His friends from Monroe High School remember him as a fun and adventuresome guy. Craven Williams and David went on a summer trip out west and got work doing odds along the way to help pay for their trip. Frank Helms remembers him as one heck of a great athletic both in high school and at East Carolina University. Julie Williams Hendley remembers that David always wanted to travel the world and see things he had never seen.
David went to Alaska twice and was an avid outdoorsman. He loved to fish and hunt. Frank said that David was very gung ho military, was an advocate of the Vietnam War, and was over there to do his duty.
He was born on March 25, 1939 to Charles B. and Alva May Westerlund Rogers of Monroe. His father, a barber, owned Rogers Barber Shop in downtown Monroe for decades. He had a brother John D. Rogers or Danny who was a Specialist Fifth Class in the Army. Danny was five years younger than him. Julie remembers that David’s mother “Wes” never got over the loss of David. She said that the Rogers family was very close and the loss of David hit them hard. After he graduated from Monroe High School in 1957 and he played all four of his high school years on the football team, earning the nickname of “Bull”. He also played football in college at East Carolina University. He coached football and baseball at Union High School in South Carolina four years before he joined the Army in 1965.
David went to jump school to become a paratrooper and also took ranger training at Ft Benning in Columbus, Georgia. He then attended Officer Candidate School and after he graduated, he was assigned as Company Commander of an infantry troop at Ft Polk in Louisiana. He next attended flight school at Ft Rucker in Alabama.
His next assignment was to Vietnam where he was assigned to the 174th Assault Helicopter Company where he served as a rotary wing aviator and a unit commander. His call sign was Captain Lollypop.
He flew a Huey UH-1C shark gunship with XM-21 minigun armament subsystem. Pete Harlem, who was crew chief of one of the shark gunships in Vietnam described the minigun armament system: each turret of the XM-21 minigun armament subsystem carried a single M-134 7.62 mm minigun which was fed ammo by a single flexible chute that led from the ammo box mounted against the aft bulkhead in the cabin. Each minigun was supplied by two rows of ammo boxes, which was a total of six boxes, via a continuous belt of linked ammo. The belt routed from one row of boxes to the other via a cross over chute and ammo drive motor assembly that attached to the end of the boxes. The XM-21 with seven shot pods was the most common weapon setup used on the UH-1C Hueys in Vietnam.
David served two tours of duty in Vietnam; his first tour of duty was from October, 1967 to October, 1968 and his second tour was from February 19, 1969 to March 11, 1969.
Danny Rogers remembers his brother telling him that he rescued a lot of American soldiers who were trapped by the Viet Cong and would have been killed had it not been for assault helicopter pilots like David, who were able to fly in to pick up the soldiers under extreme fire and fly them back out through extreme fire.
David was on R & R at a rest and relaxation camp, when he was killed in his quarters in the Quang Ngai Province of South Vietnam from an attack on the camp by the Viet Cong. He died of multiple fragment wounds when a French 75mm pack howitzer was fired into the camp and hit his hooch.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, the Flying Cross, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, the Republic of Vietnam Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal, and the Expert Badge from the firing range.
His brother Danny stated that David had planned to leave the military after his second tour of duty was over in Vietnam. He was going to start a business flying helicopters around the ski areas in western North Carolina from different cities in North Carolina such as Asheville and Charlotte. Danny said that he was going to be his crew chief.