Week of November 8

Week of November 4—10, 2018:
The Dawson Brothers

On November 6, 1964, U.S. Army First Lieutenant Daniel George Dawson and a South Vietnamese Army observer were flying aboard a small L-19 observation plane conducting a reconnaissance mission over Bien Hoa Province. When Dawson flew a low pass over the jungle tree tops a little northeast of Saigon, he was shot down by Viet Cong small arms fire and crashed. Upon hearing that Dawson had been listed as missing in action, Donald Dawson, Daniel’s younger brother, travelled to Vietnam alone and spent eight months in the jungle looking for him. Donald was eventually captured and held prisoner by the Viet Cong. Though Daniel’s remains were never found, the story of these two brothers remains a remarkable account of valor and brotherly love.

Daniel and Donald Dawson were born in northern California, but they grew up all over the West Coast, from southern California to Alaska. Their father, a commercial fisherman, was rarely around, and their mother struggled to make ends meet. Daniel and Donald (who was two years younger) were often left to themselves, and they grew to depend on each other from an early age. Daniel always wanted to serve in the military, and he enlisted in the Army and underwent pilot training in the early 1960s. He deployed to Vietnam in 1964, near the end of the U.S. advisory period and a full year before the United States officially deployed combat troops to Southeast Asia.

First Lieutenant Dawson’s aircraft was the Army L-19 “Bird Dog.” A small and slow single engine plane that the Army used to scout for Viet Cong troops, camps, and bases. Because it could fly low and slow, and because the Viet Cong had no real antiaircraft artillery, the L-19 was considered suitable for air reconnaissance. If the pilot located any enemy targets, he relayed the coordinates to bomber and attack aircraft for a strike.

While the L-19 was not in danger from antiaircraft shells, it proved vulnerable to small arms fire from the ground. If Viet Cong fighters suspected they had been spotted by the L-19, they knew a strike would be coming. They learned to do all they could to knock the plane out of the sky, usually by attempting to hit the pilot. On November 6, 1964, in the forest northeast of Saigon, the Viet Cong believed Dawson and his South Vietnamese observer had indeed spotted them (In order for the U.S. to maintain the claim that American troops were in South Vietnam purely as advisers, they were required to fly with South Vietnamese counterparts at all times). Dawson’s L-19 never returned to base. According to ostensible witnesses, Dawson had been hit by a bullet, which killed him and caused the plane to crash, though U.S. personnel did not know this at the time. Dawson was listed as missing in action. A subsequent search turned up no evidence of his crash site or whereabouts. The Army informed the Dawson family.

Donald, beside himself with anger and grief, decided to take action. Years before, the Dawson brothers had lost their father at sea when his fishing boat sank off the coast of California, and as Daniel and Donald’s mother put it to a journalist in 1965, “one unmarked grave is enough.” Donald, who had a wife and three young children, quit his job and made plans to travel to Vietnam to find Daniel.

Donald arrived in Saigon in early 1965 and immediately asked the men in Daniel’s unit if they had any information. He also studied reports of the incident. Donald determined the crash site was in the vicinity of a Viet Cong stronghold known as War Zone D, or the “Iron Triangle,” not far outside Saigon. With zero military experience and carrying a small rife, a pistol, water purification tablets, and a bottle of “Pep” pills (a methamphetamine pill widely available in 1960s-America), he ventured off alone, save for a small German Shepherd named Code he had picked up near Saigon. The U.S. Military Assistance Command, though sympathetic, warned him that they could not help him, and that if he got into trouble he was on his own.

Donald spent months, moving from village to village, asking about his brother. He printed up, passed out, dropped, and posted thousands of leaflets, written in Vietnamese, offering a reward of 50,000 piasters (roughly $5,000 in 2018 dollars) for Daniel’s remains and 100,000 piasters if he was found alive. He became somewhat famous to the local Vietnamese in the area, known only as “The Brother of the Pilot.” He encountered resistance and help in equal measure. Many Vietnamese were friendly and wanted to help. But others’ stares and silence made for numerous tense and dangerous encounters.

After several weeks based in the small Catholic village of Thai Hung, Donald decided the time had come to venture into Viet Cong-held territory. Amazingly, on several occasions he walked boldly up to Viet Cong road blocks and moved passed them without talking or looking down, followed only by the confused eyes of Viet Cong guards unsure what to make of this lone bearded white man walking through the jungle. After four months of searching, Donald finally believed he had been granted a meeting with the leadership of the Viet Cong. Instead, they blindfolded him and the young French-Vietnamese woman working as his translator and marched them for nine days to a prison camp in the jungle.

The camp was known as “Camp SOB,” nicknamed by three American POWs who spent time there before being marched northward and whose imprisonment overlapped with Dawson’s. Dawson was questioned, and when his dog, Code, lunged at Dawson’s interrogator, a nearby guard shot and killed her. Dawson was then placed in a large log cage, where he spent the next four months in captivity. His captors did not know what to make of his story, and some believed he was a spy. After three weeks, one of the camp guards relayed to him that his brother had been shot and killed and his plane had crashed. After having been cooped up for weeks, Donald himself later reported that this information—whether true or not—filled him alternately with rage and despair. At one point, he attempted to commit suicide by swallowing all of his “Pep” pills, but they only made him sick. After several more weeks, he began to be allowed outside the cage for a few hours a day to work.

Finally, one day, a well-dressed Vietnamese man sat down with him and told him he was a representative of Viet Cong leadership. They had, he said, looked into Donald Dawson’s story about why he was in Vietnam and found it credible. The man told Donald that his brother’s plane had crashed and burned, and that his brother had been hit by ground fire. He went on to note that they had buried Daniel and his South Vietnamese Army observer near the crash site. Donald pleaded to be allowed to see the grave, but he was denied. The Viet Cong officer offered Donald an unmarked U.S. Navy yellow vest, claiming it was the only thing left from the crash.

After four months in captivity, Donald and his translator were told they would be released. But while waiting for this, Donald contracted malaria, which nearly killed him. After weeks of agony and fever, he recovered enough to be escorted on foot out of Communist-controlled territory. After three days of walking, he reached allied troops.

Daniel Dawson’s remains were never located. He was promoted to Captain while missing in action. He is honored on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., Panel 1E, Line 71. His younger brother’s harrowing attempt to find his brother on his own made Donald Dawson famous for a short time. His account was published in Life magazine twice in 1965—once before he was captured and once after his release. Two production companies expressed interest in making a film about the Dawson brothers in 2013, though it was never completed.¹

¹Donald L. Price, The First Marine Captured in Vietnam: A Biography of Donald G. Cook (Jefferson, NC: Macfarland and Company, 2007); Don Moser, “‘Where Will the Bullet Come From?’ A Walk Through Vietcong Country with Donald Dawson,” Life Magazine, March 12, 1965; Donald Dawson, “I Finally Met the Vietcong and Became Their Prisoner,” Life Magazine, October 8, 1965; Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1998); “Wall of Faces,” Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (accessed 11/7/18); Dave McNary, “Luis Mandoki to Direct Vietnam War Drama ‘Don Dawson,’ August 29, 2013 (accessed 11/7/18).