09/28/2026
Two enemy soldiers find a body beside a jungle creek in Vietnam.
They dig a shallow grave and bury him there.
The dead man wears American camouflage, so they take him for an American.
It is October 1969. He is Private David Fisher, 23, a national serviceman from Balgowlah Heights in Sydney, and nobody on his own side knows where he is.
David was born in England in 1946. He volunteered for national service and was picked for the Special Air Service Regiment. In 1969 he was serving in Vietnam with 3 Squadron SASR.
On 27 September his five-man patrol was working west of the Nui May Tao. After a number of contacts with the enemy, they called for a hot extraction: a pick-up under fire, by rope, straight out of the jungle.
A RAAF helicopter hovered over the canopy and lowered ropes. The patrol went up on them, hanging beneath the aircraft, while RAAF gunships fired on the enemy below.
Somewhere above the trees, David came off his rope and fell into a thick jungle.
Aircraft searched for him. Soldiers searched the ground for six days. They found nothing, and the Army listed him missing in action, presumed dead.
They had been looking too close to the extraction point. A clue sat in their own records: a pool of water, "red in colour", just outside the search area. A sample went to the field hospital. Nobody has found a record of what it showed.
For 39 years David Fisher lay in that shallow grave beside the creek, the Suoi Sap.
In 2008 Army investigators reopened his case. They appealed to the Vietnamese community in Australia, and one man came forward. He had been one of the two soldiers who buried the "American" in 1969, and he could still describe the place.
The team replotted the helicopter's flight before the fall. The new plot put David well beyond where the 1969 searches had concentrated.
In August 2008 a Vietnamese member of the recovery team found a large bone in a shallow pool near the Suoi Sap. Beside it lay a scrap of plastic from an Australian water bladder of the kind the SAS carried. After a week of careful digging, the team lifted out his dog tags. The men who buried him had left them on him.
On 10 October 2008 David Fisher came home to RAAF Base Richmond. He was the last missing Australian soldier of the Vietnam War. One of the men who buried him helped bring him home.
Fifty-seven years ago today, he fell into the jungle near the Nui May Tao. His name is on panel 6 of the Roll of Honour in Canberra. In 2023 his family came to the Australian War Memorial to hear his story told at the Last Post Ceremony.
Rest easy, David.
We remember you.
Lest we forget.
Rod Hutchings
Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association Ltd
Private David John Elkington Fisher
2787344, 3rd Squadron, Special Air Service Regiment
Killed in action, South Vietnam, 27 September 1969. Aged 23.
Home, 10 October 2008.
