Page 32 - DFCS NEWS MAGAZINE 2020-1

Veterans Day Reunion 50 Years Later
The Two Vets Shot in Helmets on Same Mission By Andrew Dyer – The San Diego Union Tribune, November 12, 2019
Door gunner Steven Brown, right, is shown here after he got shot in the helmet on a mission in Vietnam on Nov. 11, 1969. Pilot Bobby Baker is at left. (Photo; K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union- Tribune)
It was Veterans Day in 1969 when Army Capt. Dennis Schoville took to the South Vietnamese skies over the Mekong Delta. He’d been in the Army two years and had already been wounded twice. This, however, would be his last mission.
Schoville flew his OH-6A helicopter along the outskirts of the U Minh Forest on the western edge of the delta. Alongside him flew another helicopter
piloted by Bobby Baker, a warrant officer, and PFC Steven Brown, who was Baker’s observer and door gunner.
Spotting their enemy’s position, Schoville told his own observer to drop yellow smoke on them so that
air support could target them. That observer missed and Schoville turned around to try the drop again. This time, the North Vietnamese fighters were ready.
They hit his helicopter, flying at about 50 feet, with small arms fire. Schoville was shot through a leg and through his helmet. His helicopter went down in a rice paddy.
Baker’s helicopter, still airborne, began providing cover fire for Schoville and his observer. Brown, while using the door gun, accidentally leaned on some flight controls, causing his helicopter to tilt nose-down. Just then another enemy round went through Brown’s helmet and into Baker’s. The helmets saved them, and later Schoville and his observer were rescued.
Now on Monday, in Miramar, Schoville and Brown reflected on that day 50 years ago at a Veterans Day ceremony. Schoville, who lives in San Diego and serves as chairman of the Miramar National Cemetery Support Foundation,
honored Brown in an emotional moment from the podium.
“After 50 years of reflection, I still can’t reconcile as to why others died and I did not,” Schoville said Monday. “But ...
the personnel I served with ... we would lay our lives down for each other, no questions asked.”
The coincidence of this 50th anniversary on Veterans Day was not lost on either man.
“For me, it brings back memories of the guys who didn’t come home,” said Brown, who lives in Chula Vista. “That’s what I think about the most.”
Brown said he believes that his mistake that day, when he leaned on the controls, probably saved his life. “Had we been sitting up, like we should’ve been ... it was a center punch,” Brown said of the helmet shots.
Schoville said earlier, on Friday, that he probably was in that rice paddy for five minutes, but it “felt like a lifetime.” He was treated at a MASH hospital and was told that three of the four soldiers in the two helicopters that day had taken shots to their helmets and all survived. But before he
could learn their names or verify the story, he was sent to a
Navy hospital in Great Lakes, Illinois.
“I heard it, but I didn’t know who they were, I couldn’t
remember,” Schoville told the Union-Tribune. “I didn’t know if it was true. I moved on.”
Dennis Schoville holds the helmet he was wearing 50 years ago in Vietnam when he was shot in the head. The bullet entered the helmet, grazed Schoville’s head, and then exited. (Photo; Andrew Dyer / Union-Tribune)
32 / DFCS News Magazine / SUMMER 2020