I never know what memory might happen to pop into my head at any given time. While I used to just ruminate and ponder on them for a few minutes and move on, these days I try to at least make a few notes on my iPhone for a story idea to be developed later.
The older I get the less I am able to run easily through my memory banks with total recall…it takes some more pondering and work to coax the memories back. These playing cards popped into my head the other day and the first thing I did was go to eBay to see if I could find one of the cards to add to my small bookcase of dad’s military mementos. I found they were very rare, but I did find some information I was unaware of.
When dad came back from Vietnam in the summer of 1966 he brought several duffle bags and a foot locker back with him. These were filled with the paraphernalia of a soldier and stored away along with another 20 years worth of soldiering in an area underneath the stairs that was commonly called “The Cave”, as it was not easily accessed and you had to crawl in on your hands and knees.
Naturally, this was attractive to us kids as we could grab a flashlight and secretly dig through all kinds of cool stuff we weren’t supposed to touch. One of the things in the footlocker was a number of playing card decks like the one below. Having skulls, we naturally thought they were very cool and swiped a deck or two to play with. We thought it was weird that some of the decks only had 52 aces of spades, but some were just regular playing cards.
When dad starting finding them spread all over the house we got a spanking and told that the cards were special and we needed to leave them where they were.
We didn’t know why they were special, we just thought they were cards and there were several decks. As we got a little older the story came out that these were “Death Cards” from Vietnam used by soldiers as calling cards and left on dead enemy soldiers to let the Viet Cong know who they were up against. Well, that only made them more desirable since we constantly playing Army all over the neighborhood… so we started leaving a card on enemy neighbor kids as we “killed” them.
Most of my life I just assumed these cards were used by the entire 1st Cavalry Division and were probably still very common. I have learned since the cards were designed by Captain Mozey, the commander of Charlie Company, my dads unit, and were unique to the men in the 8th Cavalry “Jumping Mustangs”, which were an Airborne/Air Assault unit, hence the “Death From Above”.
1965-1966. Capt. Mozey is crouching on the left.
Vietnam 1965-1966
Here is some historic information I discovered while researching the cards written by retired Sergeant Major Herb Friedman, who researches and collects death cards:
There is a confirmed report that this card was designed by Captain Mozey of C Company, 1st Battalion of the 8th Cavalry Regiment “The Jumping Mustangs” during his Vietnam tour of 1965-1966. A member of the unit told me that:
The calling card was placed on the chest or tucked, slightly, in the shirt pocket. But as I said before we did not use it except to say “We were here.” The actual “Death From Above” saying was a WWII phrase. As of August 1966 the 1st & 2nd of the 8th “Jumping Mustangs” were all carrying a deck of “Death From Above” cards.
Specialist 4 Kevan Mynderup, a former member of “Charlie” Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1968 adds:
I can confirm that the “Death From Above” card was designed by Captain William B Mozey in either late 1965 or early 1966. When Bill took over the company the nickname was changed to “Death From Above” and the unit members got a full deck of the playing cards along with a Black Silk scarf with the “Death From Above” and airborne Skull on it. The phrase was banned in the Battalion Area, so the guys said “DFA” until the brass figured that out. It was an Article 15 offense to say either. The company was broken up at least 2 times because of “DFA” and the cards and scarves disappeared, but returned in 1968 when I was with the company. Only Charlie 1/8th Cavalry was known as “Death From Above” at this time. The other companies had their own nicknames as did all the companies in the 1st Air Cavalry Division.
Although Mozey has been credited with designing the cards, it appears that he had them printed in the United States. One complete deck was found in an old foot locker and the cards turn out to have been printed by: Brown & Bigelow, St. Paul, Minn., U.S.A. Text on the actual deck adds the following information: The Business builders, 55164, A Saxon Industrial Company.
Brown & Bigelow of St Paul, Minnesota, was a leading producer of playing cards in the U.S. from the late 1920s to the 1980s. Brown & Bigelow manufactured playing cards under several brand names, as well as novelty and advertising decks. There seems to be no record of them producing Death Cards, so perhaps because of the political situation in the United States the company chose to keep their participation in the production of these cards quiet.
Former Specialist Fourth Class Vic Castle told me that when he arrived in Vietnam as a member of the 1/8th Cavalry on 1 May 1967 they showed him the death cards and black silk scarf and told him their use was prohibited. He says:
The clerk calls out my name. I get in Jeep for short ride to 1/8th Cavalry. There is a large sign that says, “1/8th Cavalry: Airborne, Air Assault, Air Mobile.” Out walks this Sergeant who greets us. I tell him I think there has been a mistake. I haven’t had Jump training. He says, “Don’t worry about it; we don’t give you a damn parachute anyway. He assigns me to A Company. He shows me the Death card and the “Death From Above” black scarf and tells me if I get caught with either it is an Article 15.
He remembers that some unit members were court-martialed while using the cards. He said:
I was told that the men were carving a Cavalry patch on a dead Viet Cong’s chest and stuck the playing card in his mouth. There was a soldier from an engineer outfit there and he took some pictures. He sent them back to his father who apparently was not amused. An investigation followed and then a trial of a First Lieutenant and a buck Sergeant. I think the trial was held in St. Louis and both men were sent to Ft. Leavenworth.
It seems to me that the two men were tried for abusing the body of the dead Viet Cong rather than the use of the death cards. Such charges have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems perfectly acceptable to shoot a terrorist a dozen times or hack him to death with a bayonet, but abuse the body in any way afterwards and it is a criminal act. How strange.
Curiously, the “Death from Above” death cards reappeared again 30+ years later when American troops were sent to the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm.”
From Ron Doyler:
“There exists another form of these cards. Brown and Bigelow out of Minnesota produced them. William Mosey had them made when he was with the CAV in VN. The cards were done in full decks of regular suits and also ace of spades only. I have two of which were gifts from the Colonel when I was a boy. The cards are all black background with a winged skull and DEATH from ABOVE. The Colonel coined this phrase and had a unit flag also made. If I remember correctly from my conversation with him the director of Apocalypse Now had to gain permission to use this in the film from Col Mosey. Over the years the Col. has given all the cards away.”
I find the background of all this fascinating, as it has been part of my life for over 50 years now. I even wrote “Death From Above” on my climbing helmet back in the 90’s as a sort of karmic dare to the powers that be, as rocks falling from above was one of the more common dangers we encountered while climbing.
While these were just playing cards, I shudder to think how many of mom and dad’s mementos we destroyed over the years when we were kids. After a while all the cards had been lost or destroyed, but there was much more.
There were some cool old suitcases that had stickers of where they had traveled stuffed full of cool stuff they had stashed away, like mom’s old brown army boots, both their uniforms and patches, medals and other hard won awards, post cards and various souvenirs, leaded crystal from Austria, and on and on. We were a half dozen destroying locusts devouring everything in the house. At least the internet allows us to reclaim some some of the bits and pieces of our history.
Tall Tales From Capt Rogue 
I don’t remember seeing these when I was a kid. In fact other than the dress hat in the hall closet or a random shirt or cap there was not much left by the time I was old enough to remember. I didn’t know much about Dad’s time in the military until we started discussing WWII in history in elementary school. Then I got to see the Japanese flag and the German camera with the bullet hole in it. I was allowed to take the flag to school. When I held it up in history class telling them my dad brought it back several kids tried to correct me saying, “You mean your grandpa.” Later in my early teens I found his army yearbooks where he had written stories of his experiences. There were newspaper articles of his heroism and pictures of him when he was in the honor guard. I was amazed and proud. Dad had always seemed to be old to me. I had never known him to be the bad ass Army man that he was. I asked him if I could have the yearbooks to keep. He said yes, but of course Mom said I could have them some day.
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See, I just made notes to do a story on the war souvenirs. And another on running around the neighborhood playing army against the neighbor kids wearing all dad’s gear. And another about the wide range in our ages and being the baby sitter for all you yahoos.
Dad was getting old when you were born! He was 44 when you were born and would have been in his 50’s by the time you started paying attention to his age. I think it might be a good thing for you that he did have time to mellow out, when he came back from Vietnam to took him a few years to decompress from 20 years of military life. We were treated like his young recruits, falling in a formation line and getting out asses chewed out, GI’ing the floors down on our knees with scrub brushes, eating every pea on our plate or getting thumped on the head with his boney finger…hmm, another story…
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Right! Paul and I should probably start writing stories of the dad we had! 😉 He definitely had mellowed. Well, not all the way…
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Yes you should! And his mellow was judged on his own scale, not to be confused with a meditating monk’s mellow 🙂
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Reference: Death From Above Card. I am the son of, Lt. Colonel William B. Mozey (Retired and very much alive). I would like to correct, the array of misinformation that has been stated about my Father’s “Death From Above” cards. In early 1966 with the rank of Captain, he took over as Company Commander of C Company, a Combat Infantry Rifle Company, of the 1st Battalion (Airmobile) 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.
Prior to taking over as company commander, he came up with the now well-known card and it’s design, (drawing it out by hand, then and adding the words “Death From Above”. He contacted the Brown & Bigelow company (from his hometown), sending them the design. He asked if they could send him decks of playing cards” with the logo, and the words “Death From Above” underneath the wings & skull design.
As stated, Only Charlie Company, 1/8th Cavalry Airmobile, was known as the “Death From Above” company in 1966.
According to my Father, the other company’s in the battalion, and even other airborne units started asking, if they could obtain some of the cards. To which my father replied “the only way you will get one is, if you become a traitor, and fight for the other side.”
After my Father’s 1st tour (65-66), other units also started to utilize the slogan, and even came up with many different variations in the design of the original card. This has become one of the most recognized symbols to have come out of the Vietnam war, as there seems to be endless amounts of “take off designs” that range from cards to t-shirts available to purchase on the internet, and other venues. There was even a Beer named “Death From Above” from New Zealand, depicting imagery of Huey Helicopter gunships with a hop designed Death from above wings, that was sold worldwide.
I would like to ad, approximately 30 years ago, my father gave permission to a fellow combat veteran he met on his 2nd tour in Vietnam 68 -69, (who coincidently also lives in Minnesota), that he could have manufactured, NEW “Death From Above Cards” with the stipulation, that they have an 3/16″ white border encompassing the entire outside edge, of the otherwise black colored background of the card.
As for these “original” Decks having been produced with all Ace of spades cards, that is 100% absolutely not correct. All the decks were a standard deck of playing cards. Also the “DFA card” depicting a black spade with skull and a sickle, IS NOT a original “Death From Above Card”.
Also my Father has stated, during his time as “Charlie” Company’s Commander in 1966, the Phrase of “Death From Above” was never banned, nor was it an Article 15: and the Company was never broken up, and added “Charlie company 1/8th, never committed any atrocities, while I was in command.”
Hopefully this will put to rest the misinformation that has been circulating out there, about the history of the Original “Death From Above Card”, that my Father designed.
I am very proud of my Father, and his many accomplishments, his courage, his complete honesty, generosity and compassion he has shown not only to me, and his family, but to all who have met him, and to his fellow “Band Of Brothers of the 1/8th Cav (Airmobile 1965-66) Veterans, he so proudly served with.
A proud Son
David Mozey
*Note: I have spoken to my Father, on this subject in great depth, countless times. In fact I just talked to him about it today, after celebrating his, 89 years young birthday 9/3/2019.
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Thanks for the comments David, I really appreciate getting to what is truth and what is myth. However, I don’t feel my story has “the array of misinformation” you suggest and mostly you simply re-state what is already written there. My father was a platoon sgt. under your father’s command in 65-66 with many years of combat experience. I believe I noted many of the “truths” you speak of and noted from whom the 2nd hand stories came from. Understanding 65-66 was the initial major push of troops in a war that lasted for over a decade, what may or may not have happened after 1966 may have many “other truths” as well. While noting your position mainly concerns the creation of the original cards, after your father left in 1966 the company and regiment remained in Vietnam for many years past his command…with ample opportunities for new stories and situations to form a history of their own, including card re-designs, other commanders to have different viewpoints on the use of the cards and banning phrases or other units plagiarizing similar designs. My dad came back from Vietnam with several decks, including some with all aces as well as regular decks. Maybe they were not “original”, but they came from Vietnam in 1966. Having served in Korea in 1979-1980, I know how easy it was to take something to a local in-country craftsman and have them create a copy with whatever changes you asked for and make as many as you wanted. Your father’s truth is exactly that, his truth. Someone else’s truth from a few months or even years after your father left with totally different situations is just as valid. It is always good to get to the roots of where something started to fully understand the history, which I do not feel I have misrepresented.
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I have been to many 1/8 Cav Reunions and know your dad pretty well, he sent me a sterling DFA hat pin many years ago. Just talked to your dad last week 10/08/2019 about SGM Speakman who was under your dads command as a SGT 65/66. Michael Price B 1/8 .. 67/68
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Just today I received a note from Bill`s wife that he died on 20 December, 2020. Bill and I were good friends since the Associate Inf. Officers Course at Ft. Benning January-June 1965. We we went to gun shows together and I was at his house many times. We kept in touch over the years and he often sent me clippings that he thought would be of interest to me. I always enjoyed them and our many phone conversations. When he found out that he would become the company commander of Charlie Company he wrote to me when I was in Saigon and asked me to have the Death From Above flag made and sent me a sketch of what he wanted it to look like. I had it made at a cost of about $10.00 and mailed it to him. I have always been proud of the fact that I had a hand in the Death From Above story. Bill was a great friend, honest as the day id long and had many funny stories to tell. His greatest time in the army was commanding Charlie Company. Foe anyone who knew him he will be at the top of their memory list.
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Thanks for the update, sad to hear of the passing of Commanding Officer Mozey. The Jumping Mustangs of Charlie Company in Vietnam was my father’s last war before he retired, having already served in WWII and Korea. Much respect for all our old warriors.
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