Daddy Jay Stories: Di Linh

You have to drive through Boa Loc to get to Di Linh, Vietnam. Fifty years ago the road between the two towns were nothing but Indian country but now it is almost impossible to see where one town ends and the other begins. Di Linh is the heart of Daddy Jay’s first tour in Vietnam, so I feel it is only fitting for this story to begin here.

By the time we reached the border of Di Linh I could see the look of relief on my grandfather’s face as he finally recognized Mr. Tet’s tea plantation. The plantation no longer belonged to the Frenchman but the valley and the rows of tea were still in place.

The road splits into two now and one leads up a hill to a small park with a tennis/soccer field and a two-story building some two hundred yards away. Across the street is a newly renovated government building. Fifty years ago the tennis courts were a landing pad for helicopters, the government building was the compound which housed the 407th scout company and my grandfather, and the two-story building was an old hotel and the main focus of my favorite Daddy Jay Vietnam story.

“John Dunn and I were sitting on guard one night during Tet of ‘68," Daddy Jay laughed to himself as he started this one, “I know I have told you this 100 times but it amazes me every time.”

Tet means the Lunar New Year and, in the past, everything had been all-quiet on the fronts, but this January of 1968 was the start of the Tet Offensive. The NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and the VC (Viet Cong) hit the compound where Daddy Jay and the 407th scout company were garrisoned almost every night.

“It was nothing serious, just little bursts here and there,” Daddy Jay said.

It was late in the evening when Daddy Jay and John Dunn were sitting on top of the compound keeping watch. About 150 or so yards away from the compound stood a two-story hotel with open windows, in between were thick trees, branches growing in every which direction.

“John turned to me with a parachute flare in his had,” Daddy Jay was already laughing, “’I bet I could hit that hotel with this flare’ and I told him there was no way in hell he could hit that hotel because there were too many trees in the way; it wouldn’t make it 20 yards.” So John looked at Daddy Jay, looked at the parachute flare, aimed, fired the flare from the top of the compound and off it went.

“That damn flare went straight through the trees and right into the open middle window of that hotel.”

They waited and about three minutes later people started pouring out of the hotel like ants. “I swear, they were coming out of the windows, just all over the place,” Daddy Jay gestured with his hands what it looked like from 150 yards away. “Smoke was coming out of the windows and about 2 or 3 minutes later the owner came out with that flare on the end of a broom just raisin’ hell.”

The hotel building is still there, the trees have been cleared and the land developed over time. “You could sit there your whole life and try and make that shot again, but you never would.”