Pfc. Evan Dale Hill

Mar. 21. 1948 - April 28, 1968

Oroville

Dale Hill was born and reared in Oroville and graduated from Oroville High in 1966. He was just 17 when he married his high school sweet heart, and by the time he arrived in Vietnam three years later, they had  two sons, a 2-year- old and a 7-month-old.

Hill worked briefly for PG&E and a truck parts shop after high school. He enlisted in the Army in July 1967 and was trained for an armored division.

At (he beginning of April 1968, Hill was shipped to Vietnam as a replacement infantryman. He stayed alive in-country just 28 days.

Another Oroville GI who served in a nearby platoon wrote home and described Hill’s final battle “on a dark spooky night” in the A Shau Valley. For his actions Hill received a posthumous Silver Star:

Our platoons were split and I was about 150 yards away,” the friend wrote.

“We fought them had though. All the Claymore mines had been blown in the attack by first and second platoons, as they had received the brunt of the attack.. .The order came down in first platoon that more Claymores had to be put out, 75 yards in front of our lines in that darkness.

“Do you know what that requires of a man? Nobody wanted to go but Dale realized it had to be done.

“He picked up a mine and....two others followed Dale’s initiative and went out too. They went 50 yards to the front. Dale had his mine set and was almost back when the attack came again.

“Two people were still out there and they were down, wounded. Dale ran back out for the nearest through the bullets and brought him in. Dale was safe but he remembered the third man and was gone before a word could be said. He went down and they thought the worst.

“After an eternity, suddenly there he was. His shoulder bleeding, dragging the third man in. He crossed the line starting to say something we’ll never know.

“That fatal bullet suddenly struck. He didn’t say much, something about God, his family and a hope for them. The people of his platoon could now fire their mines and the attack was repelled

“Two people are alive and well now. They owe him that....lf sometime you meet his people, tell them to be proud.”

Chico News & Review, May 26, 1988