RIPPLE SALVO… #867… “…DON’T FORGET THE VIETNAM POW’s AND MIAs”… That was the “header” for the lead editorial of the Ogden Standard-Examiner on Sunday, 21 July 1968. While the OpEd didn’t name the subjects of their editorial, the identity of the pair of warriors in Air Force RF-4C 64-1042 of the 16th TRS and 460th TRW out of Tan Son Nhut is clear from the record. On 26 July 1967, MAJOR GILLAND WALES CORBITT and 1LT WILLIAM ORLAN BARE, disappeared into the night and the Annamite Mountains of North Vietnam on a photo reconnaissance mission. They had completed their mission and were returning when their Photo Phantom disappeared off the radar about 25 miles west of Dong Hoi, North Vietnam. Disappeared. COLONEL CORBITT and MAJOR BARE (promoted while MIA) remain missing in action, presumed killed in action and thier remains rest where they fell on the battlefield fifty-one years ago. The July 1968 Standard-Examiner editorial requesting Northern Utahns remember our POWs and MIAs is posted below… but first…
GOOD MORNING… Day EIGHT HUNDRED-SIXTY-SEVEN of a return to the skies of North Vietnam and the air campaign of 1965-1968 called Rolling Thunder…
HEAD LINES… From the OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER on Saturday, 20 July 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “VIETCONG REBELS MANACLE 39 PRISONERS–Set Captives Out For Bait–Reds flee As B-52s Attack”… “A heavy raid by U.S. B-52 bombers scared away Vietcong guerrillas who set 39 manacled captives out as bait and planned to ambush South Vietnamese troops coming to their rescue, military spokesmen said today. The government troops freed the emaciated men and women, who had been chained to stakes in the ground, and reported killing six Vietcong soldiers who had stayed behind as guards when most of the other guerrillas fled. Three South Vietnamese infantrymen were wounded when the government troops charged into an open field Friday to free the prisoners in the Mekong Delta, 125 miles southwest of Saigon… Kill 29 Rebels… Nine miles north of the ambush site, other government soldiers reported killing 29 guerrillas in two days of fighting…three government troops were killed and 29 wounded in the intermittent fighting….Elsewhere, ground fighting remained in its month-long halt, with no significant actions …Small scale terror attacks had been anticipated today, called ‘national shame day’ in Vietnam because of the signing of the 1954 Geneva convention which partitioned their country.”… Page 1: “BLAST INJURIES 12 IN SAIGON”… “…injured by a grenade thrown on a Saigon street today during a dispute between members of the Hoa Hao, a splinter Buddhist group.”…
Page 1: “DETERMINED CZECHS TO ATTEND RUSSIAN SUMMIT SHOWDOWN–INFORMED SOURCES VIEW KIEV AS LIKELY TALK SITE”… “Prague radio reported today for the first time the Soviet Union’s call to Czechoslovakia’s liberal leadership for a showdown meeting next week and informants said this was a clear sigh the Prague reformers would attend.”… Page 1: “PROTESTERS CHANT ‘SEIG HEIL’–Disrupts Wallace Talk In St. Louis”… Page 1: “McCARTHY AND HUMPHREY SPAR ON VIETNAM ISSUE… Page 1: “JAMES EARL RAY READY FOR TRIAL”… Page 1: “Gary Indiana Police Force Fails to Report For Work– Wildcat Strike”… “Sixty of Gary’s 220-member police force failed to report for duty Friday night and today in what Chief James Hilton termed a wildcat strike.”… Page 1: “LBJ, THIEU CONFER–End Meet Today”… “President Johnson an President Nguyen Van Thieu plan to pursue the Vietnam war at its present level…an advance copy of the closing joint communique made no mention fo halting all bombing of North Vietnam nor did it mention how Saigon might approach direct dealing with the National Liberation Front of which the Vietcong is the military arm.”
20 JULY 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… Associate Press no coverage for air ops north of the DMZ… VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing air losses in Southeast Asia on 20 July 1968…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) IN THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIETNAM ON 20 JULY…
1965… COMMANDER VALENTINE GEORGE MATULA, USN, CO RVAH-1 … (KIA)… and… LT CARL EUGENE GRONQUIST, USN… (KIA)…
1966… CAPTAIN MERRILL RAYMOND LEWIS, USAF… (KIA)… COLONEL WILLIAM HUMPHREY NELSON, USAF, 355th TFW… (KIA)… CAPTAIN WILLIAM HARLEY MEANS, USAF… (POW)… 1LT EDWARD LEE HUBBARD, USAF… (POW)… CAPTAIN LAWRENCE BARLOW, USAF… (POW)… CAPTAIN NORMAN ALEXANDER McDANIEL, USAF… (POW)… and… 1LT CRAIG ROLAND NORBERT, USAF… (MIA)…
1967… NONE…
1968… NONE…
“LEAVE A REMEMBRANCE” (and Contribution?) at VVMF “Wall of Faces“… Try it, you’ll be glad you did…
RIPPLE SALVO… #867… OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER, 21 JULY 1968, Page 6, Opinion Editorial…
“IT’S WELL TO REMEMBER THE USS PUEBLO, BUT DON’T FORGET THE VIETNAM POWs and MIAs”… I quote…
“The battle cry of the Vietnam War–if there is a battle cry about this crazy, mixed-up war–seems to be emerging as ‘Remember the Pueblo.’
“We agree that the USS Pueblo an its 93 (82) surviving crewmen, taken prisoner early this year (22 Jan) by the Communists (North Korea), should not be forgotten. But while we’re remembering the Pueblo, let’s not forget the more than 1,200 U.S. servicemen who are prisoners of the North Vietnamese or missing-in-action over North Vietnam (and Laos). After all, the Pueblo’s capture by North Korea was only incidentally related –as an intelligence ship, seeking information about the Reds–to the war in Vietnam.
“The loss of these other hundred Americans is as direct result of the fighting in Southeast Asia. As of mid-July, the Pentagon knew of only 287 U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines or fliers who definitely were in the prisoner of war category. There are at least 913 others whose fate is unknown. To their families, this is, in many ways, worse than being listed as POWs.
“It was just about a year ago that a friend of ours became one of those who are among the missing, the vanished. He was an Air Force career officer who had filled a wide variety of assignments, including a hitch flying B-47s at nearby Mountain Home, Idaho, Air Force Base. He was originally from Wyoming and is married to a Nevada girl. He could have, with his seniority, remained at a comparatively safe desk job. But that wasn’t the way he looked at things. His profession, he insisted, was that of a combat pilot.”So he volunteered for assignment to the Hill Air Force Base-maintained F-4 Phantoms, knowing he would go to Vietnam. The craft he drew was a reconnaissance version of the F-4, unarmed so it could fly faster and farther than the regular fighter-bombers as it made photographs of enemy positions.
“He went to Southeast Asia late last June. Within 29 days he had flown 21 missions, returning safely from each. But on the 30th day–his 22nd mission–he and his navigator went down over rough terrain, a combination of water, jungles and mountains. Nothing’s been heard from our pilot friend since. For several weeks, his wife and their three children maintained hope that he had bailed out safely and would work his way back to friendly territory. But as the weeks turned to months this faint glimmer of the officer reaching freedom had to be discarded.
“The wife has returned to college, trying to keep her sorrow–a sorrow magnified by the nagging feeling of not knowing whether her husband is dead or alive–buried beneath the textbooks and cares of her family. She’s brave like most service wives. And she’s still hopeful. But it’s a strain that tests the strength of any woman.
“This story can be told in more than 900 other versions–those of the other men missing over enemy territory or behind the Red lines. It’s the waiting, the wondering, the living ‘half a life,’ as one wife put it that’s the pain. We just can’t forget these men, any more than they can forget the officers and crew of the Pueblo. We know all too well that the Communists laugh at the conventional rules of so-called civilized warfare.
“Only 21 prisoners have come back to tell what the North Vietnamese are doing including five who escaped. Three Americans were released Friday–turned over to the custody of Red sympathizers–as a propaganda gesture by the North Vietnamese. These are the only men who can truthfully report that the POW picture is. They’ve related the details of the brutality that Ho Chi Minh’s forces practice beatings, segregation into small units, parades before irate natives, inadequate food and all the rest. That’s the physical torture. The mental anguish is worse–particularly the lack of mail from the loved ones.
“The U.S. diplomats and military leaders negotiating at Panmunjom for the release of the Pueblo crew know all this. So must Averell Harriman, Cyrus Vance and the others who are meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris during the so-called ‘truce’ talks. If there is ever a time when our negotiators can lay down conditions must be a provision for word about the prisoners of war and the men missing in action. Any enemy who will not meet this basic requirement for humane treatment deserves no favors from our side.”….
End of quote from the S-E…
COLONEL CORBITT and MAJOR BARE continue to rest in peace where they fell –glory gained, duty done– fifty-one years ago. Left behind… My thoughts tonight are with the families of two warriors who laid down their lives for their country in a war waged long ago…
VIETNAM-ERA STATISTICAL REPORT ON Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia… At war’s end more than 2,500 personnel were unaccounted for. Over the years the effort to recover the bodies of the fallen in North & South Vietnam and Laos RELENTLESS… As of 31 May 2018 the Department of Defense records indicate:
(1) A total of 1,597 remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Navy-356; Air Force-496; Marines-202; and Army-512 Civilians=31…
(2) 1,019 of the missing are being actively pursued and another 90 have been deferred. 488 have been deemed unrecoverable (for example those lost at sea)…
Humble Host applauds the dogged determination and expertise of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to find, recover, identify and return to the families the remains of the fallen who remain behind… You guys are great… oohrah…
Lest we forget… Bear