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'Moving Wall' a pasteboard box of memories
By CAPT. RICHARD J. SPROUSE Public Affairs Officer "The Moving Wall," the half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington, recently made its way to the Minnesota State Veterans' Cemetery near Camp Ripley.
"The Wall" travels throughout America for most of the year as a way to honor the 58,000 men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Vietnam War. Not just those who gave their lives, but those who remain missing as well.
I remember reports of those who had died or were missing as I watched the sights and sounds of the war on the evening news out of Johnstown, Pa. One of the missing was a young man from nearby Greensburg who I would get to know later.
I have also had the honor of knowing and serving with plenty of Vietnam vets. But it's those reported as missing in action that I have had a decades-long connection to.
In late 1975, I was stationed with the U.S. Army at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. Saigon had fallen in April and it seemed no one wanted to think about Vietnam or remember the men and women who served there.
Landing on my desk one day was a pasteboard box simply marked "POW/MIA-Vietnam." Inside were the after-action reports describing the circumstances surrounding Arizonans who had served in the Army and had been listed as missing in action or held as a prisoner of war during Vietnam.
There was only one POW that I can recall and about a dozen MIA, but the after-action reports on both could have filled several .50-caliber machine gun ammo boxes.
I had no direct connection to the POW who received an annual physical courtesy of the U.S. Army. That would not be the case with those MIA.
The MIA files each contained a "buck slip," a sort of semi-official routing document that was to be signed and dated annually to ensure they were properly reviewed, secured and stored. My assignment was to be the caretaker of these missing men and their memory for the next couple of years. Little did I know then that I would continue that mission decades later.
Those already musty-smelling and yellowing volumes contained rattling narratives that explained the MIAs' last known moments. Hollywood couldn't write such a script. It wasn't surprising that most involved a helicopter, the symbol of the Vietnam War.
Each report told somewhat similar tales of war and uncertain fate: The helicopter was last seen taking heavy fire before crashing and burning.
The fate of the crew - unknown.
In one instance I recall a "hard landing" where two of the four crew members were seen exiting the flaming chopper.
It was initially thought that the pilot, Warrant Officer Jon Reid of Phoenix, had been captured, but he was not among the POWs released in 1973.
In 1999, the remains of Reid and the copilot, 1st Lieutenant David May of Hyattsville, Md., were identified during excavation of the crash site. Today they rest at Arlington National Cemetery. The resting places of the other crew members, Spec. 5 Randolph Johnson of Milwaukee and Spec. 4 Robert Acalotto of Greensburg, Pa., are known but to God.
Over the past decades I've watched with much interest as about half of the Army MIA from Arizona were recovered, but there's still six that remain unaccounted for. The Wall always moves me to think of Ronald Babcock, Paul Bates, Elliott Crook, Charles Dale, Lowell Powers and Armando Ramirez.
There were so many questions as I tried to put the puzzle of the last moments of a man's life together with the final crucial pieces missing. It seemed that I had been handed Pandora's box containing all the pain and pride of those that had served in Vietnam. It all had a profound effect on me and still does.
Maybe that's why when that simple yet breathtaking monument to Vietnam is nearby, I hover around for an hour or so, searching for those names again and hoping someday I'll finally be able to close that pasteboard box forever.
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