An Iowa News Correspondent Narrowly Avoids Disaster During Vietnam War

Dean Borg, an Iowa news correspondent, tells the story of how an illness may have kept him alive in Vietnam. He was scheduled to accompany soldiers on a combat mission and his illness kept him from going on the deadly trip.

Dean Borg, a radio and television reporter in Cedar Rapids, took an assignment in Vietnam in early 1970. After a few days in Saigon, he hitched a ride north to Cu Chi to look for soldiers from Iowa. 

"Well, I was eating food on economy and by the time I got to Cu Chi I had severe, severe dysentery. And I was to go out on the search and destroy mission with about 16 soldiers and I thought it best that I decline the opportunity to do that. As it turns out, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Individual who had arranged for me to be on that search and destroy mission told me that night, 'Mr. Borg, of the 16 men who went out this morning, 13 are gone.' They had encountered Viet Cong and three returned and that was it. So you might say that I might have been four who returned or I might have been among the 14 then who perished that day. So the dysentery was a blessing."

Borg himself served more than three decades in the military, and the Forest City native reveres all who answered the call.