56 Years Lost, One Reunion Found: The Vietnam Delta Divers

There's a chapter of Army diving history that almost slipped away — not because it didn't matter, but because the men who lived it were scattered before they ever got the chance to call themselves a community.

Jackson Quigley was one of them. A Vietnam-era diver, drafted and sent straight to Navy Dive School after basic, then on to Fort Eustis to a nearly defunct dive unit — waiting on the orders everyone knew were coming. These men didn't deploy as a detachment or a company. They went to war individually, crisscrossing Southeast Asia by helicopter and landing craft as one- and two-man dive teams, averaging three to five dives a day, seven days a week. Many taught themselves the skills of an "Engineer Diver" — a term that hadn't even been coined yet.

And then they came home, and just as quietly, they scattered. For Quigley, that was 56 years ago.

What brought him back wasn't a record, or a roster, or an algorithm. It was this Association — and one connection that reunited him with the brothers he'd served beside more than half a century earlier. In his own words, he'd carried all of it quietly for decades, and getting back together with his team gave him a chance to set something right.

That's the whole point of what we do.

History isn't just the famous dives and the Mark V helmets in a museum case. It's the body-recovery jobs nobody talks about. The det-cord wrapped around a propeller shaft because that's what the situation called for. The on-the-job training in a war zone with no manual and no margin. The Vietnam divers earned a place in the Army diving story, and for too long that place sat empty.

We have a chance to fill it. Quigley calls it bringing the Delta Divers "back into the fold," and he's right — there's still time, but not unlimited time. Every reunion, every reconnected member, every name we recover is a piece of that history saved.

If you served in that era — or you know someone who did — reach out. Don't let another year go by.

Read Jackson's full letter here: Why Come to a Reunion