David E. Taylor (Class of 1966) oral history and papers relating to the Vietnam War (AMS.1U.T5)

Biographical/Historical note

First Lieutenant David Taylor, United States Marine Corps, graduated from a public high school in Bergen County, Ridgewood, New Jersey and entered Brown University in 1962 on a Naval ROTC scholarship. However, he was not keen at being cast as a “Hawk”, and he did not openly share his feelings. He read quite a bit and felt the conflict in Vietnam was more of a civil war and did not think the Domino Theory of the day was accurate. He played on varsity baseball and basketball and was a member of the fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha. Each summer he would go on active duty. In the summer of 1965, at Quantico, he learned of President Johnson’s escalation of the war. Taylor had earlier thought by the time he finished college, the war would be over and he’d never be involved. He spent the next year on campus in a sort of state of bewilderment, feeling his commitment to ROTC had been a mistake. Just before graduation he met his first wife, Kathryn Fuller (Pembroke, Class of 1968), beginning a whirlwind relationship and then maintaining a long-distance relationship. He received his B.A. degree with a political science major in June 1966, and he immediately went to Quantico for Officer Candidates School (OCS), United States Marine Corps for six months of training. Taylor and Fuller were married in December of 1967.

The Marine Corps required all of their regular officers to be first and foremost infantry officers. To avoid infantry and delay being sent to Vietnam, Taylor chose to pursue flight school which was 12-18 months of training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. The Marine Corps was in the process of transitioning to virtually an all helicopter fleet for support in Vietnam. Almost 95% of the flight students at that time were training in helicopters. Taylor trained on T-28 and T-34 aircrafts for carrier-qualification. He then moved to a tiny aircraft called a TH-13M, by Bell and then to H-34, the workhorse of the Marine Corps during Korea. He finished flight training in early 1968.

He and Kathryn drove to Marine Corps Air Facility Santa Ana, California by way of Mexico. They lived in Laguna Beach in a garage apartment, because Kathryn refused to live on base. The Marine Corps was forming a new squadron to use the new experimental aircraft CH-53, so Taylor signed into the HMH – Heavy Marine Corps Helicopter 462 and continued with six more months of training with his squadron based in California. During training the squadron stabilized getting to know each other well.

In August 1968, David Taylor left for Vietnam and his wife returned to the New York area. His squadron first landed in Okinawa then flew into Da Nang at night where Taylor felt he had just walked into Dante’s inferno. The next day they flew by C-130 from Da Nang to where they were stationed at Phu Bai. The mission of the squadron was to provide logistical support (moving soldiers, supplies and equipment, and casualties in and out of battle) with CH-53s to the northern half of the operations for the Marine Corps and the northern half of I Corps. This included Hue, Khe Sanh, Con Thien, Dong Ha, Quang Tri, and A Shau Valley on the DMZ or just inside the Laotian border. During his service in Vietnam, Taylor took Forward Air Controller School, in Okinawa, and Jungle Environmental Survival Training in the Philippines and met his wife in Sydney, Australia for one R & R. Taylor served thirteen months in Vietnam and flew seven hundred missions.

In September 1969, the time for him to return to the states, Taylor applied for HMX-1, (Helicopter Marine Experimental, 1st squadron, Marine Corps). Its primary mission is to fly the President of the United States [Richard Nixon, at the time]. Its secondary mission is to be an experimental squadron. Among other things, Taylor tested laser-guided ordnances before they were ever used in warfare and test-landed the CH-53 on the White House lawn. Marine rotations were stateside for three years and then another tour in Vietnam but Taylor managed to take leave and enrolled in Harvard Business School in 1971.

By 1973, Taylor had a three-year old daughter and was working in the commercial real estate business, a partner in a firm called Trammell Crow Company, the largest company in the United States. Taylor remained at Trammell Crow Company until his retirement. Throughout his military service, Taylor felt his marriage was not as strong as it could be and he and Kathryn eventually divorced. He lived in Palm Beach, Florida at the time of the interview and admits Vietnam was the “greatest experience of my life. You faced death every day, so you looked at life differently.” In 2013, after two years and support from several Congressmen, Taylor was notified he would be receiving the Presidential Service Badge, an apparent oversight from his days in the Marine Corps and HMX-1. He credits his involvement with the Brown Vietnam Veterans Archive and Beth Taylor for facilitating his receipt of the Badge.