Bud Domagata – Forward Observer – Part One
The Whole Story
Bud saw three successive TET offensives: 1968, 69 and 70. On his first tour as an enlisted soldier, the infamous 68 TET had him pinned down without a weapon for two days under a truck on the docks of Saigon. This tour lasted just five months. Bud’s second tour as an officer lasted over a year and a half. He marched as a forward observer calling in artillery fire with the 53rd South Vietnamese Army Regiment for four months, and then five months with the 3/506 Airborne Infantry. Nine months was a long time for an officer to be in the field as a forward observer. Ordinarily he would have been pulled out of the field back to a job in a battery or the rear. Seeing no end in sight to his field assignment and tired of sleeping in the jungle with rats, blood sucking creatures and marauding Viet Cong, Bud extended his tour in Vietnam in order rotate to become an air observer. He still called in artillery fire for ground forces, but now from a little two-seat airplane. Of all places to be in Vietnam, in the air was one of the worst, but Bud’s feeling was, “They can shoot at me in the air now instead of on the ground, but at least I’ll have a clean bed to sleep in at night.”
Lt. Domagata beside his Cessna O-1 Birddog
Called a Seahorse for its radio handle
Bud faced multiple dangers in Vietnam, yet he remembers only a handful of incidents. He relies instead on the testimony of others whom he does not remember either. It’s not that Bud has a poor memory. He retains an iron grasp of places, equipment, dates, military units and a host of logistical detail. It’s the fighting he’s forgotten.
I don’t remember any battle. I do not remember a specific time shooting at anybody. I do not remember a single bullet fired in anger. Never. None. Zero. Not one. With one exception I don’t remember calling in artillery on an enemy. The same thing while flying with the Seahorse pilots. One of the pilots contacted me and said you got to come to our reunion. So this past year I went to the Seahorse reunion. Two pilots are talking about us flying into heavy machine-gun fire and getting the plane all shot up. They were very specific about times and places. One was up at Song Mao, flying into machine gun fire. Another one was right outside of LZ Betty, another situation where we are getting fired at by multiple guns back and forth. The pilots knew exactly how, when and where. I had no recollection. They said, “You were the artillery guy in the back seat. We know what you were doing, you were calling in the artillery, and we were screaming over the radio.”
The stories Bud does remember are like nuggets catching a spark in the dark. But you can’t help wondering, what’s in the shadows that could tell us more of this soldier? There’s a hint of an answer in a story set well after Vietnam. So let’s begin at the end.
Found and Unforgotten
Hank Parker and a couple guys found me on the Internet. I start getting bombarded with, “You’ve got to go to the reunion, there’s no way you are going to miss this. (Reunion of the 3/506 Infantry) We are going to kidnap you.”
“First of all, I don’t know who you are and why are you saying this stuff to me?”
Then this guy named Hank Parker starts telling me stories about all the things that we did together, and I say, “I do not know you, Hank.”
Hank says to me, “No, we did all that stuff. And you had a dog that was always with you.”
“You are out of your mind. I never had a dog.”
So he sends me pictures of me with the dog.
Lt. Domagata with his puppy
It’s not just one picture, he sends several. Okay, he’s got pictures of me and I am believing he is a real guy and I should know him. But I don’t know him; I don’t remember him.
My wife says, “You have never been to one of these things, so go, get it out of your system.”
I go to the reunion in Reno, I fly out, and there’s this group of guys telling all these war stories. They got more booze in the hospitality room than three taverns. These guys are hammering it down, laughing, maps out, pictures, books, and I am not connecting with anybody. I look at the books, and at the pictures, and I remember the places but I have not connected with anybody.
For two days I am still not connecting with anybody, so Saturday I plan to catch a plane out of there. But they tell me, “You have been here this long, you are not going home, you are staying another day. There’s a big banquet tonight where all the ladies are dressing up and there’s going to be dancing along with the best meal you can imagine. You gotta stay, because we won’t let you leave.”
That evening right after the dinner there were some thank-you’s, awards and recognitions. They read a document about the extraordinary actions of a medic who I had met earlier in the day. He was just the humblest guy, a postal carrier, quiet guy, nice guy. They read off two pages of names, maybe 30 guys that he had saved. And for each guy that he saved there was a little story. Everybody is crying, and they call him up, and they give him an eagle and a plaque with his name engraved on it and a saying from the Band of Brothers, that Shakespeare quote, with his dates in Vietnam. I got chills.
Then they said, “We got one more.” And I saw another eagle up there. They started reading this document about a former forward observer and then called my name. My mind is racing. I am red. I am sweating. They said, “Lieutenant Bud Domagata, come up here and get this eagle.” I went up there and I said, “You know, this is the greatest honor of my life. But I do not remember all this stuff that you just said about me, and I don’t remember any of you guys.”
They were all standing up and said, “We remember you, Bud.”
I thought to myself, this sucks, because I don’t remember any of them. Not a one of them. Not one!
I take the eagle home and put it on the TV stand with the greatest pride.
Our daughter is back from college and is sitting there watching TV. She looks up and says, “Dad, that chicken is staring at me.”
Notes:
The 3/506 Airborne Infantry shoulder patch features an eagle’s head, leading to the nickname “Screaming Eagles.”
The book “Band of Brothers” and subsequent TV series were about the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
The infantry placed a high value on a good forward observer, often claiming he saved as many lives as a medic. It’s not a surprise the 3/506 honored Bud beside one of their medics.
