Dale Dye

Early life

Dye was born on October 8, 1944, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to Dale Adam and Della Grace (née Koehler) Dye. Dye's father was a liquor salesman in the St. Louis area, and Dale accompanied him to working-class taverns where he heard stories from World War II veterans. One story from a Marine about man-to-man fighting in the Pacific Theater piqued Dye's attention, and after reading about the Battle of Iwo Jima, he resolved one day to join the United States Marine Corps. After graduating from the Missouri Military Academy, Dye failed the extrance exam for the United States Naval Academy three times, and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1964.

Military career

After training for six months as a mortarman on Okinawa, Dye's unit was among the first to deploy to Vietnam at the end of 1965. After returning to the United States, his superiors noticed his keen observational skills and literary interest, and he was reclassified as one of the few Marine combat correspondents. Dye was wounded during the Tet Offensive in 1968; in his book Dispatches, journalist Michael Herr provides a vivid picture of Dye during the chaos of the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Huế:

And there was a Marine correspondent, Sergeant Dale Dye, who sat with a tall yellow flower sticking out of his helmet cover, a really outstanding target. He was rolling his eyes around and saying, 'Oh yes, oh yes, Charlie's got his shit together here, this will be bad," and smiling happily. It was the same smile I saw a week later when a sniper's bullet tore up a wall two inches above his head, odd cause for amusement in anyone but a grunt.

Fellow Marine correspondent Gustav Hasford, also a veteran of the Tet Offensive, nicknamed Dye "Daddy D.A." and included him as a character in the novel The Short-Timers, later developed into the film Full Metal Jacket. Dye was sent to recuperate in a rear area, while the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines—the unit he had traveled with—was preparing for Operation Ford. Dye persuaded the battalion commander to let him accompany the battalion as a war correspondent. During the next week, the battalion engaged in firefights with units of the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN). On March 18, 1968, as the unit fought an all-night firefight, Dye replaced an assistant machine gunner who had been killed in an isolated position forward of the remainder of the battalion. Wounded, Dye exposed himself to intense enemy fire to retrieve ammunition for the machine gun to help hold off PAVN soldiers. During other engagements, he exposed himself to enemy fire to rescue several wounded Marines and a Navy corpsman. As a result of his actions, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V" for heroism.

Dye served in Vietnam in 1965 and 1967–1970, participating in 31 combat operations over three tours of duty. After 13 years as an enlisted Marine, rising to the rank of master sergeant, Dye was appointed a warrant officer in 1976. While on active duty, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Maryland University College. Dye was later commissioned as an officer, and was deployed to Beirut for duty with the Multinational Force in Lebanon from 1982 to 1983. He retired from the Marine Corps in 1984 at the rank of captain. Dye was later awarded the Order of Saint Maurice for his contributions to infantry.

Civilian career

After retiring, Dye became a correspondent for the Soldier of Fortune magazine. He worked for the magazine for one year, during which he worked in Central America, providing guerrilla warfare training to troops in El Salvador and Nicaragua while reporting on conflicts in the region.

Technical advising

Determined to make Hollywood's depictions of battle more realistic, Dye founded Warriors, Inc., a company that specializes in training actors in war films to portray their roles realistically, and provides research, planning, staging and on-set consultation for directors and other film-production personnel. In 1985, he pitched fellow Vietnam War veteran Oliver Stone a plan to put actors through a mock boot camp before production of the movie Platoon. Dye put the principal cast—including Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, and Forest Whitaker—through an immersive 30-day military-style training regimen, limiting their food, water, and sleep, and firing blanks to keep them awake. Dye had a small role in the movie as Captain Harris and also wrote a novelization based on Stone's screenplay.

Dye also advised on the television miniseries Band of Brothers (2001), The Pacific (2010), and Masters of the Air. He also trained the actors in Saving Private Ryan, with Tom Hanks saying, "Without Dye we would have had zero authenticity in regard to our roles. His work permeated every scene."

Acting

After Platoon's critical success, Dye played a role in another Vietnam War movie, Casualties of War, and also prominently appeared as Colonel Robert Sink in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, on which his company also worked.

Dye appeared in Outbreak portraying Lieutenant Colonel Briggs, a U.S. Army officer. He played Theodore Roosevelt's superior officer Colonel Leonard Wood in the TNT miniseries Rough Riders. He appeared in Saving Private Ryan as an aide to General George Marshall; in Under Siege and Under Siege 2: Dark Territory as Captain Garza, an admiral's aide; in Spy Game as Commander Wiley during the rescue sequence; in Mission: Impossible as Frank Barnes of the CIA; in JFK as General Y; and in Starship Troopers as a high-ranking officer in the aftermath of the Brain Bug capture.

Dye played himself in Entourage, teaching fictional character Vincent Chase to scuba-dive in preparation for his role in Aquaman. He appeared in the 2010 film Knight and Day with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, and in Larry Crowne with Tom Hanks the following year. He was the technical adviser for the 1994 Oliver Stone movie Natural Born Killers, making a brief appearance as a fictionalized, police-lieutenant version of himself. Dye played Col. Porter in the TNT science fiction series Falling Skies from 2011 to 2013. As of 2015 he was preparing to direct two films, No Better Place to Die, which he wrote, and Citizen Soldiers. He had a cameo appearance as New Founding Father Donald Talbott in the 2014 film The Purge: Anarchy.

Writing

Dye has written several novels, including Run Between the Raindrops in 1985 (also published as Citadel) and Conduct Unbecoming (1992), and the novelization of the film Platoon. Along with wife Julia and comic-book artist Gerry Kissell, Dye created the critically acclaimed and best-selling graphic novel Code Word: Geronimo (IDW Publishing, 2011), which tells the story of the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.

Radio and video games

During the Iraq War, Dye was hired as a military commentator by radio station KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles and given a two-hour radio show. He hosted the History Channel's documentary series The Conquerors. He was featured in two tracks on Hoobastank's CD Every Man for Himself.

Dye consulted during development of the Medal of Honor video games series, and lent his voice and likeness to the character Gunnery Sergeant Jack Lauton in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. He reprised his role as Colonel Robert Sink in the Brothers in Arms video game series, for which he also provided his likeness.