Decades after returning from Vietnam, Dennis Caldwell of Hancock is writing the story of a young man who never got to come home.

Caldwell, who grew up in Michigan, enlisted in the Army in 1967, during the height of the Vietnam War. 

“I knew things were not going well for me in college, and I wanted to fly,” Caldwell recalls. “The Army had a program where you could enter the helicopter training program with a high school diploma. I went in to become a warrant officer and helicopter pilot.” 

Caldwell was trained to fly an attack helicopter, which was a new machine to the Army at that time. At flight school in Alabama, he met Eddie Brown, a 20-year-old young man from rural Kentucky. 

“We hit if off really well together right away, and we became very good friends,” Caldwell said. 

Eddie, according to Caldwell, was a rising star in his small Kentucky town, beloved by all who knew him. 

“He had been a high school DJ, and everyone in town knew him. He was very fun-loving, very bright,” Caldwell recalls. “He was kind of the hope of this very small, very poor town in rural Kentucky.” 

Eddie gradated from high school in June 1967, and by July, he was in the Army. Caldwell remembers that all through flight school, Eddie talked about his girlfriend, Delcie May.

“He was very much in love with her. All he talked about was Delcie May,” Caldwell said. 

After Caldwell completed flight school, two months ahead of Eddie, he stayed in the United States to complete additional flight training.  In mid-October of 1968, Caldwell was assigned to A Troop in the 3/17th Air Cavalry based at Long Binh, a large military complex located about 15 miles northeast of Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City). Eddie, after returning home for a brief leave,  was assigned to C Troop, 3/17th Air Cavalry, at Di An, a smaller base about seven miles west of Long Binh and closer to Saigon. 

“I found out Eddie and I were in sister units,  only five miles from where he would be stationed,” Caldwell recalled.

 Dennis contacted Eddie by company mail,  and the two made plans to meet up on Caldwell’s first leave. 

“That never happened. Eddie was killed three or four weeks after I got in country,” Caldwell said.

Although Caldwell did extensive research into the exact circumstance of Eddie’s death, he never learned for sure what happened. 

Both Caldwell and Brown were assigned to fly  missions generally outside of populated areas.

“On any given day, we could be assigned reconnaissance missions as far as forty miles away to places known as Cu Chi, the Iron Triangle, Tay Ninh, or Nui Ba Den (Black Virgin Mountain),” Caldwell said. “It is difficult to pin down what happened to him exactly. He was on a low-level recon mission, down over the trees, looking for enemy activity or equipment, things like that. All the pilot of their wingman helicopter heard all he heard was Eddie calling ‘Oh no!’— and he looked and saw the helicopter flying into some trees and breaking apart. Apparently, there was no indication of hostile fire; nobody saw or heard anything, no evidence of shootout or anything on the ground. No one knows exactly what happened. There are various reports that I have discovered that it was a combat loss; one says explicitly it was hostile fire, another said there was no hostile fire.” 

Eddie and his two crewmen died. He was just 20 years old. 

The loss of his friend had a devastating impact on Caldwell, who was just starting his year-long tour as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. 

“Eddie’s death in particular really hit me pretty hard. Even in the short period of time that I had been in Vietnam, after a week or two, I began to question what was really going on.  We weren’t doing much in terms of trying to better the lives of the Vietnamese people,” Caldwell said. 

About 10 years ago, after retiring from a career in aviation, Caldwell decided to write down his friend’s story. Over the years, he had stayed in touch with some members of Eddie’s family. To write the memoir, he tracked down and interviewed people who had known Eddie, Eddie’s surviving family members, and Delcie May. One family member had kept a scrapbook Delcie May had made about Eddie, including letters and photos. 

 “It was really meaningful to be able to sit and talk to people who knew Eddie, who knew his family and Delcie May.  They enjoyed being able to talk about him, and I learned some things and about her, and the families,” he said.

Caldwell learned that Eddie’s death had devastated his entire hometown.

“I learned that when the family were trying to figure out where to have a funeral service, they were planning to have it at the high school, because that was only place large enough to hold the crowds. But Eddie had a little brother just getting ready to go into the high school, so their mom refused to have the funeral in the gym. She didn’t want Eddie’s little brother to have to walk there every day after having his brother’s service in there,” Dennis said.

Caldwell also learned that Eddie and Delcie May had become engaged before he went to Vietnam. 

“Writing the memoir has been a quest of finding the truth about things. It really meant a lot to me when I found out that Delcie May was his fiancee. It was in his obituary, ” Caldwell said. “Losing Eddie destroyed Delcie May’s life in some ways. She had a tough time of it. She got married to someone else, but it didn’t last long. She remained like an adopted daughter to Eddie’s family, throughout all their lives.”

The aftermath of Eddie’s death haunted Caldwell throughout his life. He struggled with depression after returning from Vietnam, and considered “running off” to Canada. 

“Then I was talking to a high school friend about the whole thing, years ago, and he told me I needed to write about it someday. So this memoir is also keeping a promise to him,” Caldwell said. “I’m 78, and I want to do this, to get this off my plate, and to tell Eddie’s story while I still can.” 

Even decades later, Caldwell is struck by the pointlessness of Brown’s death, and of the futility of Vietnam, and war, in general. 

“It seemed to me my friend’s death was such a waste. “It’s all a waste. I’m trying to make this memoir not about me. It’s about Eddie, about his family and friends and the community he left behind, on the toll it took on his whole family and his whole community. I’m trying to explain the toll it takes,” Caldwell said. “And the utter pointlessness of war.”