Dale Dye

Dale Adam Dye Jr. (born October 8, 1944) is an American actor, technical advisor, radio host and writer. A decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, Dye is the founder and head of Warriors, Inc., a technical advisory company specializing in portraying realistic military action in Hollywood films. Dye has also offered his expertise to television, such as the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific, the Apple TV+ miniseries Masters of the Air, and video games, including the Medal of Honor series.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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's military decorations and awards include: