FIRST U.S. SOLDIER KILLED IN GROUND COMBAT
On the morning of Dec. 22, 1961, three trucks carrying members of the 3rd Radio Research Unit, their intelligence counterparts in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and an ARVN security detail rolled out the gate of their compound at Tan Son Nhut Air Base on the outskirts of Saigon. This compound was a high-security area surrounded by barbed wire fences. Only people with a legitimate reason for being there and “a need to know” were admitted. The small convoy was embarking on a mission west of Saigon. When it ended, all but one member in the third truck would be dead. Among the casualties was Spc. 4 James T. “Tom” Davis, age 25, the first American to die in a ground combat action in Vietnam.
Davis grew up in the small town of Livingston, Tennessee, about 100 miles northeast of Nashville. It was a rural area with lots of mountains, streams and woods. According to his family, Davis was an “outdoor person” who spent most of his time fishing, hunting, trapping and roaming the woods. After high school, Davis attended Tennessee Polytechnic Institute but left to enlist in the Army.
When he completed basic training Davis was sent to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for Morse intercept training at the Army Security Agency. Afterward he was selected for radio direction finding school, where the Army sent its most promising ASA students to learn how to locate enemy communications signals.
In early 1961, under
