BY ELIZABETH NEFF

THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    When they were young men and soldiers, Mike Christensen carried a wounded comrade away from gunfire in Vietnam, only to have him die in the arms of medic Dave DeSoucy. About 33 years later, the two met again.

    Over coffee, Christensen, of Taylorsville, and DeSoucy, a deputy sheriff from San Bernardino, Calif., who is serving as a volunteer Olympic security officer, reminisced Saturday about their time in the 101st Airborne.

    They were trying to piece together details of the death of the fellow soldier that had brought them together after so many years. DeSoucy had come to Utah hoping to find Christensen and solve a puzzle involving the death of paratrooper James Michael Holmes of Mississippi.

    "Dave is the first guy I've sat down and talked to about those events since I got back," Christensen said Saturday. "I had a lot of things that were hid away in my mind, and a lot is coming back to me."

    He remembers feeling like an aged veteran after spending almost a year in Vietnam when he met Holmes, who had recently arrived.

    "I felt like an old man when he came in," said Christensen. "But we were all young."

    In the days leading up to Holmes' death, hostile fire had been exchanged for days at Firebase Tomahawk in the northern part of South Vietnam. Their platoon was trying to take a hill that would give them a key position on a ridgeline when they came under fire.

    Holmes was hit in the torso. Christensen was later awarded a Bronze Star for carrying the wounded soldier back to safety just before Holmes died in DeSoucy's arms.

    "We went through things most people cannot relate to," DeSoucy said.

    DeSoucy had thought Christensen might have Holmes' Zippo lighter, engraved with Holmes' full name and a U.S. Army parachute emblem. Holmes' family has never received his personal items and did not know the details of his death until Holmes' niece and DeSoucy found each other on the Internet last month.

    Knowing Holmes' family did not get a letter from a commanding officer, the former medic had hoped he and Christensen might be able to share memories with the family and return Holmes' lighter to them. The two men found each other this weekend after The Tribune ran an article about DeSoucy's search.

    "My sister-in-law and my wife saw it, and friends of mine that I've known from way back then saw it," said Christensen, 54, of Taylorsville. "I guess it was my 15 minutes of fame."

    The two were able to contact each other after Christensen called The Tribune. But Christensen said he does not have the lighter and didn't know where it might be.

    "I wish I did," he said Saturday. "I had a lighter I got from one of the guys, but it wasn't Michael's."

   DeSoucy, 53, says he always wanted to contact Holmes' next of kin to tell them how the 21-year-old had died. Holmes had been the first of DeSoucy's friends to die in the war and an unshakable memory over the years.

    When DeSoucy went online to renew his membership in the Alpha Avengers Association, a veterans group, he saw a posting seeking information from Holmes' niece, Trudi Evans. The schoolteacher had been making a scrapbook for her mother and Holmes' sister, Sandy Sartin of Darbun, Miss.

    Christensen contacted Evans briefly Saturday.

    "I couldn't tell her much," Christensen said of their conversation. "I wish I did have it [the lighter]."

    Holmes had been in Vietnam for only three months when he died. His family had thought his body was recovered only after he had been missing in action for a time.

    Even without the lighter, Evans said just being able to speak with those who knew her uncle and hearing how he spent his last days were "amazing."

    "It was very nice to talk to him," Evans said Saturday. "He told me about the medal and insisted that he send it to me. This has been a miracle -- just think about the odds."

    DeSoucy said he is glad to have found Christensen and is looking forward to an Alpha Avengers reunion in Colorado this summer. He hopes the lighter might yet be found.

    "It may turn up somewhere else," he said. "But it will probably be a little while."