It was a routine convoy through the Vietnamese jungle that sweltering day. Sept. 12, 1968. A handful of young soldiers were riding a transport vehicle through the brush, one of them was 21-year-old Dave Dahlin.
He was a smiling, blond-haired young man from the San Fernando Valley. A guy who attracted almost everyone around him by his sweet nature.
At 4:20 p.m. the ambush came.
Dahlin, in charge and sitting high in his truck, died first. One rifle shot and he was gone.
It has been 30 Septembers since that day, but Dave Dahlin still has a special hold on those who knew him.
On this Memorial Day morning, under a skinny pine tree at Dahlin's Chatsworth grave site, his 83-year-old father, Cliff, a man still struggling with his son's death, will stop for a few silent moments soon after sunrise.
Then two sets of men who knew Dave Dahlin in two separate worlds will meet there. Ryan Khoury and Roy Morris were Dave Dahlin's best friends from Cleveland High School in Reseda; Gene Novak and Bill Doyle knew him in 'Nam.
The pairs of men met by chance three years ago, while visiting the grave on Memorial Day. Khoury and Morris, who call their devotion to Dahlin a "love story," have been coming to the grave every Memorial Day since 1970.
But it was Novak and Doyle's first time there--a gesture meant as much to honor Dahlin, whom Novak calls "the kid who brought out goodness in us," as it was to heal their own emotional wounds from the war.
Since that day, the men have kept in touch, writing letters, trading phone calls and reminiscing about Dahlin.
Aside from memories, what Morris and Khoury have left of Dahlin are letters and photographs.
The two are both 51 and live in Simi Valley. Today, they have receding hairlines and responsibilities. But in photos from their youth, they appear mop-topped and lighthearted. Almost always, the pictures show them with a lanky Dave Dahlin.
Dahlin, his friends say, was not the smartest kid around, or the best athlete, or the most handsome. He wasn't a saint. But he was selfless, which made him dependable.
Imagine the shock, says Morris, on that day in 1967 when Dahlin's draft letter came. None of their other friends had been called up. The war in Vietnam seemed like something "not real."
For all of their surprise, his pals never really considered the worst that could happen. Dahlin, just 19 when he left, was the safe one, the guy who always did what was right. Nothing bad could happen to him. It wouldn't make sense.
