The following story is about James Davis who was the first recognized American soldier killed in open combat with the enemy during the Vietnam War. I was stationed for a year at a compound on Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon which was named in his honor. The following story will tell a little about Jim's life, his mission in Vietnam and finally his death while serving his country.
The 8th and 57th Helicopter Companies arrived on the USS Core, at Saigon Port in December 1961.
Only days after the two units arrived in Vietnam, a 3/4 ton truck rumbled across Tan Son Nhut Air Base past radar domes and administrative buildings, turned a corner near aircraft hangars and stopped abruptly in front of a small heavily guarded compound within the air base. The truck had arrived to pick up one last passenger. The driver and occupants were instructed to wait near the gate of the 3d Radio Research Unit until their passenger came out of the compound. Very few people, Americans included, ever set foot within the fenced-in area unless they were assigned to the Army Security Agency. Finally, James T. Davis exited the top-secret facility.
A Vietnamese driver was at the wheel of the truck with nine Vietnamese soldiers, in full combat gear, sitting in the back. The cab of the truck only had room for two; Davis had slung a sixty-pound rucksack between himself and the driver on the front seat. It was equipment he was sticking close to. The truck's engine started with a bellow, drove away from the compound and pulled out of the main gate of Tan Son Nhut Air Base. It swung onto the main road going north and then off to the left and away from the city towards Duc Hoa.
James T. Davis, known to friends and family as "Tom," had been in Vietnam for five months. The sights and sounds of the congested city and the erratic maneuvering of the Vietnamese driver as he nosed through traffic were a sharp contrast to Davis' life in rural Livingston, Tennessee.
As a child, much of his time was spent out of doors hunting, fishing and exploring the hills in and around Livingston. While in high school he played football as a defensive halfback. The year after he graduated, "Tom" Davis married his high school sweetheart, Geraldine Martin. Once, in a high school English class, he was given the assignment of writing an autobiography in which he stated, "My ambitions are unlimited, my fate unknown." James T. Davis would meet his fate as the first battlefield casualty of the Vietnam conflict.
Tom left his engineering studies at the Tennessee Technological University in his senior year to join the army. After training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Tom was transferred to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, where he completed the Direction Finding Course and the Instructor Training Course at the U.S. Army Security Agency School. In May 1961 he received orders for the 3d Radio Research Unit, Republic of Vietnam and on 22 December 1961, riding in that 3/4 ton truck, left the compound soon to bear his name.
Specialist Davis and the ten ARVN soldiers were on a radio direction finding mission twelve miles from Saigon. Davis and the ARVN's were half of a team who would find enemy radio transmission locations by tuning in the same frequency from two different geographical points. This procedure would enable such missions to pinpoint the exact location of enemy radio transmitters. During the detection process, however, Davis and the soldiers were themselves detected.
An unknown number of Viet Cong guerrilla forces were hidden along the sides of the road. As the vehicle passed, a land mine was detonated under its tailgate. The vehicle swerved off the right side of the road thirty yards past the point of explosion. Davis leaped from the cab of the truck to rally the ARVN forces. He took a stand fifty feet in front of the vehicle in an effort to gain the most effective position possible to return fire on the enemy. Although valiant: his attempt to return fire was brief. He managed to squeeze off four or five rounds before a bullet took his life. Nine of the ten ARVN soldiers were massacred in the onslaught. A Vietnamese Civil Guard unit located a mile from the action arrived on the scene but the Viet Cong had melted back into the jungle.
The body of James "Tom" Davis, the first American to lose his life in open battle with the Viet Cong, lay on the roadside on the outskirts of Saigon for over an hour until a U.S. Army officer and a member of the Vietnamese General Staff arrived on the scene by helicopter. The first mission of the new helicopter units in Vietnam was to recover the body of the first American killed in open combat. . . .
The 3d Radio Research facilities were officially designated Davis Station on 10 January 1962, becoming the first military compound to be named for a fallen soldier in Vietnam. Davis Station was originally the home of the 3d Radio Research Unit which, in fact, was a cover organization for the headquarters of the Army Security Agency in Vietnam. The 3d RRU was replaced in 1966 by the 509th Radio Research Group.
By the end of 1972, the Army Security Agency had vacated Davis Station and the location became known as Camp Davis. After the Paris Accords, Camp Davis became the headquarters of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) delegation in Saigon.
This photo was taken by Doug Warner from the water tower near the compound. The James Davis Memorial is in the foreground. Our hooches (barracks) and Tan Son Nhut Runway in the rear of photo.
The Radio Research Communications Unit - Vietnam comcenter would be to the left and not in photo. Photos of our comcenter are very rare since it was against the law to take them.
