When I asked a friend who served in Vietnam, what he thought of the movie "Saving Private Ryan", he answered, "The only thing missing from that movie was the smell of death and burning flesh!" It still sends chills running down my spine when I think of that moment. I can't imagine what it's like being blown up thirty feet up in the air and landing on your head. That's exactly what happened to Denis, only to be found days later by another platoon as his was wiped out. When he recovered he wanted to go back in to finish his tour. His requisition was denied. His commanding officer gave him a choice, either take a desk job or go home. He took the latter, he came home and became a cop. I had another name for Denis, "The Runaway Freight Train", he was unstoppable.
Denis's story is similar to many others in the military during wartime. He voluntarily enlisted soon after three of his friends were drafted and never came back. They asked if they could serve together as they were friends and they would take care of each other. However, on that faithful day, while they were on a mission on patrol, they were ambushed by insurgents and were killed instantly along with the rest of the platoon. When Denis heard, the anger and frustration nearly drove him insane. He immediately joined the Army and went directly into combat. He joined only for one purpose, to go in and avenge the killing of his friends and "wipe out that country from the face of the earth", in his own words. Denis served three tours in Vietnam, from being a "helicopter door gunner" to a "tunnel rat" and everything in between. He was fighting a one man war.
As in every other war, the buddy system was a common occurrence, when friends and family members demanded to serve together for the sole reason of protecting each other. One of the best examples is in the movie "The Deer Hunter". However, the military had a policy against that, unfortunately it only applied to family members. A policy that started after an event that took place during World War II, when five brothers from Iowa insisted on serving together aboard the same ship. Stationed in the South Pacific, the ship sank when it was hit by a Japanese torpedo. Three of the brothers were killed instantly, the other two ended up in the water only to face a shark attack. By the time they were rescued, only one, the oldest made it in the raft including ten other survivors. Being overwhelmed with grief by the loss of his brothers and disappointed for not being able to save them, he went insane, jumped in the water and drowned.
One day two men in uniform showed up at their family home and said to their father, "We have news about your sons." He asked, "Which one?" They responded, "All five."
The family wasn't told the whole story on how the event took place until months later when President Roosevelt personally wrote to them. As the parents began lobbying in Washington to make a law against having family members serve at the same time, their only daughter joined the Navy and became a Wave. The Navy did have a policy to keep siblings from serving together but they didn't enforce it. As a result of the Sullivan brothers and others like the Niland brothers, the Navy adopted the "Sole Survivor Policy" to protect family members from serving in the military if they already lost members in the service. As most people know this as "The Sullivan Law", it was never named that, instead the Navy named two destroyers in their honor, the "USS The Sullivans DD-537 and DDG-68".
It's been said that Steven Spielberg was inspired by the story of the Sullivan and the Niland brothers and directed the movie "Saving Private Ryan". As for Denis, he's living the rest of his days with a steel plate in his head and attending mass almost every day asking God's forgiveness for what he's done.
"War is as much of a punishment to the punisher as it is to the sufferer."
Thomas Jefferson
