Doug Dakin

Doug Dakin sat down with me for Heroes I Know.

We had not really talked in almost thirty-three years.

He grew up in Hope Mills, right outside Fort Bragg.

Three years in Germany as a dependent.

A teenager over there.

He played football at Southview.

His dad was a soldier.

He never thought he would join the Army.

A year and a half after high school his parents went back to Germany and left him the house.

Not smart for an eighteen-year-old kid, he says.

He was an average student.

He did not apply himself.

The Army taught him how.

Infantry.

The Eighty-Second.

He was never the gung-ho type.

Give him the choice between a warm bed and the field, he takes the bed.

But he wanted to be knowledgeable.

Professional.

He did recruiting duty in Philadelphia.

A lot of the people he recruited became noncommissioned officers and officers.

Delta Company had to send a jumpmaster to try out for the hat.

He was the only one qualified.

His first sergeant told him not to pass the interview.

There was no way he was going down there to give a sorry class.

For his hat class he gave the limitations of the TOW missile system.

I was his trainer.

He soaked it up like a sponge.

Black Hat.

He says it was the toughest school he ever graduated from.

One word for it.

Honored.

He graded for ten months to a year.

March 23, 1994.

Fourteen twelve in the afternoon.

We were in the circle.

Doug and I walked out of the latrine when the explosion came through.

He found a man on the ground with his left leg gone from the knee down and gave him aid.

He and Thornton used the landline to call for medevac.

He and JJ loaded a deuce and a half with the wounded.

Doug led the way to Womack in his civilian truck.

Flashers on.

Horn going.

Through the intersections.

One victim rode in the back of his little blue Jeep.

He still has that Jeep.

We had eighty students there.

Not one got hurt.

He calls that a miracle.

About seven years ago he took the Lord as his savior.

He says that is when he became a man.

A year ago he started with the Gideons.

If God can be a hobby, he says, that is his hobby.

His favorite book is John.

His granddaughter Loxley took him to church.

His wife is Melissa.

Twenty-six years married.

Four kids.

Six grandchildren.

His son is the city manager of the town in Tennessee where they live.

He says he is blessed.

Over and over again.

He can still give the opening statement for the period of instruction.

It never left him.

That is why we hit record.

Get the story on tape before we are too old or too sick to tell it.