August 5th, 1959 ~ May 7th, 1975

58,214 paid the ultimate price

POW/MIA 1,822

Maine Deaths 343

216 United States Army

19 United States Navy

20 United States Air Force

88 United States Marines

0 United States Coast Guard

North Vietnam, a communist regime, attacked two American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 2nd & 4th, 1964. The USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. By 1969, 543,000 United States troops were involved. By 1975, all of Vietnam was under communist control. Later research, including a report released in 2005 by the National Security Agency, indicated that the second attack most likely did not occur, but also attempted to dispel the longstanding assumption that members of the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson had knowingly lied about the nature of the incident.

Apparently mistaken for a Frenchman, Lieutenant Colonel Albert Peter Dewey, promoted to Major was gunned down by Vietminh troops on September 26, 1945, as he was driving a jeep to the Saigon airport. Dewey was the son of a former Illinois Congressman, Charles S. Dewey, (Charles S. Dewey served in the United States Navy 1917-1919 and was honorably discharged with the rank of Senior Lieutenant) and a Senior agent in the Office of Strategic Services in Saigon (O.S.S., a precursor to the C.I.A.). He became the first American killed in what would come to be called the Vietnam Era. You won't find his name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, nor will it appear on any Missing in Action list, even though his body was never recovered.

Dewey's main purpose when he arrived in Saigon on the 4th September 1945 was to arrange for the repatriation and evacuation of U.S. POWs being held there by the Japanese. When he landed at Tan Son Nhut Airport on that first day of what were to be the last three weeks of his life, American fighting men had been involved in an air and naval war with the Japanese in the skies and water of Indochina for nearly three years. Even the harbor of Saigon had been raided and bombed by U.S. carrier based aircraft.

The OSS team that Major Dewey headed, code name Project EM BANKMENT, was to locate 214 Americans at two Japanese camps in Saigon. The majority of them had been held in Burma for most of the war and employed, as slave labor building a railroad line that was to cross the Kwai River, later made famous by the movie Bridge On The River Kwai.

Camp Poet in Saigon held five POWs, and Camp 5-E, just outside of Saigon, contained 209. Of these, 120 were from the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery of the 36th Division, a National Guard antiaircraft outfit from Texas that had landed in Java by mistake and had been captured intact. They would later become known as the “Lost Battalion.” Of the remaining POWs, 86 were survivors of the cruiser Houston, sunk on the night of 28-29th February 1942 off the coast of Java. Their fate was also unknown until Dewey liberated them. The other eight were airmen shot down over Indochina.

Awards listed:
Silver Star
Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster
French Croix de Guerre
French Legion of Honor Chevalier
Tunsian Order of Nicham-el-Oftikhar

Air Force Tech Sergeant Richard B. Fitzgibbon, Jr., was murdered in Vietnam by a fellow airman on June 8, 1956, he has been formally recognized by the Pentagon as the first American officially to die in the Vietnam War.

Marine Lance Corporal Richard B. Fitzgibbon III -- his son  -- was killed in action in Vietnam on September 7, 1965. The Fitzgibbons are the only father-son honorees on the Wall.

Some 128 members of a MAAG began supervising the use of U.S. equipment in Vietnam on Sept. 17, 1950. And two U.S. fliers contracted by the CIA were killed in action flying missions over Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The first U.S. advisors sent to actually train Vietnamese troops arrived February 12, 1955. Captain Harry Cramer, Jr., was killed in a munitions-handling accident October 21, 1957: His name had been the first listed.

"We went; we didn't ask why; our country called; and we were proud"

Vietnam Era Veterans

BERNARD, Paul R.

BROOKS, Gary K.

BRADEEN, Harris L.

BRISSETTE, Daniel E.
BRYANT, Philip Sherwood ~ killed Vietnam 1968

BUDEK, Alexander T.

CATLIN, James W.

CHABOT, Daniel M.L.

CHILDS, Robert M.

CLARK, Warren K.
COOLIDGE, Gary R.

COOPER, Edward G.
DAKIN, Manley C.

DAVIS, Frederick M.
DECOSTER, Roger Clayton

DIMAMBRO, Daniel R.

DOUCETTE, Ronald G.
DUDLEY, Robert Lee
FARNUM, Larry Bruce

FEELY, Joseph
FISH, Donald Merton
GILBERT, Reynard Scott
GILBERT, Richard Earl
GREEN, Steven Lament

HARLOW, Gary

HARRINGTON, Robert E.

HISCOCK, Ronald E.

HUME, Gerald E.
JANELLE, Raynaldo Wilfred Jr.

JORDAN, John Leforest
JORDAN, Kenneth Wayne

KALINOWSKI, Robert Z.

LABBE, Bertrand

LANGELIER, Raymond L.
LANGLIN, Dennis Harold ~ Leeds
LEAVITT, Peter Marshall
LEE, Clarence Sidney Jr.
MARSTON, Russell Samuel

MASON, Robert A.
MORRIS, Roland Edward

MURPHY, Francis L. (Tri-Vet)
MURRAY, Randall Augustus

PERRY, Gregory L.
POLAND, Daniel Lovell
POULIN, Raymond A. Jr.
PRINCE, Donald Allan
PULSIFER, Howard Asheley
QUIMBY, Barry Brent
QUIMBY, Craig Donald
 

REICHEL, John Henry
RICHARDSON, Floyd Earl
RICHARDSON, Harlan Walter Jr.
RICHARDSON, Sherman Charles ~ deceased
ROBERTS, William Haven
SCHERER, Fredric George
TALBOT, Dale T.
TWITCHELL, Dale Macklyn

VIGER, Wayne H.
WITHAM, Carl Harry
YOULAND, Frank Leroy

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