The man who died in an overnight fire in North Roanoke County this week was a Green Beret who served three tours of duty in the Vietnam War.

Firefighters found William E. Jackson, better known as "Bill," and his dog Nakita under the rubble of a house that burned in a heavy blaze early Tuesday morning, according to a Roanoke County Fire & Rescue news release and an obituary in today's Roanoke Times.

By the time firefighters were called, the single-story brick house on Magnolia Road, off Plantation Road, was already engulfed in flames. A man who drove by about 2:15 a.m. called 911 and unsuccessfully tried to enter the house, said department spokeswoman Jennifer Conley Sexton.

Jackson had apparently died of smoke inhalation, and fire investigators believed the blaze started accidentally though they couldn't determine the cause because of the extensive damage, Conley Sexton said Thursday.

Jackson's roommate was away, Conley Sexton said. The house was completely destroyed, and damage was estimated at $200,000, she said.

Jackson, a Detroit native, served in the U.S. Army Special Forces as an infantry soldier sometime between 1954 and 1975 in Vietnam, the obituary says. He received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm, and Vietnam Service Medal with four campaign stars.

He then worked as a certified emergency nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem for 36 years, said Phil Turpin, a retired U.S. Army sergeant major who met Jackson at the Disabled American Veterans Chapter No. 3.

"Bill was the type of person who was born with a gifted mind," said Turpin from his home in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

"He was a master electrician and a master carpenter, but he had no reason to be. He just wanted to do everything himself, so he got books and learned how to do them. He had photographic memory, so it was like he just absorbed everything in front him."

Staff writer Sheila Ellis contributed to this report.