'Got to be Billy': Fallen soldier's relic found after decades, now revered by NJ museum

HAWTHORNE — The doodles of a musing Marine stained the sides of his helmet cover in black ink.

He printed the name of his high school sweetheart and the date that they met. He proudly scrawled the name of his town and, in Greek letters, the name of his fraternity. And on the back of it, he wrote “DUTCHES” and “(SNORKLE).”

The cryptic graffiti was all that one enterprising collector of military artifacts had to rely on when he set out to connect with the family of the serviceman three years ago.

But he accomplished more than that.

After the family obtained the relic from the collector in June 2021, it was loaned to the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and Vietnam Era Museum in Holmdel. It is now the centerpiece of a special exhibition.

Michael Thornton, the curator and interim director of the museum, said the helmet cover is a state treasure.

It is placed there on a helmet of the same era, resting atop a pedestal in a display case.

“It’s very humbling to have it here,” Thornton said. “I knew instantly that it would be the midpoint in the show, and that Billy’s story could speak for so many individuals.”

Billy is Lance Cpl. William G. Dutches, who was shot in the neck and killed when his platoon was ambushed near the city of Hội An in South Vietnam on Flag Day in 1966. He was 21, and the first of 11 servicemen from the borough to die in the war.

The helmet cover belonged to him.

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Quinn Matthews, the collector, did not know that when he bought it. In fact, he said he did not even realize that “DUTCHES” referred to someone’s name.

Matthews, 26, of Toronto, purchased the helmet cover for $200 from International Military Antiques Inc. in the Gillette section of Long Hill in August 2019. He said he is often leery of buying such artifacts online because they can be easily faked. But its price was reasonable, so he said he decided that it was worth the risk.

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When he received the helmet cover, Matthews said it was clear to him that it was legitimate. Faded letters of those perplexing marks were the first positive sign, he said. Then, it was the feel between his fingertips of the worn-out fabric, and a label stitched to the underside of the cloth piece that dated it to the early 1960s.

After a bit of internet sleuthing, Matthews came across the name of a historian from the same town written on the item: “Hawthorne, New Jersey.”

Paul Chepurko, an author who has studied the lives of the borough’s fallen soldiers, reassured Matthews of the item’s authenticity. He also promised to help track down the Dutches family.

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“It started to become a lot more real,” Matthews said. “He was like, ‘This has got to be Billy.’”

'Sweetened by risk'

Dutches, a 1964 graduate of Hawthorne High School, left behind a large family on Kingston Avenue. He was the third of six children and the eldest son.

The street, off Lincoln Avenue, was dedicated to Dutches on the anniversary of his death in 2011. The borough has maintained the tradition of renaming roads after fallen soldiers with Chepurko’s assistance. On Friday, officials were due to dedicate a portion of Rea Avenue after Leo A. Braddell, an Army Air Forces veteran of World War II who died in February 1945.

Dutches was also survived by his girlfriend, who he hoped to marry. Her name is featured prominently on the helmet cover – “BETTY LOU” – along with the initials of his fraternity – “ΩΓΔ.”

His brother, Frank Dutches, now 68, was just 12 when the family got word that he was killed. He remembered he still had to go out to finish his paper route for the Paterson Evening News on the same night.

“It never leaves you,” said Dutches, the town treasurer – an elected post – in Monroe, Connecticut. “It’s part of your life that’s always there, and will always be there. You don’t want it to go away.”

Dutches said he was influenced to later enlist in the Marine Corps when he and his parents visited Billy at Parris Island in South Carolina for a pass-in-review ceremony. “It was a big moment,” he said, “watching your big brother graduate from boot camp.”

Billy joined the service when he was 19, almost immediately after receiving a high school diploma.

A blunt declaration typed under his name in the yearbook hints at his frame of mind at that time: “Everything is sweetened by risk,” it says.

Just two years would pass before Billy was gone.

Dutches said his family’s decision to part with the helmet cover was difficult, but that it was made easier knowing how much the museum will cherish it. He said it was also important to him and his surviving siblings – a sister, Diane, died in May 2019 – to understand that the relic is symbolic of a broader sacrifice of tens of thousands of soldiers who perished in the war.

“It was a good feeling to see it and touch it, but it brings you back,” he said. “It brings you back to when the news first broke.”

According to the National Archives, 58,220 U.S. soldiers were killed in the war. Billy was among 1,487 casualties from New Jersey.

'Objects tell stories'

One question about the helmet cover will endure: That is, where on Earth was it for 50-plus years?

It is a riddle that no collector or historian – not even Matthews – can explain. Tracing its journey has proven to be an impossible task.

“It’s a total mystery,” he said.

Matthews said he did not get very far when he asked the military antiques seller about the origin of the helmet cover. He said he was only informed that it came from a dealer in Georgia.

But Thornton, the museum curator, said he has a theory that may clear up at least part of its history. He said it is a distinct possibility that the helmet cover was reissued to another Marine after Dutches was killed.

There are marks on one side of the relic that Thornton said do not belong to Dutches. “It’s just the reality of the supply chain,” he said. “Stacks of gear were picked up off the battlefield.”

Thornton also speculated that the helmet cover may have been discarded by the time the U.S. finally withdrew its troops in March 1973, two months after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. The military, he said, left a lot of its equipment to help South Vietnam, which continued to fight against North Vietnam until the fall of Saigon in April 1975.

“That’s one way it could’ve lingered there,” he said.

But that the helmet cover eventually coursed a path to the U.S. and survived for decades longer is miraculous, Thornton said. “I like to say objects tell stories,” he said. “This one can easily write a book.”

Matthews deserves praise, Thornton said, for understanding that the relic is bigger than his private interests.

The collector, who aspires to be a doctor, said the helmet cover’s permanent place in a museum is a perfect outcome to its secret past.

“It’s one of the prides of my life to have been able to help out with this,” Matthews said. “It makes me feel like collecting is a worthwhile thing to do.”

Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: devencentis@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Family connects with fallen soldier of Vietnam War with helmet cover