design of the M14 rifle at the time.”
How else would a retired engineer organize his personal wine collection? Photo: Chip Lohman
Following his retirement in 1979, Mills and his wife, Caroline, settled in Springfield, Va., followed by a move in 2005 to Dumfries, Va., just 20 minutes south of Fort Belvoir—their first duty station of nearly three decades prior.
As we were looking through his gun collection, we passed by a climate-controlled room in Mills’ basement. Given his organizational skills at Springfield Arsenal, it was no surprise to see how Lt. Col. Mills inventoried his retirement hobby of wine collecting.
Postscript
What follows are a few of the hallmarks of our nations’ military might, spread over the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, two World Wars, the Korean War, Vietnam and our continued presence in the Middle East.
Rocky Mountain Arsenal: The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a United States chemical weapons manufacturing center located near Denver, Colo. The site was completed in 1942, operated by the U.S. Army throughout the later 20th century, and was controversial among local residents until its closure in 1992. Much of the site is now protected as the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.
Detroit Arsenal: Detroit Arsenal was the first manufacturing plant ever built for the mass production of tanks in the United States. Established in 1940 under Chrysler, this plant was owned and managed by the U.S. government until 1952, when management of the facility was turned over to the Chrysler Corp. Chrysler’s construction effort was one of the fastest on record.The first tanks rumbled out of the plant, even before its construction was completed.
Watertown Arsenal: Established in 1816-1968, the Watertown Arsenal was a major American arsenal located on the northern shore of the Charles River in Watertown, Mass. During the Civil War, a new commander’s quarters was commissioned by then-Capt. Thomas J. Rodman, inventor of the Rodman gun3.
Watervliet Arsenal:“The Big Gun Shop.” Built in 1813 in Watervliet, N.Y., on the west bank of the Hudson River, it is the oldest continuously active arsenal in the United States. The arsenal was founded to support the War of 1812, and was designated as the Watervliet Arsenal in 1817. Today, Watervliet produces much of the artillery for the U.S. Army, as well as gun tubes for cannons, mortars and tanks. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1966.
Footnotes:
1The rail is named after the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, which was tasked in 1992 to develop a standardized mounting system after the U.S. Army was dissatisfied with available products on the market.
2John C. Garand created the semi-automatic M1 Garand rifle that was widely used by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War.
3 The Rodman gun was a class of Civil War–era coastal fortification artillery pieces designed to shoot shell and shot munitions.