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Two Brothers Finally Home, RIP!
Soldiers Missing in Action from Vietnam War Identified
August 11, 2010 - The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of two U.S. servicemen, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.
U.S. Army 1st Lt. Paul G. Magers of Sidney, Neb., will be buried on Aug. 27 in Laurel, Mont., and Army Chief Warrant Officer Donald L. Wann of Shawnee, Okla., will be buried on Aug. 21 in Fort Gibson, Okla.
On June 1, 1971, both men were flying aboard an AH-1 Cobra gunship in support of an emergency extraction of an Army ranger team in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. After the rangers were extracted, helicopters were ordered to destroy claymore mines which had been left behind in the landing zone. During this mission their helicopter was hit by ground fire, crashed and exploded. Pilots who witnessed the explosions concluded that no one could have survived the crash and explosions. Enemy activity in the area precluded a ground search.
In 1990, analysts from DPMO, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) and their predecessor organizations interviewed both American and Vietnamese witnesses and produced leads for field investigations. In 1993 and 1998, two U.S.-Socialist Republic of Vietnam teams, led by JPAC, surveyed the suspected crash site and found artifacts and debris consistent with a Cobra gunship. In mid-1999, another joint team excavated the site, but it stopped for safety reasons when the weather deteriorated. No remains were recovered, but the team did find wreckage associated with the specific crash they were investigating.
The Vietnamese government subsequently declared the region within Quang Tri Province where the aircraft crashed as off-limits to U.S. personnel, citing national security concerns. As part of an agreement with JPAC, a Vietnamese team unilaterally excavated the site and recovered human remains and other artifacts in 2008. The Vietnamese returned to the site in 2009, expanded the excavation area and discovered more remains and additional evidence.
Forensic analysis, circumstantial evidence and the mitochondrial DNA match to the Magers and Wann families by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory confirmed the identification of the remains.
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What a romantic story of corny nationalism. A country still concerned about the whereabouts of bodies of soldiers killed many decades ago is a country of disney and hollywoodie people.
Romantacy. Hollywood and disney will love it. We can already see the $$$$$ signs in the eyes of these movie execs.
If they had been members of my family and their bodies were found and returned "home" after these many decades of being dead, I would not care.
These dead soldiers won't RIP any better buried in the US than if they were buried in a foreign country. It's ridiculous to believe the contrary.
Get used to it. It's a fact of life. People die. Soldiers die. Where you're buried after you die makes no difference.
It's just another example of sick and immature nationalism in the US. Bunch of babies and baby killers.
Oh, and Vietnamese soil would be a [better] place to be buried than US soil is, too. Vietnam is not an imperialist, colonialist, corporatist, destructive, and genocidal country, while the US is. What a place to be brought back to for reburial.
There's an expression often used when speaking of the rogue nature of the govt. People often enough say that "The founding "fathers" must be rolling over in their gaves". Iow, they would not be RIP anymore.
I put "fathers" in quotes because they weren't fathers to any of us.
Seem to have a tremendous lack of critical thought functions as well as common sense, my guess is nobody probably cares about you, but hey if that keeps you in this state of fear in life so be it!
If your view is about the families of the two deceased soldiers KIA, then that's understandable; but it's not national news-worthy. And nationalism is indeed a problem in the racist, genocidal, pillaging, hypocritical, imperialist, blind, and crony patriotism U.S.A.
The families of those two soldiers will receive the bodies of their deads sons back home or buried across the country (continent) in DC. They will or might be more at rest now, the families that is. They won't live with the thoughts that their sons are dead, as of long ago, but not buried nearby. Some people are literally comforted by this difference; dead and buried far away, or nearby.
I know some people who I care for who would have the above kind of emotive character, and perhaps I also would if I was in their shoes; although I doubt it. And some people I know also would not have this sort of emotive attachment. They have more spirit than that. Location of burial is simply not pertinent.
But my criticism is about the nationalism and the whole country making a big deal about where these two soldiers dead long ago are buried or located. They're certainly not your, my or most people's loved ones or past loved ones. It's a family thing. They wouldn't care about my family, so ....
Now for soldiers KIA or not KIA, but nevertheless dead because of having served in the present wars, I view this differently. The reason is that these deaths are from the current wars of our country's making, choosing while most troops didn't realize they were ordered into war of aggression. Yet I nevertheless don't see any point in making their deaths a national news matter except for waking citizens up so those who aren't active physically or at least morally about the crimes of this govt become active and cease voting in ways that elect rogue and otherwise unvetted electoral candidates.
Otherwise, the deaths of these soldiers are family matters. Media local to where the families live can and should provide some news coverage, but national coverage is of no value except if it helps to get people to stop electing rogue govts. National news should be about critically important issues most of all. Other news can remain local and no one will be harmed because of it.
If soldiers dead long ago being returned to so-called home, and to the home that sent them to their deaths in wars the US criminally waged, is to be national news, then it should be to promote activism against rogue govt or politics and for the awakening or, rather, development of a national and moral consciousness. The lack of that national quality is why these soldiers died in wars of aggression.
I didn't lack that consciousness when enlisting in the USN in 1975. Many citizens do suffer from lacking this consciousness. That has to change [nationwide].