Vietnam veteran keeps vow to buddy, returns keepsake after 35 years

MOUNT VERNON, Ky. -- Richard Hines traveled to eastern Kentucky from Michigan to keep a 35-year-old promise to an Army buddy.

Hines' pledge: return an old Bowie knife to David Chaney's family in Rockcastle County.

"I made a promise," Richard Hines said, standing by David Chaney's grave on Saturday, "and I'm here to keep that promise."

Chaney bought the knife in 1969 and took it with him to Vietnam with Troop A, 2nd Squadron, 1st Armored Cavalry. Chaney died in an attack on his tank in 1970 and his family thought the knife was forever lost.

But Chaney had given the knife to Hines, his closest friend, shortly before he died and he kept it after returning to the United States. He and five other buddies from David Chaney's old outfit came from around the country to stand at Chaney's grave at McKinney Community Cemetery and present the knife to the Chaney family.

David's brothers, Steven, Stanley and Dennis Chaney, and his sister, Twila Luening, said they were gratified and stunned, not only that their late brother's prized possession was returned, but by the unlikely story of how it happened.

Last year, during a unit reunion, Hines revealed to some buddies that he still had the knife. The former soldiers then began trying to reach the Chaney family with the intention of returning the knife.

The group of Army buddies had information about David Chaney placed on a veterans' Web site, then found Steven Chaney, and the two groups got together.

"I was totally shocked," said Steven Chaney, 45, who was 11 when his brother died. "It just amazed me that they would want to do this, and come all this way, after 35 years."

But David Chaney's former buddies -- Hines, of St. Helen, Mich.; Larry Drummond, of Overland Park, Kan.; Randy Teal, of Ocean Springs, Miss.; Vic Reyes, of Berwyn, Ill.; Tony Dodson, of Philadelphia; Jon "Brian" Kosteck of New Haven, Ind. -- said that returning the knife was something they had to do.

'Healing process'

"It's a step in the healing process," said Teal, who was on the same tank with David Chaney the day he died. "There's not a day that David is not in our minds, not a single day."

Chaney was killed when his tank was hit by rocket-propelled grenades while responding to a mortar attack in central South Vietnam on Aug. 31, 1970. Hines pulled Chaney's body out of the burning tank.

"To this day, I don't know how I was able to do it," Hines said.

He said Chaney had given him the Bowie knife not long before.

"He told me he knew that I would respect it and care for it," Hines said. "He had a premonition that he wasn't coming home. My promise to him was that I would get him home, and give him the knife before we came home."

Family members couldn't fight back tears at the sight of the knife.

"This is not just about a knife," said Ricky Bullock, a cousin who was 5-years-old when David Chaney died. "It's like getting a part of David back home."

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Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com