John Warne Remembers Sgt. Daniel 'Danny' Ackerman

Surrounded by small flags, empty gun shells, pioneer headstones and a poignant hand written card from an old girlfriend, where she wrote to him "it had been over forty years, I finally found you" is the grave marker of a Carson City Vietnam veteran, Sgt. Daniel Ackerman, who died in combat.

His body is buried at the old pioneer Empire Cemetery. His marker is in the southwest corner, high above the Carson River where Danny Ackerman loved to hunt, fish and hike around with his friends.

"Danny wanted to be buried right here" said his close high school friend John Warne. "Before Danny went to Vietnam, he told his mom if anything bad happened to him, he wanted to be buried right here, where he loved fishing, hunting, and the Carson River."

The river view is beautiful from where Sgt. Danny Ackerman rests. The U.S. military wanted Sgt. Ackerman buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but his mom remembered what Danny wanted. That was to come home to his hometown, Carson City, the tiny and quaint state capital of Nevada, a then nearly rural town of 8,000 residents.

Daniel L."Danny" Ackerman was one of John Warne's best friends and they spent many hours fishing, hunting and trapping beaver next to the old Empire Cemetery. John even recalls he and Danny chasing rabbits right through the Empire cemetery. Danny was a year younger than John, in the Carson High School Class of 1966. The Carson High campus was then located where Carson Middle School is today on King Street.

"Danny didn't have a mean bone in his body," Warne recalls. "I wondered how he would survive being in a place like Vietnam."

It turned out that when Danny enlisted, he did thrive in the Army. He went through basic training and then a lot of intense and very specialized military training at Fort Hood, Kentucky.

His military unit even competed against combat seasoned Army Rangers in war games prior to being shipped to Vietnam. Danny's Delta Unit was known as the Blue Tigers. Their job in Vietnam was to fly helicopters and drive armored vehicles to combat hot spots and keep roads open where Vietcong rebels menaced both the U.S. military and the local population.

Due to their elite fighting skills, the Secretary of the Army allowed the Blue Tigers to wear their distinctive maroon berets while serving in Vietnam. Danny's job in the Blue Tigers was as a Armored Recon Specialist. Here's a Army website listing of what high end skills Sgt. Ackerman had to have to perform to do his job well in the Army: www.mosdb.com/army/11D/mos/216/

Danny served with the elite Delta Troop 3/17 Air Cavalry in Vietnam. His unit arrived in Vietnam in October 1967, and though they were in numerous combat actions, Danny was the first soldier from his unit to die in Vietnam, on April 10, 1968, less than two years after he graduated from Carson High School. Danny had celebrated turning 21 just three weeks earlier.

His brother in arms from the Blue Tigers, John Dungan, remembers Sgt. Danny Ackerman well. Mr. Dungan says his Delta unit held a service in Vietnam for Danny before his remains were sent home to Carson City.

Mr. Dungan shared an 8mm movie still, with a serious looking Danny ready to board a plane to take him to Oakland, Calif. From Oakland, the Blue Tigers had taken a ship to Vietnam.

John Warne has never forgotten his dear friend. He and his wife, Joann, named their own son Daniel after Danny Ackerman, and John's voice is emotional at times when he talks about Danny.

When Mr. Warne's granddaughter, Kylie Warne, had to do a Veterans Day project on our veterans while she attending Carson Middle School — Danny's old Carson High Campus— her grandfather suggested she do her project about his old high school friend Danny Ackerman.

Kylie is 19 now, and thankfully young men her age are a bit safer, unless they make that difficult decision to enlist. No one is drafted in the United States anymore-like 19 year olds were in 1968.

Of course Danny did enlist-and he chose to serve his country.

Though many people may claim our tragic losses in Vietnam were in vain, today Vietnam has changed, and they are trading partners, and a country where some Vietnam War vets and other Americans now visit as tourists.
That's probably no consolation to John Warne, who simply says, "I still miss him."