Jackson was preceded in death by . . . his grandson, Perry Dale, . . .
A year after enlisting, on June 22nd, 1967, Audra’s son Perry Patton Dale was killed in action in Vietnam during “The Battle of the Slopes,” on Hill 1338 in South Vietnam, near the tri-border area with Laos and Cambodia.
Seventy-six members of Perry’s Alpha Company were killed in an ambush as they were making their way back to base camp at Dak To. Forty-three of them had been executed. This was surmised by the exit wounds those forty-three had in their heads. One wounded soldier had survived the ordeal by playing dead. Although his head was split open, and his skull exposed, the coup de grâce had only stunned him.
General Westmoreland flew in to address the survivors and praise them for their courage. Standing on the hood of a jeep, he congratulated them on their victory, saying that they had “whipped” the enemy. One member of Alpha Company turned to another and asked rhetorically, “Wonder what he’s been smoking.”
Perry Dale was among the seventy-six killed, but he was apparently not one of the forty-three executed. The death certificates of the executed reported that they had suffered “fragmentation wounds to the head”; Perry’s Report of Casualty stated that he died “as a result of metal fragment wound received during hostile ground action.”
The newspaper report in the Fort Bragg Advocate-News, datelined June 29, 1967, read:
FORT BRAGG FAMILY MOURNS
War Comes Sadly Home
Headlines all over the nation Saturday told of the destruction of two platoons of paratroopers—76 dead out of 80 men—in a Red ambush high in Vietnam’s central highlands.
Mr. and Mrs. Boyd Dale of Fort Bragg were waiting for the body of their son, Sgt. Perry Patton Dale. “An officer came to talk about the arrangements,” said the father. “They had told us Monday that Perry was dead. He will be buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery. We had a call again in the morning, and we believe our boy is on his way home.”
Perry Dale is survived by his parents; three sisters: Rosalie (Ted) Green, Sharon (Larry) Keinfeld, and Patsy (Fred) Silva; his grandparents, Jackson and Crystalina Calloway; and several aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews.
Prior to departing Dak To, the 173rd Airborne, to which Perry belonged, conducted their traditional “boots” ceremony. In a poignant tribute to those from their ranks who had fallen in the battle, the Sky Soldiers held a memorial service with a pair of jump boots placed in rank to represent each fallen paratrooper. The sight of dozens and dozens of boots arranged in neat rows packed an emotional wallop; it was a ceremony the participants would never forget.
Perry received the following medals: Good Conduct; Parachutist Badge; Marksman Badge (Rifle); Expert Badge (Automatic Rifle); Bronze Star; Combat Infantryman Badge; Military Merit Medal; and Gallantry Cross with Palm (the latter two were posthumously awarded to him by “The Government of the Republic of Vietnam”).
America’s largest anti-war protests took place four months later, in October, as tens of thousands marched on Washington. Among the counterculture in the United States, 1967 was known as the “Summer of Love.” Somehow, word of that did not seem to reach those engaged in combat in the jungles of Asia. On a single day, in a single battle, in a solitary company of soldiers, in the midst of that peaceful-sounding, sunny season, seventy-six young American men lost their lives. Beloved son, brother, grandson, etc. Perry Patton Dale was one of these.
Chapter 1 can be read here.
Chapter 18 can be read here.