Chapter Four

George Burks

August 13, 1949 — March 10, 2026

George Burks was born on August 13, 1949, in Huntsville, Alabama. He grew up in Huntsville Park, the mill village on the southwest side of town where everybody knew everybody, where kids ran between yards and screen doors were never locked and supper was whenever your mama called you in. He was Stevie’s big brother. He was from Bradley Street.

He went to Vietnam. He Made a Difference. He Changed the World.

*   *   *

The date was March 25, 1970. George Burks was twenty years old.

After eleven o’clock that night, a mortar carrier exploded. The blast was so catastrophic, so consuming, that sections of the vehicle melted. Men who had been alive seconds before were simply gone — not fallen, not wounded, gone — blown into pieces so small that the men who survived had to collect what remained of their friends by shovel and bucket in the darkness of a Vietnamese jungle.

George Burks did that. He picked up his friends by shovel and bucket. Then he tried to sleep.

*   *   *

On the morning of March 26, 1970, a Chinook helicopter arrived to remove the dead. The men of Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment — the Blackhorse Regiment — had barely slept.

Then the radio crackled.

Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, was in trouble. Four kilometers away, deep in War Zone C near the Cambodian border, seventy-nine American soldiers had wandered into an NVA stronghold. They were surrounded by seven hundred North Vietnamese Army troops inside a massive underground bunker complex. Supplies were low. Casualties were mounting. The enemy circle was tightening. Helicopters could not penetrate the triple-canopy jungle above them. Artillery could not be targeted without hitting their own men.

They were going to die.

Captain John Poindexter was twenty-five years old. He did not wait for orders from above. He looked at his men — exhausted, grieving, having spent the night collecting the pieces of their friends — and he gave the order that would define all their lives:

Nineteen combat vehicles plowed four kilometers through triple-canopy jungle. One hundred meters every five minutes. Landmines beneath every foot of ground. The possibility of being ambushed behind every tree. For eight hours, Alpha Troop fought. More than twenty of George’s brothers were wounded. At least two were killed. Their names are on the Wall in Washington.

When it was over, seventy-nine Americans were alive who would otherwise have been dead. One survivor called it a miracle.

The battle had no name.

*   *   *

On that same day, March 26, 1970, on Bradley Street in Huntsville Park, a ten-year-old boy named David was doing whatever ten-year-old boys do. Next door, George’s little brother Stevie was nine years old. Nobody on Bradley Street knew. It never made the papers. The evening news never mentioned it. The battle had no name.

*   *   *

George Burks came home in December 1970. He came home to a country that did not want to know what he had done or what he had seen or what he had carried out of that jungle by shovel and bucket. He came home to silence, and the silence came home with him.

The seventy-nine men he helped save came home too. They came home to their families, to their towns, to their lives. They married. They had children. Those children had children. Grandchildren were born who will never know that the reason they exist is a man from Huntsville Park, Alabama who saddled up on the morning of March 26, 1970, after a night that would have broken most men. They are alive — every one of them, and every soul that came after them — because George Burks and the men of Alpha Troop answered the radio.

None of them knew his name. He did not know theirs. That is not how it works. That is never how it works.

He put his medals away. He did not talk about it. For thirty-nine years, he did not talk about it.

What he has said, in his own words, is this: “I came home from Vietnam in December 1970. Having spent time in many battles with the 1/11 Armored Cavalry I had a lot of unanswered spiritual questions. The year 1970 is when and where my journey started.”

The journey he is describing is not a journey away from what happened. It is a journey through it. George Burks went from addiction to alcohol — the darkness that finds so many men who have seen what he saw — to a search for something he could only call the divine. He found Carl Jung. He found Hope Presbyterian Church on the corner of Bailey Cove and Weatherly roads in Huntsville. He found a guitar. He built a music room above his garage. Every morning, he gave God the first word of the day. Every evening, he gave God the last word.

“Chopping wood and carrying water, the spirit is with me.”

He worked thirty years in civil service and retired. He did not talk about the jungle. He did not talk about the mortar or the bucket or the four kilometers through triple-canopy or the seventy-nine men who came home because Alpha Troop answered the radio. He was George Burks from Huntsville Park, Alabama. He played his guitar. He talked to God. He was Stevie’s big brother.

*   *   *

In 2004, Captain John Poindexter — the twenty-five-year-old who had given the order to saddle up — finished writing a document he called The Anonymous Battle. He had spent years tracking down the men of Alpha Troop, men scattered across America who had put their medals in drawers and tried to go on living. He wrote their story. He called it anonymous because that is what it was — a battle so significant it saved seventy-nine lives, fought by men who received nothing for it, remembered by no one outside the men who were there. Poindexter did not sell the book. He gave it away. It was not about money. It was about the beginning of a five-year fight to make sure the right people finally knew what happened in that jungle on March 26, 1970.

In 2012, author Philip Keith published Blackhorse Riders: A Desperate Last Stand, an Extraordinary Rescue Mission, and the Vietnam Battle America Forgot. Keith interviewed approximately three hundred men to write it. It won the 2012 USA Best Book Award for Military History. It was a finalist for the 2013 Colby Award. It received the Silver Medal from the Military Writer’s Society of America. Philip Keith also wrote Firebase Illingsworth, another account of the regiment’s service in Vietnam.

The American Heroes Channel produced a documentary about the rescue. It aired on March 14, 2016 — forty-six years after the battle — as Season 2, Episode 5 of Against the Odds. The title was “The Untold Story of the Rescue at Dogshead.” It ran forty-three minutes. It received an 8.7 rating on IMDB.

George Burks of Huntsville Park, Alabama is in that book. He is in that documentary. He is also in “Fire Base Illingworth: An Epic True Story of Remarkable Courage Against Staggering Odds” — another battle he was involved in.

▶ Watch: Against the Odds — “The Untold Story of the Rescue at Dogshead” (American Heroes Channel)

*   *   *

On October 20, 2009, President Barack Obama stood in the Rose Garden of the White House. More than eighty veterans of Alpha Troop were present — men who had spent decades with their medals in drawers, men who were seeing each other for the first time in nearly forty years. For most of them, it was the first time they had even taken their medals out since coming home. They wore them on their dark suits that day. Most wore at least one medal for valor. Many wore several. To stand among them, as one witness said, was to truly be in the presence of heroes.

And standing alongside them — reunited with the men who had saved their lives thirty-nine years before — were the survivors of Charlie Company. The saved and their saviors, together in the Rose Garden of the White House. Barack Obama said it plainly: he had saved those seventy-nine American soldiers, some of whom were joining them that very day.

They did not come alone. They brought their wives. Their children. The people who had spent thirty-nine years beside men carrying a silence they could not explain. The families of Charlie Company stood a few feet from the men who were the reason they existed — husbands, fathers, grandfathers who had come home from a jungle near Cambodia when they had no right to expect it. And finally, with the President of the United States bearing witness, the full story was told out loud.

Those soldiers went on to have families — children and grandchildren who also owe their lives to Alpha Troop. Some of those children and grandchildren were in that garden. All of them, whether they could name it or not, were there because of a radio crackling in the dark, and a twenty-five-year-old captain who said “saddle up and move out.”

The President of the United States awarded the Presidential Unit Citation to Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. It is the nation’s highest honor for a military unit — awarded fewer than one hundred and thirty times since World War II.

Then Barack Obama looked at the men standing in front of him and said the words that Captain John Poindexter had been fighting for five years to make happen:

George Burks of Huntsville Park, Alabama was there.

*   *   *

The following June, the Huntsville Times found George. A reporter was writing a series called Spiritual Journeys — conversations about faith and personal philosophy from a variety of people. George agreed to be part of it. The piece ran on June 11, 2010. There was a photograph of George in his over-garage music room, playing his guitar. He was sixty years old.

He was asked how faith works in his day-to-day life. He said: “Each day I try and not allow myself to engage in any activities until God has had the first word of the day. And in the evening, I give God the last word.”

He was asked about a tough time that faith had helped him through. That is when he talked about Vietnam, briefly and without detail, the way men of his generation do. He said the journey started in 1970. He said he went from addiction to freedom. He said that self belongs to the divine, and it will one day return to the divine.

He was asked for advice for those seeking God. He said: “One thing I find most amazing about people seeking the divine is that they try much too hard. Once a person discovers that God is nearer to them than any building made by man, suddenly they experience that the Divine is all around them.”

His favorite Bible verse was Romans 7:18: “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”

He said: “My favorite verse describes a problem: Having to deal with the flesh but wanting to be spiritual.”

A man who picked up his friends by shovel and bucket in a jungle in Vietnam, who came home to silence and thirty-nine years of a country that did not want to know, who found God and a guitar and a music room above his garage — that man knows something about having to deal with the flesh, but wanting to be spiritual.

*   *   *

This chapter was being written on Sunday, March 8th, 2026. George Burks was on his deathbed. Stevie and Davy were texting each other for hours.

Stephen Burks — the nine-year-old brother of George from Bradley Street, is now sixty-five years old and still talks to David Limbaugh nearly every day — had been sitting with him. Stevie had been telling George about this book. He had been reading these words to him.

George Burks smiled. He passed away at 8:30am on March 10th, 2026, surrounded by family and friends. His life made a difference. He changed the world.

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In Memoriam