He turned nightmares into a dream

“When I left for Vietnam and flew out of Bismarck, that's the first time that I saw my dad cry,” Vietnam War veteran David “Dave” Logosz says. “My mom and dad were there, and my grandparents were there, and they were all in tears. I'm sure they didn't think I was going to come back alive.”

But he did.

The North Dakota farm boy survived 369 days in Vietnam, including 46 days of “pure hell” in Cambodia, as a U.S. Army sniper and radiotelephone operator with Delta Company, 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. There, the 3/22nd Infantry engaged in a variety of missions, including search-and-rescue operations, securing supply routes and defending fire support bases against enemy attacks.

“I learned the definition of two words in Vietnam. One of them is tired. How tired can you get? So tired that you don't sit down because you might not be able to get back up. The other word is scared. How scared is scared? You get mighty scared,” Dave says. “You see other people get wounded and killed, and you wonder, are you next?”
 

JUNGLE ENEMIES 
“When we landed in Vietnam, I couldn't believe how hot it was, and it stunk,” Dave says.

For that entire year, Dave lived in the jungle.

“We just slept on a poncho on the ground, in the rain, in the heat. We just had to endure the conditions that were given to us,” he says.

There were many enemies in the jungle: communist forces, the weather and the critters.

“It’s different in the jungle,” Dave says. “One day, it was just pouring rain. There were five or seven of us that were moving along. We decided to take a break in this banana plantation, and I sat down on this log. … The log started moving. It was a Burmese python, (as big as a log) and about 20 feet long. That'll wake you up in a hurry.”
 

PURE HELL
Dave was involved in the invasion of Cambodia in April 1970.

“Cambodia was pure hell because we were fighting not VC (Viet Cong), but NVA (North Vietnamese Army), skilled soldiers,” he says.

Those days and dark, silent nights in Cambodia bonded Dave to his fellow soldiers. They laughed when they could, sometimes at the expense of his good friend, Rooster.

Dave fought in Cambodia, in the same fatigues, for 46 days.

“You wore them so long that the armpits rotted out and the uniforms turned white from salt, from sweat,” Dave says.

“When we got back from Cambodia, we were a rough-looking bunch,” he says.
 

PURPLE HEARTS
Dave earned many medals from his time in the service, including four Purple Hearts.

On Black Virgin Mountain in Tay Ninh, Vietnam, Dave and four others walked into a U-shaped ambush.

“We were jumping from boulder to boulder to get away, but the enemy fire was just, it was terrible,” Dave recalls. “And there was a guy, he wasn’t even 50 feet in front of me, with a machine gun. I took a hand grenade and threw it at his position, and (that’s when I noticed) I got shot in the finger.”

Dave lost part of his left middle finger – his dominant shooting hand – but quickly returned to combat.

“They send you back out, as long as you can move,” he says.
 

GOING HOME
Dave got to Vietnam the same day as his friend Rooster, which meant they were on the same helicopter out when it was time to go home.

The night before they were to leave, Rooster went to visit buddies at another fire support base about 10 miles away. He jumped a ride on an armored personnel carrier (APC) the next morning to make his 10 a.m. departure.

“About 8 o’clock in the morning, we heard an explosion. It was about half a mile away from us,” Dave recalls.

A rocket-propelled grenade hit the APC Rooster was in.

“(It) took both of his legs off, and he bled to death,” Dave says, fighting back tears.

“You remember the sad stories, and you try to remember the good times in Vietnam, too… There were a lot of good times, and you developed a comradeship with those people,” Dave says. “They became like part of your family.”
 

SCARS OF WAR
Once back in America, Dave was processed out at Travis Air Force Base in Oakland, Calif., then bought his plane ticket home to North Dakota.

“It was a very anti-war climate at the time, and so, fortunately, North Dakota carried the patriotism. But there were parts of the country that, of course, did not, and he experienced that when he was coming back from Vietnam,” Dave’s wife, Cathy, says.

It was August 1970.

“It was at the airport (in California) where they were spitting on soldiers, and that didn’t give us a good feeling,” Dave says. “That contributed quite a bit to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), because here you thought you did what you had to do, and you did your time. And here, there were people that were disrespecting you.”

“When I first got back from Vietnam, I had PTSD really bad,” Dave says. “I would go to bed, and I'd wake up and the sheets would be so wet you could wring them out. I had nightmares like you wouldn't believe. Through the years, it's gone away, not completely, but I can go sometimes a couple weeks without dreaming about Vietnam. Yet, I can have a dream, and I can remember the smells, I can remember the names of the people that were there, and I can remember what happened, just as clear as it happened 10 minutes ago.”

It took work and getting help, but Dave figured out a way to keep on living, despite the nightmares and scars of war.

“I decided that PTSD wasn't going to get me; I'm going to win,” Dave says. “While I had PTSD, I did quite a bit of drinking. See, that was one of the ways to forget your troubles. And I decided, well, it's time to quit and behave and try and get this stuff out of your mind.”

Cathy says she’s proud of her husband for sharing his story.

“Dave has always been one to share his stories with others, his experiences, his encouragement to talk with him to get help if they need it. And I think he, over the years, has influenced a lot of others to open up about their experiences,” she says.
 

DAVE’S DREAM
In 2011, Dave and Cathy joined Vietnam veterans across the country for a motorcycle ride to Washington, D.C., to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“Along that trip, I saw more emotion out of Dave than ever,” Cathy says.

They stopped at many veterans memorials along the way, including one that moved Dave to tears, as a shadow fell over Rooster’s name.

“When I came to his name, I couldn’t stand it. (It) was so emotional to see his name there,” Dave says.

After that trip, Dave decided he wanted to see a memorial erected honoring all the veterans of Stark County.

Cathy and Dave handed out invites. Five people showed for the first meeting. A month later, there were 50 people. Four years later, there was a memorial standing in Dickinson honoring the more than 6,000 Stark County veterans, from the Civil War until now.

An adjacent building, which is owned by the city and managed by Dickinson Parks and Recreation, was later added to the veterans memorial site. It can be rented for parties and events, and was partially financed through fundraising by veterans, who raised $100,000 within a week to get the project off the ground.

“It was all paid for before it even happened,” Cathy says.

Last month, the Stark County Veterans Memorial Association celebrated the 10th anniversary of the memorial’s dedication.

“If I did anything in my life, that's it,” Dave says with pride.

“It’s Dave’s dream. That’s what I call it, Dave’s dream,” Cathy says.

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Cally Peterson is editor of North Dakota Living. She can be reached at cpeterson@ndarec.com.