LIEUTENANT COLONEL MEIR ENGEL; U.S. ARMY 

DOB/DOD: September 12, 1914 (Tel Aviv, Israel) – December 16, 1964; 50 years old
RELIGION: Jewish
MARITAL STATUS: Married Myra S. Wachtel Engel (1919-2002) on September 19, 1943, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
CHILDREN: Two sons, David S. (1944-2016) and Rafael “Ray” J. (1956-).
COLLEGE: Master of Arts from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America on June 7, 1942.
SERVICE NUMBER: O-535489
ENLISTMENT: First enlistment on November 1, 1943, then recalled to active duty during the Korean War on September 1, 1950. From 1954 to 1957, he served as the Jewish Affairs advisor to the US Army Command (Europe) in Heidelberg, Germany. This was followed by tours of duty at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and Fort Ord, California. He became the first American Jewish chaplain to serve in Vietnam.
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 5310, Chaplain
TOUR START DATE: August 1964
UNIT: Advance Team SD-5891, MACV Advisors (Special Forces)
CASUALTY LOCATION: Saigon
ON THE WALL: Panel 1E, Line 77

FAMILY: Born to Yaakov Shalom Engel (1881-1953) and Hannah Schlesinger Engel (1884-1961). Two sisters, Batya Engel Halevy (1915-1987) and Ruth (1919-2015). One brother, David (1924-2015).   

DECORATIONS: Awarded two Bronze Star Medals, two Army Commendation Medals, and the B’nai B’rith’s Four Chaplains Award. 

CIRCUMSTANCES: Died of a heart attack in the Naval Hospital in Saigon.

OTHER: A chaplain in three wars, Rabbi Engel was a spiritual advisor to Jewish GIs from the South Pacific to Europe. He was born in Palestine and came to the United States in 1937 after receiving a master’s degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Engel served briefly as the religious leader of Brith Shalom Community Center in Philadelphia before joining the Army in November 1943. After tours of duty in the Pacific, he returned to civilian life in 1946, serving congregations in North Carolina and Massachusetts. Meir was called back into the military, enlisting in the Air Force in September 1950. Over the next 14 years, he saw combat in Korea, was the Jewish adviser to the European Army Command, and became the first Jewish chaplain to be sent to Vietnam. [Philadelphia Daily News, October 26, 1987]

From “Confidence In Battle, Inspiration In Peace; The United States Army Chaplaincy 1945-1975”

On 9 December 1964, a letter was sent to Chaplain Engel through MACV from the Office of the Adjutant General informing him of his mandatory retirement by 30 November 1967. Less than one month later, a terse, tragic message from MACV was sent in reply: “Chaplain Engel died 16 December 1964 of a heart attack.” “This command suffered a great loss today,” began a letter from General William C. Westmoreland to MACV personnel on the date of Chaplain Engel’s death. “His keen sense of humor, religious tolerance, high intellectual acumen, and his friendly spirit had endeared him to the members of this command . . . ” Although not a battle casualty, Chaplain Engel was the first Army chaplain to die in Vietnam.

From the Philadelphia Daily News on October 26, 1987.

A chaplain in three wars, Rabbi Engel was a spiritual advisor to Jewish GIs from the South Pacific to Europe. He was born in Palestine and came to the United States in 1937 after receiving a master’s degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Engel served briefly as the religious leader of Brith Sholom Community Center in Philadelphia before joining the Army in November 1943. After tours of duty in the Pacific, he returned to civilian life in 1946, serving congregations in North Carolina and Massachusetts. Meir was called back into the military, enlisting in the Air Force in September 1950. Over the next 14 years, he saw combat in Korea, was the Jewish adviser to the European Army Command, and became the first Jewish chaplain to be sent to Vietnam. He died in the US Navy Hospital in Saigon on December 16, 1964, at the age of 50, after suffering a heart attack. The Lieutenant Colonel was survived by his wife, two sons, two brothers, and two sisters.

From TabletMag.com on November 11, 2014
By Hillel Kuttler

THE RABBI IN WARTIME
In the fog of war, one chaplain made a difference. So, a grateful veteran decided to learn more about the man he once knew.

For a half-century, the Vietnam War has taken huge bites of Richard Eisenberg’s soul, plaguing him with memories of battles fought and friends lost. He certainly didn’t want to go. In 1960, he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and bounced between jobs at banks in Manhattan before reaching Vietnam. “I wasn’t doing a whole lot with my life,” he says now. So, hoping to pre-empt the inevitable draft notice, he enlisted in the Army, took eight weeks of basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., then was off to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for another two months to become a military policeman. That, he figured, might keep him stateside.

It didn’t. Eisenberg got to Vietnam in August 1964. He’d return, shattered, the following summer.

Lots of vets have rituals to help ease the painful memories: regular visits to the memorial in Washington, drinking sessions with VFW or American Legion buddies. Eisenberg’s ritual is different. He says Kaddish for a fallen friend—one who died not by a bullet but of a heart attack, a military chaplain whom he met just four times.

Every December, Eisenberg, 72, lights a candle on the yahrzeit of the chaplain, a rabbi. Standing in his kitchen those evenings for all these years—first in Brooklyn, then after moving to Denver—he speaks a few words to his wife and two daughters about the rabbi and his loss. He recites a prayer and strikes a match.

Fifty years since the rabbi’s death and a century since his birth, the rabbi’s light flickers in Eisenberg’s soul. But lately the ritual has new heft. For the rabbi’s memory led Eisenberg on a journey, two years ago, across the country, bringing new people into his life, men and women who, in their own very different way, loved the rabbi, too.

Early October 1964: Someone shook Pvt. Richard Eisenberg’s shoulder, waking him from an afternoon slumber in the tin hut he called home.

“Who the hell are you?” Eisenberg blurted. He looked up to see the stripes and insignia on the visitor’s shoulder, signifying a lieutenant colonel, a chaplain.

The visitor was Rabbi Meir Engel, a thin, bespectacled, no-nonsense, witty man who retained a trace of his sabra accent from his native Tel Aviv. Engel had come to the U.S. Army’s air base at Soc Trang, along the Mekong River Delta at Vietnam’s southern tip, because that’s what military chaplains did.

Engel loved his job. He’d arrived in Vietnam that summer, right around the time Eisenberg did. He’d fought in the Haganah paramilitary organization and departed pre-state Israel for New York in 1937 to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary. But Engel left his first pulpit, in Philadelphia, to volunteer in the U.S. military, and he was sent to postwar Japan. He returned to the United States to lead congregations in Greensboro, N.C., and Beverly, Massachusetts, but gave up synagogue life for the chaplaincy, which included serving the Army Command in Heidelberg, Germany, then South Korea and two posts stateside.

“One could see a glow in his eyes and sense the pride in his voice as he described the hurdles he had overcome in order to serve effectively in Vietnam,” wrote a fellow chaplain, Aryeh Lev, in 1964, of a retreat they attended in Tokyo.

Engel “was filled with the joy one derives from feeling needed,” Lev wrote.

Standing in the private’s hut that day, Engel was needed to deliver a singular message: Eisenberg, write home.

“He read me the riot act on the responsibility I have to my parents and my sister. It made me want to cry, to tell you the God’s honest truth,” Eisenberg says now. “I was not being a dutiful son — not writing home. It had a lot to do — I’m not going to lie — with alcohol and drugs. I didn’t want to be there.”

Soon, it was Engel’s typed letter that reached Eisenberg’s parents, Samuel and Ida, in Flatbush, a Brooklyn neighborhood. It was dated October 16, 1964.

My dear Mr. & Mrs. Eisenberg,

I should like to introduce myself to you. I am the recently assigned Jewish chaplain to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.

My reason for writing you is that I met your son, Pvt. Richard Eisenberg, during my recent visit to his place of assignment at Soc Trang. I visit there once a month, and am happy to see that he finds the time to meet with the only rabbi stationed there.

I am a father and know of the fears and anxieties parents harbor for their children. It is because of this knowledge that I am writing you to alleviate your concern for your son. I saw Richard, he looks well, is hard working, and is counting the time till his return to the bosom of his family.

Should there be anything I can do for him or for you, just let me know and I shall do my utmost to comply with your request.

The Eisenbergs had made plenty of requests already—pestering the Pentagon, a member of Congress, and even, so family lore has it, President Lyndon Johnson—in a vain attempt to ascertain how their son was faring. Now, finally, they knew something.

Later that month: A Cobra gunship touched down at Soc Trang, a small base surrounded by miles upon miles of rice paddies. Wounded soldiers were carried out hurriedly.

Eisenberg squatted at the helicopter’s door. He held dual jobs: two days on, two days off as a military policeman; two days on, two days off flying as a door gunner. The latter was a task Eisenberg volunteered for to lessen his colleagues’ load, but the job was perilous. Door gunners trained their M-60 machine guns on threats that could bring down the helicopter ferrying troops into combat and picking them up a week later—or retrieving “whatever was left of them” by then, Eisenberg explains now.

This was a “whatever was left of them” trip, and the commotion on the tarmac was as heavy as the rain then falling. A lone figure wearing a camouflage poncho rushed up. Eisenberg didn’t know who he was. Then recognition came.

“I’ll get to you later, Richard,” Engel told him as he ran off with a casualty. Recalling the scene nearly a half-century later, Eisenberg corrects himself. “No—he said, ‘I’ll get to you later, Reuven.’ He used my Hebrew name.”

Later, the two men stood under a canopy outside the base’s hospital, the rain still pounding. The chaplain gave the soldier a hug. “You’re doing a good job,” the chaplain said.

The gesture was timely. Eisenberg was in a sour mood.

“It’s not a good day,” he said, “when your guys are hurt.”

November 1964: The hurt was Mrs. Eisenberg’s back in Brooklyn, and on this day, the chaplain who came to convey it barged into Eisenberg’s tent and pulled rank.

The lieutenant colonel ordered the private to write a letter home.

November 20, 1964

My dear Mrs. Eisenberg:

I had delayed answering your letter of 3 November 1964 until after my monthly visit to Soc Trang. I returned from there yesterday and am happy to inform you that I saw Richard and spent some time with him.

I hope that you do not mind, but I had a “fatherly” talk with him concerning the importance of writing home regularly. I minced no words, for as a father of a son about the same age as Richard, I felt that it might do him some good. I also left with him a Hanukkah menorah and Hanukkah candles, as well as a procedure sheet [about] how to light the candles and what blessings to recite. These, the menorah and candles, were sent to me for distribution to the Jewish men by the Jewish Welfare Board.

As I see Richard once a month, I shall continue to report to you. If there is anything else you would like me to do, just let me know.

Like the earlier one, this letter was typed on the Military Assistance Command’s stationery. Both concluded with Rabbi Engel’s signature, but this one added a handwritten flourish.

Enclosed is a letter written by your son. I told him that I wanted to enclose a letter from him to you with mine.

Engel’s intervention was personal. He couldn’t fathom someone cutting themselves off from family. Colleagues would remember his longing for his wife and two sons. In a memorial book published after Engel’s death, Lt. Col. John T. Calter, a fellow chaplain, told of running a retreat in Vietnam for Catholic soldiers at which several lauded Engel. Calter saw Engel soon after the retreat.

“I don’t want to flatter you, Meir, but our Catholics are all singing your praises,” Calter said.

Engel responded: “Please don’t worry about [not] flattering me today. I can use some. I miss my wife, Myra, and my morale is low.”

A Jewish soldier, Earl Kulp, an assistant program officer, wrote this of Engel in the memorial book: “No man in Vietnam felt his separation from his family more deeply [or] counted the remaining days of his separation more fervently and loudly.”

That likely explained Engel’s twisting of Eisenberg’s arm to write the letter. It arrived, together with Engel’s, in Flatbush in a now-long-yellowed envelope, franked postage-free. The Eisenbergs kept it, then Richard inherited it, now one of his daughters has it, and eventually her sons will get it.

“He sat down with me, like a father, for a couple of hours, telling me how important it was for a Jewish son to respect his family,” Eisenberg recalls. “Me, a 22-year-old punk from Brooklyn, N.Y. I did not learn that lesson. Rabbi Engel taught me that lesson.”

Early December 1964: The rabbi sat beside Eisenberg in the office of the base’s commander, Maj. Joseph Levinson. Engel’s visit, like the previous ones, had boosted the base’s Jewish population to three.

Levinson sat at his desk, Engel and Eisenberg on the couch opposite. The trio schmoozed for 10 minutes, but Eisenberg felt out of place among officers. He made to leave.

“Sir, I think it’s about time I got back to my duty,” Eisenberg said, rising.

“Carry on,” Levinson said.

“No, you should stay a little longer,” Engel said, coaxing him back onto the sofa.

Decades later, Eisenberg scratches his head, reviewing Engel’s response.

He comes up with this: “It was because I was one of his boys, one of his Jewish boys in Vietnam. I sat back down, and he put his arm around me. Just chit-chatting. The rabbi made me feel I belonged in the room.”

The trio remained for 20 minutes more. Engel asked Eisenberg, “Are you writing your family on a regular basis?”

“Yes,” Eisenberg replied.

Later that month: Levinson rushed up to Eisenberg on the tarmac.

“Why weren’t you at the service?” the commander asked.

“What service?” Eisenberg responded.

“Rabbi Engel passed away,” he was told.

In the early hours of Dec. 16, Engel had died of a heart attack at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Saigon. He was 50.

Eisenberg slumped in shock, then anger at his commander. He still can’t fathom Levinson’s neglecting to convey such crucial news when it was fresh, when he could have attended Engel’s funeral, said a proper goodbye.

Not being there for Engel, when Engel was there for him—the pain torments Eisenberg still.

“I was devastated,” Eisenberg says now, “and I carried that devastation with me all my time in Vietnam, and since then.”

September 13, 2012: Eisenberg and his sister, Ellen Racioppi, began the five-hour drive from Staten Island, N.Y., to Washington, D.C. The day before, they’d visited their parents’ graves, Sept. 14 being Ida’s birthday. Eisenberg, a retired postal worker, returns east once a year, but this trip was different. He’d come to make his peace at another grave, of sorts, one he’d never brought himself to visit. And he came prepared.

The siblings reached the nation’s capital and headed directly to a pointy-tipped stretch of black granite on the National Mall. Eisenberg searched the logbook nearby. Of 58,195 dead—one. He found a name in the book and stepped to the reflective stone that is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Meir Engel.

Eisenberg touched the letters carved into the stone on Panel 1E, Line 77. He contemplated, etched the letters onto a paper.

He knelt a moment and placed an envelope on the ground.

Rabbi Engel—you will never know how much you meant to me, read the handwritten, capital-block letters on the inside of the greeting card that came illustrated with a Jewish-star charm.

From the time we first met, you holding me by the neck and ordering me to sit down and write my family, to all those visits on the base for me. It has taken 48 years to get this out of me. Though this is a long time coming and you are long gone, know this: You are never, never—ever—forgotten.

Eisenberg had written his name and unit, the 560th Military Police Company of the 121st Aviation Company, on the card. To the Engel family, the card continued, beneath a hand-drawn line:

I knew Meir all too briefly in Vietnam.

I only wish that I made an effort to contact you sooner. I want you all to know what a wonderful and caring man he was, and I am sorry for your loss. The world was a better place while he was with us. I know that the rabbi would be glad to know that I am at peace now, and I hope that you are as well.

Dad did it.

“He finally had the courage to see D.C., the Vietnam Wall,” Dayna Eisenberg Perez thought that afternoon. He was foremost in her mind as she sat before her home computer in suburban Denver, the day’s work teaching English as a second language to high-school students over.

“OK, I’ll search again,” she thought, typing MEIR ENGEL into a search engine.

Not much came up in her spotty attempts over the years. She’d long wanted to see what Engel, the man of legend, looked like, learn about his career, and whether he’d left behind a family.

This day, though, she got scores of hits, mainly Jewish-newspaper articles about a ceremony nearly a year earlier at Arlington National Cemetery, a mile from where her father was likely standing with his sister that very moment.

Jewish Chaplains Memorial—that’s what the articles called the rounded-off plaque mounted on stone. On Chaplains Hill in the country’s most revered graveyard, on the banks of the Potomac, a new monument had been dedicated on Oct. 24, 2011, joining those memorializing the 150 Protestant and the 65 Catholic chaplains who’d died in service. The Jewish plaque, plain but elegant, said tons by saying so little: just 14 names, 14 dates of death, 14 titles of rabbi. The men represented the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox branches of Judaism and had died while serving the U.S. military during the period running from World War II through the Korean War and on to Vietnam.

Only one of the 14 served in all three wars. Meir Engel.

The program the Jewish Chaplains Council published for the ceremony stated that Engel earned an award for his service in each war, along with two Bronze Stars, two Army Commendation Medals, and B’nai B’rith’s Four Chaplains Award. One commendation medal was for serving at Fort Dix, where he remained until 1962, two years before Eisenberg got there for basic training.

Four of the men memorialized on the new plaque died during the Vietnam War. But calculating how many American Jewish military chaplains served in Vietnam then is “tricky,” says Albert Slomovitz, author of the book The Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History, because some may have been based elsewhere, like in Japan, and dropped in periodically or were reservists called up for short-term service.

Those based in Vietnam and on full-time active duty were “probably under a minyan’s worth,” he says, fewer than 10.

Eisenberg Perez didn’t know this, but she saw the rabbi’s name mentioned in several articles—his surname, anyway. That’s because a man named David Engel spoke at the Arlington ceremony, but his connection wasn’t stated.

Eisenberg Perez guessed at David Engel’s identity. She went onto Facebook and typed his name. A posting she read mentioned his being Meir’s son.

“Oh, my God!” she thought. “He has living sons!”

October 11, 2012: Eisenberg had returned from Washington. He showed off his pictures of the Vietnam wall, of his hand resting against it, of Engel’s name. He told his family about leaving the card, knowing that no Engel kin would see it. Just as well that he’d made copies beforehand, the better to reread the emotions he had difficulty expressing.

“You’re never going to believe this,” daughter told father as they stood in her kitchen. “Rabbi Engel has living children, and I have made contact with one of the sons.”

Eisenberg stopped by most days after picking up his grandsons, Andrew, then 8, and Ryan, 4, from school while their parents were at work. Eisenberg Perez had just come home and delivered this bombshell.

Her father felt like he would pass out.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” he said.

He asked her to confirm that this could be true.

That night, Eisenberg Perez found David Engel’s home address online. Her fingers glided across the keyboard, typing what she later called “a crazy letter” of introduction.

The opening rambled with excitement, but Eisenberg Perez got herself on point.

Your father got my dad through the toughest of times in war, and when he died, a part of my dad died, too.

She went on:

Your father was a true hero and provided support, comfort, and faith to Jewish soldiers in a time of war. My sister and I, growing up, would ask our father to tell us stories along with the pictures that he has from Vietnam, and in every story was mention of the chaplain, Meir Engel. Every year, my father lights a memorial candle in memory of your dad. My dad still has the old green “Jewish Bible” (as the military called it) that the Army provided all the men and women. He told me it’s the same one that he and Rabbi Engel prayed from.

And this, of David’s possibly being Meir’s son:

I got goose bumps thinking that I might be able to get in touch with you and tell my dad about the information that I have found! My heart almost stopped as I kept reading the articles. … I know that my dad would be honored to talk to you and tell you stories about your dad and to connect with you.

I would love to hear back from you! Either way, please let me know that you are the right person or that you are not.

October 15, 2012: In Shelton, Connecticut, David Engel had a long day at work manufacturing promotional products. He opened the mail, stunned. Finally, he typed a response and emailed it to Eisenberg Perez.

I just arrived home and read your letter. It was incredible. Yes. I am proudly the son of the late Rabbi Meir Engel (Z’L). I would very much like to speak with you.

Forty-one minutes later, she wrote back.

I am so happy to hear that you are the son of the late Rabbi Engel. This is truly incredible, and I am almost at a loss for words in disbelief. What an amazing story!

She told him she could speak by telephone after work.

The next morning, David telephoned his brother. “I’m going to forward something to you,” he told his brother, Rafael “Ray” Engel, who’d just arrived in his office at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a professor of social work. “Make sure you’re alone when you read it.” David forwarded his exchange with Eisenberg Perez.

David was 20 and studying international economics at Berkeley when his father died. Ray was just 8, but he still recalls playing chess with his dad. Ray also remembers a drive they took along northern California’s famed 17-Mile Drive, back when Meir served at Fort Ord.

“You can’t help but remember stuff like that,” Ray says now.

He’s carried those images throughout life, and in telling of them and others, Ray passed on bits of his father to his wife, Sandy, and then to their daughter, Yael, now 23, and to their son, 21, who carries a familiar name: Meir Engel.

Ray and David kept the hundreds of letters their dad wrote to them and to their late mother. They also have a box filled with expressions of condolence sent by soldiers whose lives Meir had touched. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. military in Vietnam, wrote. And one letter was from Navy Cdr. Ann Richman, the chief nurse at the naval hospital in Saigon. She knew Meir well from attending Friday night services regularly. She’d been off duty the night Meir admitted himself with chest pains, but was summoned and arrived just after he died.

He did not suffer, Richman wrote. He had been given medication to relieve the discomfort, and the doctor and nurse attending him said he was resting very quietly at the time he slipped away. I want to assure you that everything medically was done to save him, but it was out of our hands … I had my prayer book with me and I said a little prayer at the bedside.

Meir’s last written words were directed to David, just an hour before taking ill. On Dec. 15, Meir was up late in his room in Saigon’s Majestic Hotel, where many officers stayed. He was reading Howard Fast’s The Naked God. He found the book profound and, in a five-page letter to David, suggested that he read the book, too, although he couldn’t explain precisely why.

Meir abruptly turned personal.

My son, you have no idea how proud I am of your sense of order and law, your sensitivity of right and wrong, your desire for due process rather than the rule of the mob, he wrote with a thick-tipped blue pen, continuing for a few more sentences about rights and the ends justifying the means before realizing that “I am rambling” and “it is tomorrow” already.

I felt like communing with you, my son, whom I love with all my being and all my fiber. God bless you.

And then, using the Hebrew word, father signed off from son.

Abba.

From the medical doctors’ notes, David Engel learned that right after penning those final words, his father walked to the hospital. At about 1:30 a.m., a half-hour after being admitted, he died.

But David Engel had never read anything like this—sentiments typed by a soldier’s child who related the profound effect his dad had on her dad.

After reading Eisenberg Perez’s letter that David had scanned and emailed to him, Ray forwarded it to his wife and children. He then wrote to Eisenberg Perez.

There are no words that I can say about what this letter means, let alone knowing how your father continues to honor the memory of my dad, my Abba. He died when I was eight, so I have only the memories of a young boy.

For a long time growing up, emotionally I could not understand why my Abba had to go to this place called Vietnam and why he never came home—even though rationally and intellectually I understood. Your letter and the memories of your dad speak volumes to help me answer the emotional part.

Ray’s students sometimes approach him at graduation to say they wouldn’t have received a diploma without him. The compliments gratify him, and they’re in the moment. “But 48 years later?” he says of Eisenberg Perez’s reaching out. “It’s overwhelming to think of the impact people can have on one another and how that persists over time. It’s remarkable to me that [someone who] had very little contact with my dad, some, very meaningful, over a four-month period of time—that this is so meaningful to them.”

David spoke with Eisenberg Perez that afternoon, and they did so many more times over the ensuing months. Eisenberg Perez and Ray communicated once by Skype— the first time Ray, a non-techie, used the video-calling system.

Still, writing, talking, and viewing are not seeing.

David had a business trip scheduled for Las Vegas in January. The Engels would visit the Eisenbergs then.

The members of the second generation would meet.

The third generation, too.

January 12, 2013: It developed in a flash: the discovery, emails, phone calls, and planning the gathering. It all was so exciting.

And then this.

Eisenberg was hospitalized with chronic intestinal problems. He underwent emergency surgery.

It happened just as the Engels prepared to leave for Denver.

Eisenberg recuperated in a private room. He was up for the visit. On a shelf lay his little green Bible from Vietnam.

“I wanted to pay my respects so badly, and I had no way to do it,” he says. “And here, 48 years later, this opportunity comes and gets dropped in my lap.

“Everything happened so fast. They wanted to come and see me, which threw me for a loop. I knew what I had to do—I needed to make peace with them, and I needed to tell them how much their father meant to me.”

Eisenberg’s voice cracks, and the telephone line goes silent momentarily. He apologizes.

“Every time I think of it, I get so upset that I forgot to tell them something. I should’ve asked [them] to pray with me, but I didn’t—to please say a prayer with me for your father.”

Eisenberg had worried he didn’t look respectable in front of the rabbi’s sons and their children, too. He was hooked up to oxygen, tape on his nose, medicated.

“I wanted to tell them how much I loved their father and grandfather,” he says.

Three generations of Eisenbergs and Engels had crammed into room 242 of Parker Adventist Hospital, near Denver. Dayna greeted the Engels in the lobby. David wrapped her in a big hug. The Engel-Eisenberg embrace was on. They rode up in the elevator.

For the Engels: Ray, Sandy, Yael, and Meir had flown in from Pittsburgh; David and his son Jonathan from Connecticut, and his daughter Joanna from California. David’s wife, Sharon, couldn’t make it.

For the Eisenbergs: Richard and his wife Jean, and Dayna and her husband Juan, with their two sons. Dayna’s sister, Robyn Wisler, arrived late.

That made 14 people in the room. They all wanted to be there, if not there in the hospital. David told Dayna on the elevator ride that it didn’t matter whether the gathering was at Robyn’s house, as planned, in a hospital room, or even in a bathroom—the main thing was their being together.

Dayna and Richard spoke first, telling why Meir Engel was so important a figure in their lives. She passed around a scrapbook she’d once made of her dad’s Vietnam service.

David explained that Meir served as the U.S. military’s liaison to the Buddhist religious officials as they set up a chaplaincy within the South Vietnamese Army. Meir, who wore a Jewish chaplain’s insignia that depicts the 10 Commandments topped by a Star of David, apparently earned the Buddhists’ trust. As the liaison, David said, his father reported directly to Westmoreland.

That was the context. And here they all were, brought together by the present protagonist and the absent one.

Pvt. Richard Eisenberg: in Vietnam because he didn’t want to be drafted or sent there, so he’d enlisted, hoping that being on the military-police track might keep him stateside.

Lt. Col. Meir Engel: in Vietnam because he wanted to be there, because he couldn’t stomach “having 400 bosses” as a pulpit rabbi at an American synagogue, rather than teach and be a scholar,” as Ray Engel would tell me. “My uncle Alan, on my mother’s side, said that my dad didn’t like to kiss ass,” Ray would add. “My dad had written my brother a letter on his fears of what an American rabbi was becoming.”

The Israeli-American cleric and the Brooklyn-American grunt: one possessing the drive the other lacked, one embracing war’s challenges and the other absorbed in staying alive, one mature and the other finding himself, one the father and the other the son.

The patient handed gifts to the dead man’s flesh and blood: the silver-oak-leaf pin of a lieutenant colonel and the Jewish chaplains’ insignia, items he’d purchased at a shop on Buckley Air Force Base, not far from the hospital.

Eisenberg had hesitated about meeting the Engels. The burden would be heavy, he told his daughter.

Think of Ray and what he wrote, she’d responded. He lost his dad, his Abba, at 8.

Eisenberg understood. A good thing.

“For me, Rich was the first person I ever met who knew my dad in Vietnam,” Ray Engel says now, back in Pittsburgh, where he teaches young people to be good listeners so they can heal others. “Intellectually, I knew why my dad was in Vietnam, but this created a very human connection, and it made it real. To hear the story of their first meeting was quite touching and emotional.”

He continued: “I’m really, really touched that my dad—sorry, I’m going to get emotional—that my dad had that impact on a person,” Ray says. “It’s truly remarkable that he had that kind of influence on somebody he only had a few meetings with.”

The Engels and Eisenbergs have melded. Their yahrzeit flames illuminate. In Hebrew, Meir means “he who brings light.”

Memorialized on the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Penn’s Landing area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Panel 9.

Photo from PhillyMemorials.com

Buried at Shalom Memorial Park, 25 Byberry Road, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania; David Section, Lot 568, Grave #2. Photo by Jeff DeWitt.

END

LIEUTENANT VINCENT ROBERT CAPODANNO; U.S. NAVY

DOB/DOD: February 13, 1929 (Elm Park, NY) – September 4, 1967; 38 years old
RELIGION: Roman Catholic
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried
COLLEGE: Fordham University (for one year) and Maryknoll Seminaries in Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. Ordained a Catholic Priest on June 14, 1958.
SERVICE NUMBER: 656197
ENLISTMENT: January 2, 1966, in Newport, Rhode Island
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 4105, Staff Corps – Chaplain (Reserve)
TOUR START DATE: April 1966
UNIT: Headquarters and Service Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division
CASUALTY LOCATION: Quang Tin Province
ON THE WALL: Panel 25E, Line 95

FAMILY: Born to Vincent R. (1885-1939) and Rachel Basile Capodanno (1889-1961). The youngest of 10 children. Five sisters, Marie Capodanno Ciroli (1909-1984), Pauline Capodanno Costa (1911-1996), Eleanor S. Capodanno Cattaneo (1914-1969), Dorothy R. Capodanno Minero (1917-1989), and Gloria Capodanno Holman (1922-2023). Three brothers, James S. (1919-2014), Philip D. (1924-1990), and Albert T. (1926-1981).

DECORATIONS: Awarded the Medal of Honor, Bronze Star Medal with Valor, and the Purple Heart Medal

CIRCUMSTANCES: Died from small arms fire while on Operation Swift.

Curtis High School (Staten Island, NY) Class of 1947 yearbook

Photos above are courtesy of Catholic News Service.

CITATION TO ACCOMPANY THE AWARD OF THE MEDAL OF HONOR

AWARDED FOR ACTIONS
DURING the Vietnam War
Service: Navy
Battalion: 3d Battalion
Division: 3d Marine Division (Rein) FMF (Attached)
CITATION:

The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pride in presenting the Medal of Honor (Posthumously) to Lieutenant (Chaplain) Vincent Robert Capodanno, United States Naval Reserve, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Chaplain of the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, THIRD Marine Division (Reinforced), Fleet Marine Forces, in connection with operations against enemy forces in Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, on 4 September 1967. In response to reports that the 2d Platoon of M Company was in danger of being overrun by a massed enemy assaulting force, Lieutenant Capodanno left the relative safety of the company command post and ran through an open area raked with fire, directly to the beleaguered platoon. Disregarding the intense enemy small-arms, automatic-weapons, and mortar fire, he moved about the battlefield administering last rites to the dying and giving medical aid to the wounded. When an exploding mortar round inflicted painful multiple wounds to his arms and legs and severed a portion of his right hand, he steadfastly refused all medical aid. Instead, he directed the corpsmen to help their wounded comrades and, with calm vigor, continued to move about the battlefield, providing encouragement by voice and example to the valiant Marines. Upon encountering a wounded corpsman in the direct line of fire of an enemy machine gunner positioned approximately 15 yards away, Lieutenant Capodanno rushed in a daring attempt to aid and assist the mortally wounded corpsman. At that instant, only inches from his goal, he was struck down by a burst of machinegun fire. By his heroic conduct on the battlefield and his inspiring example, Lieutenant Capodanno upheld the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the cause of freedom.

From MaryknollSociety.org

The Grunt Priest, Father Vincent Capodanno, M.M.

Vincent Capodanno was born on February 13th, 1929, in Staten Island, New York. After attending a year at Fordham University, young Vincent Capodanno entered the Maryknoll seminary in 1949 and was ordained in 1958.  After ordination, Father Capodanno was assigned to work with aboriginal Taiwanese in the mountains of Taiwan, where he served in a parish and later in a school.  After seven years, Father Capodanno returned to the United States for leave and was then assigned to a Maryknoll school in Hong Kong.

Looking for a different challenge, Father Capodanno requested a new assignment–as a United States Navy Chaplain serving with the U.S. Marines. After finishing officer candidate school, Father Capodanno reported to the 7th Marines in Vietnam in 1966.

When his tour was complete, he requested an extension, served in the naval hospital, and then reported to the 5th Marines.  He gained a reputation for always being there – for always taking care of his Marines.

On September 4th, 1967, in the Thang Binh District of the Que-Son Valley, elements of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines found the large North Vietnamese Unit, approximately 2500 men, near the village of Dong Son. Operation Swift was underway. The outnumbered and disorganized Company D was in need of reinforcements. By 9:14 am, twenty-six Marines were confirmed dead. The situation was in doubt, and another company of Marines was committed to the battle. At 9:25 am, the 1st Battalion 5th Marine Commander requested the assistance of two companies of the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, “M” and “K” Company. During those early hours, Chaplain Capodanno received word of the battle taking place. He sat in on the morning briefing at the 3rd Battalion’s Combat Operations Center. He took notes and listened to the radio reports coming in. As the elements of Company “M” and “K” prepared to load the helicopters, “Father Vince” requested to go with them. His Marines needed him. “It’s not going to be easy,” he stated. As Company “M” approached the small village of Chau Lam, the North Vietnamese opened up on the 2nd Platoon, which was caught on a small knoll, out in the open. The fighting was fierce, hand-to-hand at times, and the platoon was in danger of being overrun. Father Capodanno went among the wounded and dying, giving last rites and taking care of his Marines. Wounded once in the face and suffering another wound that almost severed his hand, Father Capodanno moved to help a wounded corpsman only yards from an enemy machine gun. Father Capodanno died taking care of one of his men. On December 27, 1968, then Secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius notified the Capodanno family that Father Vincent would posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor in recognition of his selfless sacrifice. The official ceremony was held on January 7, 1969. On May 21, 2006, thirty-nine years after his death on the battlefield of Vietnam, Capodanno was publicly declared Servant of God, the first step towards canonization.

NOTE: Being a Servant of God requires three miracles to be Venerable and Blessed.

Steps for Sainthood: 1. Servant of God; 2. Venerable; 3. Blessed – then Sainthood

Posted by Doyle Sanders December 10, 2019

A CHAPLAIN FOR ALL

I met Father Capodanno while on a combat operation in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam, at the start of my tour in Vietnam. We only spoke to each other for a few minutes. I was still a PFC and thinking I had made an incredible mistake by volunteering for duty in Vietnam. Those few moments talking with him really changed my life, and in my mind, I realized why I was there. I was there to help “Grunts” make it home. When my tour (time) in Vietnam was up, I volunteered to extend my tour of duty there. Something strange happened after that meeting, when in combat, I felt like someone was present; someone protecting me, and I have been that way ever since. I want to believe that the presence I have felt all these years is Father Capodanno. I am not a Catholic; my parents raised me in the Baptist faith. Many chaplains in the military receive training in several faiths. I was very happy to learn that Father Capodanno was declared a Servant of God several years ago, and hopefully, they will recognize him as a Saint before my time on earth is up. Before that, I would like to see Father Capodanno recognized as the Patron Saint of Sailors and Marines.

Posted by Clay Marston, October 12, 2000

 “THE GRUNT PADRE” – FATHER VINCENT ROBERT CAPODANNO – MEDAL OF HONOR – OPERATION SWIFT – 4-15 SEPTEMBER 1967 —

In the Que Son Valley, 3/5 and 1/5 were engaged with the 2nd NVA Division and the 1st VC Regiment. Along with us was the chaplain of the 3/5, Father VINCENT ROBERT CAPODANNO. During heavy fighting and twice severely wounded, Chaplain Capodanno continued tirelessly, going from one wounded and dying Marine to another, offering whatever aid and comfort he could. He refused medevac twice, not wanting to leave his grunts, saying that he had work to do. After giving last rites to one Marine, he carried that man’s M-16 to another Marine whose weapon had jammed. Chaplain Capodanno left the perimeter to aid a wounded corpsman and three or four other Marines. He was by the corpsman’s side when an NVA machine gunner opened fire and riddled Father Capodanno from the back of his head to the base of his spine, his third PURPLE HEART of the day, and later the award of the MEDAL OF HONOR. Chaplain Capodanno had only been with 3/5 for a few short weeks, having been transferred from 1/7. He had been recommended for the BRONZE STAR in May of 1967 for his time with them. He had been on an extended tour in country from April 1966 to May 1967. He returned again in June 1967 and was again requesting an extension, or permission, to give up his R & R to be with his grunts for the holidays, when he was killed. There are 38 memorials in the name of Father Capodanno, including chapels at the United States Naval Academy and Camp Pendleton, around the world, and a destroyer escort. Also, there is a movement to have Father Vincent Robert Capodanno canonized.

Honorary namings and memorials

Within five months of his death, the chapel at the Navy Chaplains School at Newport, RI, was dedicated as the Capodanno Memorial Chapel. Other military chapels and commemorations are located in Oakland, CA, Camp Pendleton, CA, Fort Wadsworth, NY, Iwakuni, Japan, and Thiankou, Taiwan, the last of which honors the missionary who began his work in that country. A significantly prestigious memorial was the naming of the USS Capodanno, a ship whose motto, “Duty with Honor,” exemplified the chaplain service of Father Capodanno. During its 20 years of operational service, it was further distinguished as the first ship in the US Fleet to receive a Papal Blessing while docked in Naples. Further military buildings bearing his name include the Vincent Robert Capodanno Naval Clinic in Gaeta, Italy, Capodanno Hall, a bachelor officers’ quarters at the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard, and the Capodanno Research Facility at the Navy personnel offices in Millington, TN. Other tributes, geographic reminders preserving his name are: Capodanno Boulevard in Staten Island, NY, and Capodanno Street at the Naval Base, Newport, RI. Father Capodanno’s name appears on many other veteran memorials throughout the United States honoring individual servicemen and certain designated groups such as the Freedom Foundation in Valley, Forge, PA; the Catholic Chaplains Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery; the Veterans Memorial, in Kokomo, IN; and the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC, as well as the Chaplain Vincent R. Capodanno Shelter for Homeless Veterans, in Boston, MA. Two artists have chosen to commemorate Father Capodanno’s heroic final moments: an oil painting by Douglas Rosa is displayed at the Chaplain School in Newport, RI, and a bronze statue by Antonio Pierotti stands at Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island. The painting depicts the priest’s struggle to rescue the dying corpsman, while the sculpture reveals a calm and prayerful chaplain administering to the Marine. Another dramatic representation of the priest, a modern sculpture, is situated in Gaeta, Italy’s town square, which is also named for Father Capodanno. More recently, Lewis Williams, an iconographer, reveals the priest in his military uniform holding a prayer book, a premonition of his total sacrifice for God and country. Annual awards and scholarships continue to honor Father Capodanno. Since 1971, the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation has designated a recipient among the children of Marine Corps members. In 2002, the former Chaplain of the Year Award was renamed the Father Vincent Capodanno Chaplain of the Year Award. Sixteen Knights of Columbus assemblies and councils throughout the United States have chosen Father Capodanno for their patron; similarly, the Veterans of Foreign Wars have honored the chaplain by naming several posts after him. [from milarch.org]

The USS Capodanno was commissioned on November 17, 1973, and became the first ship in the United States fleet to receive a Papal Blessing when it was blessed by Pope John Paul II on September 4, 1981, the 14th anniversary of the chaplain’s death. On July 30, 1993, the ship was decommissioned after 20 years of service. [photo from Wikimedia Commons]

This is a picture of the LT Capodanno Chapel located aboard Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, CA. The Chapel is in the San Mateo section (Area 62) of the northern portion of Camp Pendleton (adjacent to the city of San Clemente and accessed via the Cristianitos Gate). From San Mateo Road, the Chapel is at the corner of “E” and 7th Streets. [photo from VVMF.org]

This monument is located at the corner of Sand Lane and Father Capodanno Boulevard, in Staten Island, New York. Seaside Boulevard had been renamed in Father Capodanno’s honor. [photo from Wikimedia Commons and contributor ELsquared]

Deacon Charles Carroll blesses a monument dedicated to Maryknoll Father Vincent R. Capodanno during a memorial service marking the 55th anniversary of the priest’s death at Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island, New York, September 4, 2022. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

Buried in Saint Peter’s Cemetery, 52 Tyler Avenue, Staten Island, NY; Section S, Range 30, Grave 11.

Photo from FindAGrave.com and contributor Vincent Maligno.

END

CAPTAIN MERLE DEWAYNE BROWN; U.S. ARMY

DOB/DOD: October 1, 1938 (Butler, PA) – April 11, 1971; 32 years old
RELIGION: Lutheran
MARITAL STATUS: Married Betty J. Parsons [now Betty Rose] (1938-).
CHILDREN: One son, Timothy (1963-). Two daughters, Melissa (1967-) and Kristel E. Brown Quarti (1968-).
COLLEGE: Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, graduating in 1961. Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary, graduating in 1965.
ENLISTMENT: November 10, 1969
SERVICE NUMBER: 199307655
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 5310, Chaplain
TOUR START DATE: August 12, 1970
UNIT: Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 198th Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal)
CASUALTY LOCATION: Quang Ngai Province
ON THE WALL: Panel 4W, Line 118

FAMILY: Born to Hale D. (1911-1991) and Christina J. McKinney Brown (1919-1988). One brother, James (1948-).  One sister, Ruth Ann Brown Hildebrand (1944-2023).

DECORATIONS: Awarded Bronze Star Medal with Valor, the Bronze Star Medal with Merit, and the Purple Heart Medal

CIRCUMSTANCES: SP4 Wayne W. Baggett was a flight-qualified UH-1 helicopter repairer serving with the 17th Assault Helicopter Company. On April 11, 1971, the 1-20 Infantry Headquarters located at LZ Liz observed an Easter Sunday service with the battalion chaplain, CAPT Merle D. Brown. A hot meal was provided, brought in by a resupply helicopter earlier in the day. At 1600 hours, Alpha Company’s resupply ship, Dolphin 21 (ship #191), returned to 3rd Platoon to pick up the empty cans and personnel. SP4 Baggett was the crew chief on this flight. While departing the 3rd Platoon field location, Dolphin 21 was hit by either one rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) or an M-79 round. The aircrew attempted to fly the aircraft out of the landing zone (LZ); however, it was hit by a second RPG or M-79 round, which caused the aircraft to crash into the LZ and burn. The LZ then came under a heavy volume of small arms fire, M-79, RPG, B-40 rocket, and machine gun fire from the northeast, east, and south of the perimeter at a distance of 75-100 meters. SP4 Baggett and CAPT Brown were fatally injured in the incident. Nine other U.S. personnel were killed as they attempted to secure the downed helicopter. They included SSGT Jean P. Humbert, SGT James L. Armstrong, SP4 Jon M. Melin, SP4 Jack P. Begley, PFC Douglas A. Varner, PFC Joseph E. Schoolmeesters, PFC Edward P Pilkington, PFC Richard M. Warren, and PFC Joe R. Silva. Another ten were wounded. [From 174ahc.org]

NOTE: This event took place on Easter Sunday in 1971.

Capital University Class of 1961 yearbook

NOTE: He is the namesake of Capital University’s Merle D. Brown Award in Recognition of Outstanding Service in Intercollegiate Debate, which was established in 1972.

Photos from vvmf.org. Taken in Vietnam on the  Day of Prayer on October 21, 1970, as he used a C-ration box as an altar.

From VVMF posted by Paul Grice on December 13, 2007

Action Report from 1st Bn 20th Infantry Website

ALPHA COMPANY
April 11, 1971


The Battalion Chaplain and a hot meal were dropped off by resupply chaplain early in the day, and at 1600 hrs, Alpha Company Resupply Ship Dolphin 21, ship #191, was returning to pick up cans and personnel, location 628523, 3rd Platoon. While departing the 3rd Platoon field location, Dolphin 21 was hit by 1 M-79 round. The Aircrew attempted to fly the aircraft out of the LZ; however, he was hit by a second round of M-79, which caused the aircraft to crash into the LZ and burn. The LZ then came under then came under a heavy volume of small arms fire, M-79, B40, and machine gun fire, to the northeast, East, and South of the perimeter at a distance of 75-100 meters. As Alpha Company 3rd Platoon was assisting the aircraft crew and passengers in evacuating the aircraft, simultaneously, personnel on the LZ started receiving hand grenades and satchel charges, time 1610 hrs. Gun-ships requested at 1603 hrs, on station at 1611 hrs, Sharks 3 & 7, and Helix 37 on station at 1623 hrs. Artillery Fire Mission called at 1930 hrs, and Dust Off 54 on station. The 3rd Platoon was still receiving small arms fire at this time. The additional gunships Gunsmoke 6, Warlord 34, 3, and 20 are on station at 1710hrs. Helix 39 is on station at 1717 hrs, first air strike in at 1730 hrs (4 sorties). Dust Off 54 picked up 7 men from Alpha Company Command Post and inserted them into the 3rd Platoon location to assist them. At 1728 hrs, Dust Off 54 extracted 6 US WIA to B Med. At 1740hrs, Blue Ghost 27 is on station. Helix 39 put in another Air strike at 1820 hrs (4 sorties). CA fleet 5 slicks, 1 AMC, on station 1825 hrs. 1st platoon Bravo Company was picked up at LZ Liz at 1830 hrs (26 packs) and inserted in vicinity grid 628523 at 1847 hrs. At 1900 hrs, Bravo Company 1st Platoon is on the ground at Alpha Company 3rd Platoon location, 628523, and is sweeping the area. AMC took 15-20 rounds of small arms fire from grid 617523 at 1840 hrs, gunships expended on target with unknown results. Dolphin 21 crew and 2 US WIA extracted by Dolphin 6 at 1850 hrs, and at 1855 hrs Helix 32 on station with air strikes (2 sorties). AMC broke station at 1904 hrs. Shadow 61 is on station at 1950 hrs. Helix 32 broke station at 2130 hrs. Shark 3 and 7, Gunsmoke 6 has broken station at 1915 hrs. Shadow 61 has broken station at 2145 hrs. Contact was broken at 1650 hrs. Results as of 0100 hrs 12 April 71, are as follows: Friendly 11 US KIA (1-174th AVN Co, 9 Alpha Company 3rd Plat, 1 Battalion Chaplain), 10 US WIA (1 Delta Company resupply, 9 Alpha Co 3rd Plat). Enemy: 2 NVA KIA, 1 AK-47 CIA. Friendly KIA CHAPLAIN BROWN, SSGT JEAN P. HUMBERT, SGT JAMES L. ARMSTRONG, SP4 JON M. MELIN, SP4 JACK P. BEGLEY, PFC DOUGLAS A. VARNER, PFC JOSEPH E. SCHOOLMEESTERS, PFC EDWARD P. PILKINGTON, PFC RICHARD M. WARREN, PFC JOE R. SILVA, SP4 WAYNE CARLOS BAGGETT (174TH ARN CREW MEMBER), ARE LISTED AS KIA. The founding personnel reported WIA Sgt Allen R. Barfield, Sgt Ananias McBride, PFC Earl R. Masburn, PFC Mark E Singleton, PFC Larry E. Foust, Sgt Donald H. Furr (Delta Company), SP4 Robert M. Fantone, PFC James P. Skelton, PFC John Lawson, SP4 Michael J. Carretti.

From The Morning Pioneer (Mandan, North Dakota) on April 16, 1971

Once Granville-Norwich Pastor Dies In Vietnam

MINOT (AP) — Word has been received of the death in Vietnam of the Rev. Merle D. Brown, Lutheran pastor at Granville and Norwich for more than four years. He had been an Army chaplain in Vietnam and reportedly lost his life when a helicopter in which he was a passenger was shot down. He was 32 years of age. He began his service as pastor of First Lutheran Church in Granville and Norwich Lutheran Church in July 1965, leaving to become an Army chaplain, entering the service as a captain. He was stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, before going to Vietnam last fall. While enroute to the war zone, Mr. Brown stopped in Granville to renew acquaintances. Friends said they understood the clergy-man had been back in the United States on leave about two months ago after completing half of his one-year tour in Vietnam, then returned to Southeast Asia. Mr. Brown was born on October 1, 1938, in Butler, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, and the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary at Columbus. Granville-Norwich was his first and only parish before entering the service. During his time at Granville, he served on the school board and city council, was chairman for a term of the Minot Conference of Churches, chairman of the Missions Board of the Western North Dakota District of the American Lutheran Church, and a member of the Lake Metigoshe Bible Camp Board. While in North Dakota, he transferred from the Army Reserves, which he entered in 1962, to the National Guard and served as chaplain of the 164th Engineer Battalion of Minot for more than three years. He is survived by his wife and three children, Timothy, Melissa, and Kristel.

Americal Division Southern Cross article; Vol. 4, No. 22 Chu Lai, Vietnam on June 04, 1971
By PFC William Hutchison

Memorial for 11th Bde Chaplain

CHU LAI (23rd Inf. Div. IO) – Memorial services were held recently in the 23rd Infantry Division chapel for Chaplain (CPT) Merle D. Brown, 11th Infantry Brigade, who was killed in action on Easter Sunday, the 11th of April 1971. The services were attended by Major General James L. Baldwin, Commanding General of the 23rd Infantry Division, members of his staff, and the Division chaplains. On Easter Sunday, Chaplain Brown lost his life as a result of enemy action. The chaplain had just finished church services for one of the companies of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade. “He truly died in the service of God and his fellowman,” stated Division Chaplain (Lieutenant Colonel) Ira G. Moss. Chaplain Brown was born on 1 October 1938 in Butler, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Capitol University and the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Columbus, Ohio. He received his commission as a chaplain and entered the U.S. Army on the 14th of May, 1968. Prior to coming to the Republic of Vietnam, Brown served at Walson Army Hospital, Fort Dix, New Jersey. In a letter he wrote just after he received his orders for Vietnam, Chaplain Brown expressed: “a tremendous joy over being able to serve the men in Vietnam.” He had been in Vietnam with the 11th Infantry Brigade since August 1970. Chaplain Brown is survived by his wife, Betty, who resides in Columbus, Ohio, and three children, Timothy, age 7; Melissa, age 5; and Kristel, age 2. The chaplains attending the memorial service were addressed by Chaplain (COL) John W. Betzold, Command Chaplain for MACV, and Chaplain (COL) Leonard F. Stegman, Staff Chaplain USARV. The benediction was delivered by Chaplain (MAJ) Edwin A. Roloson of the 14th CAB. After the services in the chapel, the chaplains dedicated a stone monument and a plaque to the memory of the Americal chaplains who had laid down their lives in the Republic of Vietnam. The monument will be permanently located in front of the Division chapel. The plaque was inscribed: “In memory of Americal Chaplains killed in Action. Servants of God and Man. They await the resurrection with the men for whom they died.”

Buried in Concord Cemetery, 673 Hooker Rd, West Sunbury, Pennsylvania; Section B Lot 245, Grave 1.

Photos from FindAGrave.com and contributor Bill Cousins.

END

LIEUTENANT ROBERT RAYMOND BRETT, U.S. NAVY

DOB/DOD: January 3, 1936 (Morton, PA) – February 22, 1968; 32 years old
RELIGION: Roman Catholic
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried
COLLEGE: Catholic University, and was ordained in the Marist order in 1962
SERVICE NUMBER: 722 522
ENLISTMENT: June 26, 1967, in Lafayette, Louisiana
NAVY RATE: 4105 = Staff Corps – Chaplain (Reserve)
UNIT: Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, Third Marine Amphibious Force.
CASUALTY LOCATION: Khe Sanh, Quang Tri Province
ON THE WALL: Panel 40E, Line 58

FAMILY: Born to Francis A. “Frank” (1906-1961) and Margaret J. Hannigan Brett (1906-1980). Two brothers, Joseph J. (1927-2012) and Francis X. [also an Army Chaplain and Catholic Priest] (1931-2017). Two sisters, Rosemary F. Brett Rouse (1932-2018), and Anastasia Brett Lawlor (1938-2022).

DECORATIONS: Awarded the Legion of Merit with Valor (citation needed), the Silver Star Medal, and the Purple Heart Medal

CIRCUMSTANCES: Father Robert R. Brett, S.M., a Catholic chaplain and Navy Lieutenant serving in Vietnam, gave his life for God and country on February 26, 1968, at age 33. He was killed in action by enemy mortar fire at the Khe Sanh Combat Base while waiting to celebrate Mass for U.S. Marines. Assigned with the 2nd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, Father Brett had been in Vietnam since late the previous September. Especially during the few days before his death, he traveled frequently between war-torn outposts. In addition to providing religious services and rites for Marines of his own faith, Lieutenant Brett provided services for personnel of other denominations and made himself available to all who sought his assistance, rendering spiritual aid and encouraging the men by his presence,” read Navy reports. Due to security, space, and staff restrictions, it was not possible for military personnel to gather in a large group, so Father Brett would go wherever he was needed. “During this time, he celebrated masses almost continuously up to 10 per day under these circumstances,” continued the correspondence. He was mortally wounded while in a bunker awaiting transportation to another area. [From catholicherald.com]

Attended St. Gabriel’s School, a pre-seminary school, for high school

Photo not available.

Catholic University Class of 1958

Namesake of Brett Hall at the Naval Chaplain’s School in Newport, Rhode Island. Dedicated on August 8, 2000.

Photo from Facebook.com

Faculty at Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio, 1962-1966

Photo from VVMF.org

From Marist Magazine Fall 2018

REV. ROBERT R. BRETT, SM
U.S. NAVY CHAPLAIN

Article adapted from: Lark, Lisa A. All They Left Behind: Legacies of the Men and Women on the Wall. M.T. Publishing Company, Inc., 2012

During his time in Vietnam, Lt. Robert Raymond Brett, SM, always stood firm – firm in his faith, firm in his duty, and firm in his devotion to his men. He would be there to provide whatever care his Marines needed, whether it be physical, emotional, or spiritual, regardless of what was going on around him. That was why he had joined the Navy: to be where the men in combat needed him most. According to his family, Bob had always wanted to be a priest. Born in 1936, Bob and his four siblings, Joseph, Francis, Rosemary, and Anastasia, grew up in the Philadelphia area, where he attended Catholic schools before entering the seminary at St. Mary’s Manor in Pennsylvania. He made his profession in the Society of Mary in 1956 and then went on to study at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He graduated with a bachelor’s in philosophy in 1958 and was ordained at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1962. Shortly thereafter, he earned a master’s degree in Latin.

Five years after his ordination, he realized that he needed to do more to support the men and women serving in Vietnam. He joined the Navy as a chaplain. After chaplaincy training in Newport, Rhode Island, and Marine training at Camp Pendleton, the now Lt. Robert Brett requested overseas duty and assignment to a Marine unit in Vietnam.

It was customary for each infantry battalion to be assigned a chaplain, and Father Brett was assigned to the 26th Marine Regiment stationed at Phu Bai. He arrived in Vietnam in September 1967 and moved to Khe Sanh with the 26th Regiment in January 1968. He was well-liked and highly regarded by the men he served. The men respected him because they saw him wherever they were, not only at the Masses he performed every Sunday. While his base was at Hill 558, where the 26th Regiment had their command post, it was common for Father Bob, as the Marines called him, to be out at the Marine positions, regardless of weather or enemy fire. In his book Walk With Me: A Vietnam Experience, Lt. Col. Jerry Kurth remembered the risks that Father Bob was willing to take to minister to the men of the 26th Regiment after they had suffered an attack that caused many casualties: “Around 7 a.m., a couple of choppers arrive at Hill 558 to pick up the replacements. Just as the last replacements board, Father Brett runs up to a chopper and tells the pilot that he will be accompanying the replacements. He never bothers to ask permission or seek approval; he just feels he is needed on Hill 861A after their ordeal.”

For most of Father Bob’s time in Vietnam, Private First Class (PFC) Alexander Chin could often be found right next to him. Chin was a 24-year-old PFC Marine from Maryland who, because of his religious beliefs, had transferred to a non-combatant post. He was not willing to take another life, but he stood by Father Bob and together they risked their lives ministering to their Marines. The two performed every conceivable religious duty, from baptisms and communions to confessions and last rites. As the base was being attacked, Father Bob would have to perform multiple Masses to make sure all could attend. He sometimes said Mass ten times a day, and each service was always packed. Kurth called him “utterly tireless as well as utterly fearless.” Before his death in 2011, Kurth told Father Bob’s family that Father Bob moved around to be with his troops, regardless of what any commanding officer ordered.

The Siege of Khe Sanh began in January 1968, just after Father Bob and the 26th Regiment had arrived in the area. North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces attacked the Marine base on January 21, beginning a massive coordinated attack that would last for 77 days and take the lives of more than 200 American troops. As always, Father Bob was in the thick of the action, ministering to his Marines. On February 22, Father Bob and PFC Chin were at the Khe Sanh Combat Base awaiting helicopter transport back to the command post at Hill 558. Kurth had not wanted Father Bob to leave Hill 558 but relented when Father Bob accused him of “preventing him from doing his duty as a priest.” As the chopper landed and Father Bob and the others made their way to it, NVA rockets began hitting the base. As the rocket fire increased, Father Bob told the helicopter to take off. He headed back to the trenches, with Chin at his side. Almost immediately upon their arrival at the trench, a rocket struck directly on the trench. When the smoke of the rocket attack cleared, eight men lay dead in the trench, including Father Bob and Chin.

Father Bob was buried on the grounds of the seminary he had attended, and Chin was laid to rest in a family plot in Princess Anne, Maryland. In 1998, the Brett family moved Father Bob to Chaplain’s Hill in Arlington National Cemetery. As a sign of their gratitude for the faith, devotion, and courage of Chin, they petitioned to have him buried right beside the chaplain. In 1999, Chin was buried with full military honors on Chaplain’s Hill. Father Bob and Chin are side by side, just as they were so often in Vietnam.

From EvangelizationStation.com – article titled The Priest and the Marine
By Donald R. McClarey

Born on January 3, 1936, one of five kids, Robert R. Brett knew from an early age what he wanted to be. As his sister Rosemary Rouse noted, “He always wanted to be a priest. He was always there for everyone.”

He attended Saint Edmond’s and Saint Gabriel’s grade schools and then attended a preparatory seminary for high school.  Brett entered the Marist novitiate at Our Lady of the Elms on Staten Island and made his profession of vows on September 8, 1956.  Studying at Catholic University, he received a BA in philosophy in 1958 and a Master’s Degree in Latin in 1963.  He was ordained a priest of the Society of Mary in 1962 by Bishop Thomas Wade at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

While teaching Latin at the Immaculata Seminary in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1967, he decided to enlist in the Navy as a chaplain. Neither a hawk nor a dove on Vietnam, Father Brett believed that it was his duty to go where he was needed the most, and he decided that the men fighting in Vietnam needed him. He joined the Navy specifically to volunteer for combat duty in Vietnam with the Marines. (The Marine Corps, although many Marines choke to admit it, is part of the Department of the Navy, and receives their chaplains from the Navy.)

Father Brett was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Navy, and, after training at the Chaplain School in Newport, Rhode Island, and Marine combat training at Camp Pendleton, California, he arrived in Vietnam on September 15, 1967, assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division. His goal was simple:  wherever Marines in his unit were in danger, he was going to be there, to say Mass, give the Last Rites to the dying, and help the wounded. His own personal safety was simply going to have to take a back seat to this mission.

His superiors quickly realized that this priest was going to need an assistant and a guard since he was so intent on going into harm’s way. They assigned him Corporal Alexander Chin, a truly remarkable Marine.

Of African-American and Chinese ancestry, Corporal Chin had served in Vietnam for several months when he had a religious conversion. He announced that he could no longer kill the enemy, but that he had no problem still putting his life on the line for his country.  Assistant and guard to a chaplain seemed like an appropriate assignment for this particular Marine.

Much of Father Brett’s service in Vietnam centered around the Battle for Khe Sanh.  Situated in northwestern Quang Tri Province, Khe Sanh was next to the border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam.  The North Vietnamese sought to replicate their victory at Dien Bien Phu over the French in the 1950s ′s by massing several divisions and overrunning the Marines at Khe Sanh.  They failed, and the Marines inflicted far more casualties on the North Vietnamese Army than they sustained.  Intense fighting at Khe Sanh lasted from January 21, 1968, to April 8, 1968, and Chaplain Brett was in the thick of it, along with Corporal Chin.

His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Kurth, recalled Father Brett in his book Walk With Me: A Vietnam Experience:

Our battalion is extremely fortunate to have an outstanding Chaplain to minister to our spiritual needs. Each infantry battalion in Vietnam has an assigned Chaplain to provide religious service to the men. The assignments are not done by religious denomination, but rather by one who is available at the time of a billet opening. Therefore, a unit could have a Methodist, Baptist, or Presbyterian minister, a Jewish Rabbi, or a Catholic Priest – whoever is due for assignment. They are a special type of religious leader – usually very down to earth, realistic, and straightforward men, as they would have to be to reach men in wartime circumstances, yet still very spiritual.

We happen to have a very personable Catholic priest, Father Robert Brett. He identifies with all the men and ministers to them constantly. On Sundays, he holds mass on a makeshift altar, and attendance is quite good. We obviously have to hold several services, so we do not weaken our overall defenses. The large attendance doesn’t surprise me, since every man feels threatened and seeks divine guidance and favor. My constant prayer, since even before I arrived in Vietnam, asks the Lord to grant me safe return to my family. I ask that he give me a future with my 5 ½ year-old son. It will be tragic if he grows up without a father, and I have missed some of his early years. I happen to be Catholic, so I attend all of Father’s services whenever possible.

Father Bob is totally dedicated to his job and truly wants to be there to watch after his community of men. He walks around our positions on Hill 558 with a small placard on the side of his helmet that says, “Some men wait to the 11th hour to believe, but they die at 10:30!”

On 5 Feb, he demonstrates just how far and at what risk he will go to perform his duties. Echo company on Hill 8651A is heavily attacked at 3 am, suffering numerous casualties. After both of the NVA assaults are repulsed, we know we have to send replacements via choppers to Captain Breeding. At around 7 am, a couple of choppers arrive at 558 to pick up the replacements. One of the people already aboard one of the choppers is David Duncan, a civilian combat photographer, who is the only journalist to ever visit our forward positions at Khe Sanh. His photographs became famous. Just as the last replacements board, Father Brett runs up to a chopper and tells the pilot he will be accompanying the replacements. He never bothers to ask permission or seek approval; he just feels he is needed on Hill 861A after their ordeal.

When he arrives on the hill, Captain Breeding spots him and blurts out, “Who’s that SOB walking around without his weapon?” When told it was the 2/26 Chaplain, he adds, “That’s great, I don’t need to babysit any more people on this hill.” That doesn’t faze Father Bob; he just continues to talk to as many men as possible. The men are deeply impressed and appreciative of his commitment and presence.

He spots the Marine positions on Hill 861, K Co 3/26, and tells one of the senior NCOs that he wants to visit those men, too! He is told that it is impossible, as there is a minefield between the two positions, 300 yards apart. The good padre is very serious and insists, so they walk over to Hill 861, trying to avoid the mines. After a brief visit, he returns to 861A and then back to 558 by midday. I would not have let him go if he had bothered to tell me of his intentions. In his mind, his desire to be of service and to administer to those men superseded any need to seek permission. Who can argue?

The Chaplain would often say Mass 10 times a day.  He seemed to be utterly tireless as well as utterly fearless.

On February 22, 1968, Father Brett and Corporal Chin were at Khe Sahn.  Colonel Kurth tells us what happened:

The next day, a chopper arrives at the combat base runway to pick up Father Brett, his enlisted assistant, Corporal Alexander Chin, and a few other individuals. As they approach the chopper, the NVA begins shelling the base with 122mm rockets. Father Brett tells another Marine to take his place aboard the aircraft, and he and Chin run back to a trench alongside the airfield. The helicopter takes off and heads for our position. The shelling continues, and one rocket round finds the trench immediately killing several Marines. Among the dead are Father Brett and Corporal Chin. The Corporal, an African/Chinese-American, already possesses two Purple Hearts for wounds previously sustained. He also had been one of my S-3 jeep drivers during our operations in the Hue/Phu Bai TAOR.

I cannot express adequately my shock and regret when I received the message informing me that Father Brett and Corporal Chin had been killed in the rocket attack, just moments ago. At this point, I’m not sure about your total reaction, but let me assure you that it immediately changes my attitude and belief in divine intervention and/or involvement. How can a merciful God allow this kind of tragedy to a man of the cloth, a good man, a dedicated minister to his people? How could you deal with such an obvious inconsistency? It took me a while following this event to return to a religious posture, and I still can’t purge it from my mind. I also deal with the guilt that if I had allowed him to go the day of his first request or not at all, he would not have been at that locale on the first day he was killed. The total shock extends to every Marine who knew him.

Man’s nature is to search for reason, yet he is incapable of answering the big questions and must rely on fate, not understanding. When we become too self-important and think we should know all the answers, all we need to do is sit in the field and gaze at the multitude of stars and planets in the night sky in just this galaxy alone. We then realize how small we are in the grand scheme. Without faith, we become even more insignificant.

Shortly after this tragic loss, I prepared an award recommendation for the Legion of Merit. Lieutenant Colonel Heath signs the recommendation, and it is forwarded to the 3rd Mar Div and approved. Father Brett is posthumously awarded that medal. Small compensation, but extremely well deserved. If anyone deserves burial at Arlington Cemetery, it is Father Brett.

Father Brett was buried at Arlington eventually, his body being re-interred there in 1998.  In a moving ceremony in 1999, Corporal Chin’s body was moved from a family plot to lie next to Father Brett’s in Arlington.

Father Brett received many honors after his death, including the naming of a building for him at the Navy Chaplain school, but I am sure the honor that he held most dear is that the Marines he served at Khe Sanh built a chapel in his honor at Khe Sanh following his death.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer on February 27, 1968

A Catholic chaplain from Collingdale (PA) who said he wanted to be where “the men need me most” has been killed in action at the Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh, South Vietnam. Navy Lt. Robert R. Brett, of 1001 Bartram Avenue, died Thursday of multiple mortar wounds. He was attached to the 3rd Marine Division. “He was neither a dove nor a hawk,” said a member of Lt. Brett’s family. “But he wanted to be where the men needed him most.” The 32-year-old priest requested overseas active duty.

Posted by Michael Robert Patterson on May 27, 1999

IN HONORED REMEMBRANCE

The last time anyone saw the chaplain and his aide alive was on an airstrip in Khe Sanh. As they came under attack from the North Vietnamese army, they waved off a helicopter set to take them away and prepared instead to do their jobs. For three long months during the Vietnam War, Chaplain Robert Brett, 33, and Private First Class Alexander Chin, a 23-year-old Marine, had forged a close partnership, scrambling through neck-high elephant grass and foxholes, dodging bullets and mortar shells as they ministered to frightened Marines. This time, the lightning-fast rocket attack on the landing strip took their lives. And their story might have ended on that February day in 1968, in the hilltop trench where their mangled bodies were pulled from the shrapnel and debris and shipped home. But yesterday, they were reunited in Arlington National Cemetery, buried side by side under a bright sky on Chaplain’s Hill. At the behest of Brett’s family and with the permission of Chin’s relatives, Chin’s body was removed from his family plot in the town of Princess Anne on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and reinterred next to the man he vowed to serve.

About 60 relatives, fellow Vietnam veterans, and military officials gathered for the ceremony. Navy Rear Admiral Barry C. Black, deputy chief of chaplains, told Chin’s family and friends that their Marine was a “spiritual hero.” Chin, family members say, was deeply religious and, after several months of combat, told his commanders in Vietnam that he could no longer kill the enemy. Instead of a court-martial, relatives said, Chin was given a job protecting and assisting Brett. “He said, ‘I won’t take a life, but I’ll put my life on the line for another.'” Black said, as six Marines held a flag above Chin’s coffin. “Alexander laid down his life. It was love’s crowning act.”

Family members embraced and sobbed openly as Marines fired a salute in Chin’s honor. “It’s devastating,” said Levi Chin, 52, his younger brother. “It’s like reliving his first funeral all over again. But it’s an honor that he’s here.”

Alexander Chin was in college, studying art, when he was drafted. Not long after he arrived in Vietnam, he and Brett became a fixture in the trenches, administering first aid, comforting Marines on the line, and doing on-the-spot baptisms. “They were always on the battlefield giving last rites and dragging the wounded to safer positions,” said Larry Ballard, who served with the men in the 26th Marine Regiment at Khe Sanh. “They were heroes. They placed themselves in mortal danger. Both of them.”

Jim Leslie, 58, a former Marine captain who served with Brett and Chin, attended yesterday’s ceremony and remembered Brett for his courage and compassion. “Chaplain Brett was always there, no matter if there was shooting or not,” Leslie said. The experience, he said, changed his life. “Some people call it foxhole religion, but for many of us, it continued forever. Brett was a brave one. No doubt.”


Brett volunteered to go to Vietnam because “he wanted to help people in dire situations,” said his brother, the Rev. Frank Brett of Norris, Tennessee, who also served as a chaplain in Vietnam. “My brother went places no one thought a chaplain would go. Most people would say, ‘What are you doing in this Khe Sanh mess?”

Robert Brett had been in Vietnam for six months when he and Chin were killed. Marines who witnessed the attack said the two were about to board a helicopter when they came under assault. Brett, they said, told the chopper to take off without them, allowing another man to go instead.

Several Marines were killed in the attack. At the time, family members said, Chin had already received three Purple Hearts and was scheduled to return home. He was engaged to be married.

“We had a banner stretched outside the door that said, ‘Welcome Home, Alex,’ ” recalled one of Chin’s sisters, Lottie Chin Benyard. “We had saved all his presents from Christmas, and we were going to celebrate all over again. Then we got the knock at the door telling us he’d been killed.”

Benyard said her family first learned of Chin’s heroism when she was contacted earlier this year by Ballard and later by Brett’s nephew, Edward Rouse. Three decades ago, Brett had been buried at his mother’s request in the cemetery of the Penndel, Pennsylvania, seminary where he received his religious training. His mother died in 1980, and last fall, Rouse and his family fulfilled their longtime wish to have Brett’s body moved to Arlington National Cemetery.

They felt strongly that Chin should be there, too. So Rouse hired a private detective, who tracked down Chin’s relatives in the Baltimore area. Chin “knew his duty was to protect the chaplain, and in honor of that commitment, I felt it was my duty to bring him to Arlington for honors and recognition,” Rouse said. “A lot of lies have come out about Vietnam veterans.

“This is a story of honor and sacrifice. It would have been very easy for them, in the face of all that evil, to give up their belief in God and their dedication to duty in the face of stress. But neither of them did. I’m proud of both of them.”

On The Lower Bucks County Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 700 Veterans Highway, Levittown, Pennsylvania

Photo courtesy of HMDB.org and contributor William Fischer, Jr.

On the ‘wall’ of the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 108 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Panel 3.

Photo from PhillyMemorials.com/PVVM


Buried in Arlington National Cemetery, One Memorial Drive, Arlington, Virginia; Section 2, Grave E-88-RH; photo from ancexplorer.army.mil. PFC Chin is buried in Section 2, Grave E-89-LH.

Photos from FindAGrave.com. Left from contributor Cindy, and right from contributor David McInturff.

END

LIEUTENANT COLONEL DON LAVERNE BARTLEY, SR., U.S. ARMY

DOB/DOD: July 27, 1932 (Pikeville, KY) – June 8, 1969; 36 years old
RELIGION: Presbyterian
MARITAL STATUS: Married Kathleen Stewart Bartley [later, Brown] (1930-2024), on June 21, 1952, in Kanawha County, West Virginia.
CHILDREN: One son, Don L., Jr. (1953-). One daughter, Sharon L. Bartley Patterson (1955-).
COLLEGE: BA from Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia, in 1954. BD from Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, in 1958.
SERVICE NUMBER: OF-0102134
ENLISTMENT: May 4, 1961
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 5310, Chaplain
TOUR START DATE: July 27, 1968 (his 36th birthday)
UNIT: Americal Division, 24th Corps Area
CASUALTY LOCATION: Quang Nam Province
ON THE WALL: Panel 23W, Line 109

FAMILY: Born to John A. (1898-1947) and Dixie J. Justice Bartley [later, Burgraf] (1899-1975). Three brothers, Edward E. (1920-1996), Buford [Army Air Corps veteran] (1922-1986), and Forrest R. [USMC veteran] (1926-2006). One sister, Christine [died of “childhood paralysis”] (1919-1932).

OTHER: Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel posthumously. Awarded the Legion of Merit, Silver Star Medal, Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal (3), Purple Heart Medal (2), Joint Services Commendation Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal (3).

CIRCUMSTANCES: At approximately 2:30 PM on June 8, 1969, a ¾-ton U.S. military truck carrying three Armed Forces Television Network newsman, a chaplain, and two other American servicemen hit a pressure-type mine of approximately 60-80 pounds as it followed a jeep on Route 540, fifteen miles southwest of Da Nang in Quang Nam Province, RVN, enroute to conduct field services for Company K, 3/7 Marines. The jeep, carrying the 3/7 Marines Battalion Chaplain, left the highway and traveled about 50 meters. When the truck followed the jeep off the road, the mine detonated, fatally injuring all personnel aboard. The truck was completely destroyed. The lost Navy newsmen included writer JO1 William R. Wilson, and photographers PH2 Carl W. Hudgins Jr. and PH1 Robert G. Stricklin. The Army chaplain was MAJ Don L. Bartley, who was accompanied by two Marine assistants, PFC Gale L. Barnes, a logistics man, and LCPL Roger L. Young, the driver, both from Headquarters Company, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division. LCPL Young suffered critical injuries to his head in the blast and was evacuated, after which time he expired. The Navy newsmen were filming the final episode of a six-part series on the activities of military chaplains in Vietnam. The segment, entitled “The Circuit-Rider,” was designed to show chaplains working close to soldiers in combat. Army chaplain Bartley was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. [From coffeltdatabase.org, 3/7 Marines Command Chronology for June 1969, and “Mine Kills Chaplain, 3 AFVN Newsmen.” Pacific Stars & Stripes, June 14, 1969]

Pikeville Academy, Class of 1950. Photos are from the Pikeville Academy yearbook, Class of 1948. Contributed by Christy Fleming, Pikeville Public Library, Pikeville, Kentucky.

Basketball team

Citation to accompany the award of the Silver Star Medal

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Lieutenant Colonel (Chaplain’s Corps) Don Laverne Bartley (ASN: O-102134), United States Army, for gallantry in action involving close combat against an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam. Chaplain Bartley distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions in March 1968, while serving as Chaplain of the 196th Infantry Brigade, 23d Infantry Division (Americal), on a combat mission in the Republic of Vietnam. Chaplain Bartley was a passenger on a helicopter that was shot down, killing all aboard except for Chaplain Bartley, who was wounded, and one other soldier who was seriously wounded and thrown from the helicopter and was lying in the open. The crash site was surrounded by Viet Cong soldiers who poured a withering fire on the crash site. Chaplain Bartley used an M-16 rifle to repel the assaulting enemy, and then crawled out under fire to the wounded man and pulled him back into the helicopter. He rendered life-saving first aid to his wounded comrade and called for a rescue force. Chaplain Bartley’s extraordinary heroism in close combat against an enemy force is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, the Americal Division, and the United States Army.

From The Corpus Christi Times on June 12, 1969

THRICE-WOUNDED MAN WITH 3 WEEKS TO GO DIES IN WAR

DA NANG, Vietnam (AP) – A U.S. Army chaplain, wounded three times in the last year, was to return home in three weeks, was killed Sunday when an enemy mine exploded beneath the truck in which he was riding.

The U.S. Command, in a belated report today, said five other Americans also died in the explosion on a road seven miles south of Da Nang. The blast destroyed the U.S. Marine truck in which the six men were riding.

The chaplain was identified as Major Don L. Bartley, Rockbridge Baths, Virginia, formerly chaplain of the Americal Division’s 196th Light Infantry Brigade, and who was assigned May 19 to U.S. Command headquarters.

The United Presbyterian minister, who suffered three wounds in action last year with his old unit, was scheduled to return to the United States on July 5. He is survived by his widow and two children.

Three of the dead were Navy sailors on a television camera crew assigned to the Armed Forces Vietnam Network in Saigon.

They were identified as journalist William R. Wilson, and Photographers Mates Robert G. Stricklin and Carl W. Hudgins Jr.

All originally were from Kansas City, Missouri, but a military source said Stricklin’s parents had moved from Kansas City to California several years ago. The city in which they now live was not known here.

The two Marines killed in the mine blast were not identified.

NOTE: The two Marines were Private First Class Gale L. Barnes, a logistics man, and Lance Corporal Roger L. Young, the driver, both from Headquarters Company, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division.

From an unknown newspaper

TROOPERS MOURN THE PADRE WHO CARED

DA NANG, South Vietnam — This is a story about a hero, a man who died in the service of his country after winning the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts in less than a year in Vietnam. He was credited with no enemy kills. In fact, never once did he lift a weapon against another man. He was Chaplain (Maj) Don Bartley. Along with five other men, the padre died in the lethal blast of an enemy mine on a quiet afternoon seven miles outside of Da Nang when nobody expected trouble. He had less than a month to go in Vietnam. Because of the harrowing pace he set for himself in the Americal Division during the early months of his tour and because of three wounds, he had been reassigned to MACV headquarters for his last 50 days in-country. He was taking part in an AFN Vietnam TV documentary on chaplains in Vietnam when he was killed. Three of the victims were part of a TV crew who had worked with Bartley on the story for two weeks. Chaplain Bartley, a United Presbyterian minister, didn’t become a hero by dying. He was

a living hero, but as is often the case, he is only fully appreciated now that he is gone. In the security of a fortified firebase or in the peril of a flaring firefight, Bartley comforted and inspired American men who wanted his services. The troopers who knew him said it best. “He was a straight guy. A lot of people will hesitate to pour out their problems to a stranger, but he managed to understand and remember the problems of everyone he counseled. He gave the distinct impression that he really cared about your welfare,” remembered SP4 Ted Simmons,

2d Battalion, 21st Infantry, of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade. Said Maj Russell Williams, Bartley’s CO for most of his tour, “He knew everyone at fire support bases on a personal basis. This was most important to him.” The words of others reflect the actions of the man, and Chaplain Bartley’s actions were gallant indeed. Three times he was wounded, yet he was able to sustain his fellow soldiers in the heat of battle. Whether they were young or old, whether their wounds were mental, spiritual, or physical, he was there to help. Men of every religion and others who professed none benefited from his interest. He won the Silver Star in March when he was cited for his impromptu role as a medic as well as that of a chaplain. He erected four chapels, including one at LZ Baldy just in time for Christmas, 1968. The 30-foot by 60-foot structure was the pride of the Virginia native. This provides a center for worship with the atmosphere to which the men here were accustomed back in the World. “It was my special dream to complete this center as it is inspiring in more ways than one.” A spokesman at MACV Command Chaplain’s office said shocked friends had not yet made a decision about continuing with the AFN documentary. Bartley had worked for two weeks on the film along with 18 other chaplains who had participated at various times.

Posted on VVMF.org by Larry Henry July 16, 2015

COMFORT IN THE TIME OF CHAOS

I met Chaplain Bartley in mid-October, I believe. I had come into the country on the first of August and spent my 1st wedding anniversary at the replacement center in southern South Vietnam. My final destination as Army Infantry would be the Americal Division (Chu Lai) in I Corps. I was a replacement for those lost in the February Tet Offensive, 1969…a pleasant thought. Once in Chu Lai, I would be reassigned to the 196th LIB and 3 BN/21 Inf operating off of Firebase Center, a mountain-top camp about 30 miles south of Danang. I remained in the field, without even a side-trip to the firebase, until mid-October when I had received a not-so-glamorous wound while on patrol in our A/O.

I was choppered to the field hospital on LZ Baldy…196 Light Infantry Brigade Headquarters. It was here that I met Chaplain (Major) Don L. Bartley. I was processed in and assigned a bed where I would stay for the next week or so. Prior to shipping out to Vietnam, my wife and I had agreed to 1) calculate the time difference between my location and home, and 2) read the same passage of the Bible at approximately the same time each day. One of my first days in the hospital, while reading my Bible passage, an officer came through the ward and stopped to introduce himself…Brigade Chaplain Bartley.

He commented on my having the Bible out, so I explained. We talked for a while concerning my wound, my field duties, and then he left. I was to see him many times after that…Chaplain Bartley made it a point to visit the Hospital and the Morgue every day he was on the Hill. He brought a lot of comfort, relaxing discussion, and hope to the wounded. After that, he would visit Graves Registration to pray for those men who would go home before their tour ended.

I moved from the field hospital to another hospital in Chu Lai, to my Company Surgeon on Firebase Center, back to the Field Hospital at LZ Baldy. Once again, I met up with my friend, the Chaplain. Days later, I was released to return to my unit in the field. I walked over to the Chaplain’s office to say goodbye. He was outside, building a Chapel in the medical area for Sunday service. He excused himself, saying that he needed to place a call, and asked me to wait. When he returned, he asked if I would be his assistant. I explained that I knew very little about what he did. He said I would only need to know how to drive a jeep and to ‘appropriate’ things. I assured him that I could do both…he told me to fly to Firebase Center to retrieve my equipment and to return to the office.

It would be a couple of months before I would join Chaplain Bartley on LZ Baldy. His assistant would not be leaving for a while, so he moved me to Firebase West to assist a new chaplain until his permanent assistant came in. Then he moved me to Chu Lai to operate the rear office and the Chapel. Every Sunday, after service on LZ Baldy, Chaplain Bartley would fly back to Chu Lai to give a sermon to all military and civilians in our area that had not had an opportunity to go to service elsewhere on base. The chaplain felt very strongly that everyone should have the opportunity to attend Church service, even though they may not have transportation. Later that day, he would return to Baldy to visit the hospital and the morgue.

During this time, Chaplain Bartley was fulfilling a dream. He was building a large Brigade Chapel on top (well, almost) of LZ Baldy…overlooking the chopper pad, air strip, and the Artillery placement. It was the Chaplain’s feeling that everyone should have a place to go that didn’t look temporary or military. Rather, he wanted them to feel at home. I soon learned the reason I was to ‘appropriate’ things and help him with the completion and furnishing of the interior. In December, my Dad died. Chaplain Bartley flew to Chu Lai to tell me…he did not call me for a pickup at the chopper pad like usual, but walked to the office.

His chopper flew the two of us back to Baldy, where I would process out on emergency leave. The Chaplain’s jeep had Brigade Chaplain on the front with a Cross and the symbol of his rank as Major. Chaplain Bartley drove me to HQ. I could not disappoint the guys we passed who were saluting…so, as the Chaplain drove, I returned all salutes. He thought that was fantastic.

Our office was inside the medical compound of C Company, 23rd Med, where the hospital was located. The Chaplain felt that he…and his assistants…were on call 24 hours a day. We were to meet every Dust-Off Chopper that came in to help transport the wounded and deceased. Therefore, we pulled no HQ company duties such as KP or guard. However, we did pull guard with the Medics to help ‘pay’ for our rent. I would soon learn just how much that man was admired in the medical compound, with soldiers just meeting him for the first time, and with his staff of field Chaplains.

When I returned from emergency leave, I felt a real tug from my friends in the field. I slept on a cot every night…they slept on the ground. I had abandoned them. I told the Chaplain that I had to go back to my infantry unit. He would not sign the transfer. He had communicated with my Mother. He had sent her a letter after my Dad died…she returned the letter explaining that my brother had died while I was in basic training. He promised her that he would keep an eye on me…and not let me go back to the field. She had lost a son and a husband within a year. He would not be responsible for her to lose another.

Actually, I felt safer in the field. The enemy knew exactly where we lived on Baldy. At least in the field, he had to find us. We got hit many times each week. Some worse than others, sometimes only mortars or gunfire. Other times, they were full-on battles. One such battle took place in May 1969. A company-sized offensive made up of NVA Regulars hit the North side of LZ Baldy. We fought all night, with most of it contained to the North side. Word was that the enemy was headed through a rice paddy towards the medical compound, but they could no longer be found.

At first light, before the perimeter was clear, the Chaplain asked me to drive him around the hill… ‘the men need to see us,’… he said. They did. We spoke to many of the guys who had fought all night…evidence of their battle was everywhere. The Chaplain spoke to them, held their hands, and embraced them. Whatever they needed. He was amazing. Then he told me to take him to HQ. A cleanup detail needed to be arranged immediately. Not only to remove the bodies, but to give respect to their souls. Enemy or not, we were to respect them in death.

In the midst of all of the chaos, we had some great times. The Chaplain had a wonderful sense of humor and enjoyed being part of the group. He encouraged the medics and doctors to meet in our office each evening after chow to do whatever they wanted to do. Usually, someone brought a guitar and we would try to sing or just listen. Chaplain Lovelace (from Tennessee) would entertain us with his version of the Hambone when he was on the hill.

His serious side came when he was preparing his sermon or reflecting on his family. His area of the office contained his bunk, his desk, and pictures. There was no door, but everyone knew that, when he was in his chair, that was his private time…do not disturb.

The Catholic Chaplain’s Assistant and I lived in a space in the back of the Chapel next door to our office. Just after I became comfortable with sleeping indoors, he wanted us to move. He felt that it was not acceptable to live in the Chapel. We built a new living quarters out of materials left over from the construction of the new Brigade Chapel…even mahogany plywood and ¼” paneling.

He and I had long discussions about the war, our family, and our plans after we returned to the world. How do we reconcile the death and destruction that went on day after day with our own beliefs of non-violence? On a Sunday evening, while waiting for anyone to show up for our new Sunday Night service, we sat on a big rock outside the Brigade Chapel. He told me how he had run away from home at 15 to join the Marines. He was caught three weeks later and sent home. He never lost his desire to join the military. His dream when he returned home from Nam was to attend the US War College. I wish I could remember more of our discussions.

I do not remember how long it was after that, but the Chaplain told me he was going home. There would be a detour, though. He was asked by the Americal (23rd Infantry) Division Chaplain to prepare some training films for an Army Field Chaplain, Brigade Chaplain, and Marine Chaplain. There may have been a Navy Chaplain in there, but I do not remember.

He came onto the Hill one day, saying that he was going to pick up all of his gear and head to Da Nang for the final filming. He would spend the day with the Marines and then head home. While I was very happy for him, I told him not to go to Da Nang. I knew he had no choice, but I had a bad feeling…superstitious, I suppose. A few hours later, I received the news.

I do not recall why the Catholic assistant and I began calling him Black Bart. It certainly was not out of anger. He did know, however, that if we had too much free time, we could get into trouble. One day, I was to dig a hole…a large one…that would be used as a dry well for our laundry water. How all of those sandbags got buried right where the hole was to be, I’ll never know. The whole compound was not that old. When I voiced my opinion, he just said… ‘keep digging’. Right after that, I had to dig another dry well…he wanted his own shower. I’ll have to admit…they were nice additions. And, he could be stern. Maybe it was the time we were going to the PX in Chu Lai. A soldier was walking toward us…obviously new in country with really fresh fatigues. He walked past the Chaplain without a salute (optional for a Chaplain). Major Bartley stopped the soldier and scolded him for not saluting. I asked him why he did that…he just smiled. I miss that man.

Initially buried in Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, 318 S. Main Street, Lexington, Virginia; New Bacon Section, Lot 4A, Space 1.

Photo from FindAGrave.com and contributor Joan Mays (top) “Bobby”, bottom.

Reinterred to Arlington National Cemetery, One Memorial Drive, Arlington, Virginia; Section 55, Grave 1910, on June 16, 2025.

Photo from FindAGrave.com and contributor “M”

END

MAJOR WILLIAM JOSEPH BARRAGY; U.S. ARMY

DOB/DOD: October 13, 1923 (Kansas City, MO) – May 4, 1966; 42 years old
RELIGION: Roman Catholic
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried
COLLEGE: Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, and St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. He was ordained on May 22, 1948, at Loras. He was the second priest from the Archdiocese of Dubuque to die during wartime. A generation earlier, a Navy chaplain, Father Aloysius Schmitt of St. Lucas in Fayette County, died aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma on December 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
SERVICE NUMBER: O-2268967
ENLISTMENT: June 12, 1953
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 75310 = Chaplain (Airborne Qualified)
TOUR START DATE: July 8, 1965
UNIT: Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division
CASUALTY LOCATION: Quang Duc Province, South Vietnam
ON THE WALL: Panel 7E, Line 22

FAMILY: Born to Doctor Joseph C. (1887-1953) and Alice Meany Barragy (1891-1987). Two sisters, Frances E. Barragy Grace (1919-2015) and Mary A. Barragy Meisch (1921-1990).

OTHER: Awarded the Legion of Merit posthumously.

CIRCUMSTANCES: On May 4, 1966, a U.S. Army helicopter CH-47A (tail number 64-13138) from the 147th Assault Support Helicopter Company (“Hill Climbers”) crashed during a combat mission 13 nautical miles northwest of Nhon Co while deploying to a forward base. The passengers were from the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry of the 101st Infantry Division. One of the passengers was the 1st Brigade’s Roman Catholic chaplain, Major William J. Barragy. Eyewitnesses agreed for the most part that there were flames coming from the rear of the aircraft, and it seemed to have no forward airspeed and was spinning and falling straight down. The technical report suggested that the combining transmission failure, excessive heat, and fire caused the #2 drive shaft to separate. The resulting fire may have been ingested into the remaining engine, causing a loss of power, SAS (Stability Augmentation System), and aircraft electrical systems. There is evidence that the pilot attempted to flare the helicopter prior to impact to no avail; the aircraft crashed on its left side and was consumed by fire. There were no survivors. [From vhpa.org and armyaircrews.com]

St Mary’s High School, Waterloo (later Columbus High School) Class of 1941?

Photo not found

Loras College Class of 1945 yearbook

Posted by Walt Williams on VVMF Wall of Faces

A Real Living Saint

You gave comfort to a very frightened 18-year-old before his first combat assault. You prayed over the dead of both friend and foe, reminding me that we are all the children of God. You were always there when I needed the courage to go on. You were my guardian angel. I was there when they pulled your body from the wreckage of that Chinook along with 20 other brave souls. May 4th will always be a day of mourning for me as long as I live.

From the Courier (Waterloo, IA) on May 6, 1966

FATHER BARRAGY, CHAPLAIN IN VIETNAM, IS MISSING
Helicopter Crashed on Mission

The Reverend Father William Barragy, a United States Army chaplain with the rank of Major, who formerly served at St. Edwards Catholic Church in Waterloo as assistant pastor for 2½ years, has been missing in Vietnam since May 4, as a result of a helicopter crash while on a mission. Word that the former Waterloo priest was missing was received Thursday by his mother, Mrs. Alice Barragy of 1315 Prospect Blvd. Father Barragy has been with the 101st Airborne unit headquarters First Brigade. He has been in the service of the army for 12 years. He entered the service in 1953 and has had three other tours of duty, one in Korea, one in Germany, and one in Okinawa. Father Barragy was due back in Waterloo this July on rotation. His mother received the report while visiting with a daughter, Mrs. James Grace, in Tampa, Florida. Major Barragy has another sister in Waterloo, Mrs. Norbert Meisch, 230 Independence Avenue. A native of Kansas City, Father Barragy. is a son of the late Dr. J. C. Barragy and Mrs. Alice Barragy of Waterloo. Father Barragy was ordained at Dubuque on May 22, 1948, after studying for the priesthood at Loras College, Dubuque, and St. Mary’s Seminary, Baltimore.

From the Courier (Waterloo, IA) on May 9, 1966

BARRAGY’S COPTER DOWN IN JUNGLE
Chaplain Lost in Flaming Crash

SAIGON  — A Roman Catholic chaplain. Major William Barragy of Waterloo, Iowa, was one of 21 persons aboard a U.S. Army helicopter which crashed in heavy jungle about 110 miles northeast of Saigon last Wednesday night. A military spokesman in Saigon said Sunday, 21 bodies were found at the crash site, but that some were so badly burned that positive identification has not been made. The spokesman said that the chaplain, therefore, officially is

listed as missing in action. The helicopter, a CH-47 Chinook, crashed about 20 miles west of Gia Nghia. It has not been determined whether enemy fire downed it or whether operational failure caused the crash. Initial reports said the craft burst into flames in the air. Most of the passengers aboard the helicopter were soldiers who had just arrived in South Vietnam from the United States and were being transported to battle for the first time. Major Barragy was attached to the  101st Airborne Division. Military records in Saigon list the death of only one other American chaplain in the Vietnamese conflict. He suffered a fatal heart attack last year.

From the Courier (Waterloo, IA) on November 22, 1966

FATHER BARRAGY HONORED FOR WAR SERVICE
Chaplain Killed in Vietnam is Cited

Chaplain Major William J. Barragy, U.S. Army, has received one of the nation’s highest military honors for “exceptionally meritorious conduct” in Vietnam prior to his death in a helicopter crash there last May 4. The Legion of Merit medal was presented posthumously to his mother, Mrs. Alice Barragy, 1315 Prospect Blvd. November 18, by direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In citing the Roman Catholic priest’s duty with the 101st Airborne Division, the award stated:

“.. Chaplain Barragy, through his personal devotion and professionalism, inspired the highest type of service from his fellow chaplains and dedication to duty from the troops during his tenure as brigade chaplain. “He was always available when needed, whether in garrison or combat, and provided spiritual comfort and personal counseling in a clearly outstanding manner. Chaplain Barragy maintained contact with local missionaries and benevolent groups as an aid to the brigade in its civic action programs. He was constantly with the troops, whether under fire, encouraging the men to renewed efforts, or at an aid station consoling the wounded and administering to the dying.”

Father Barragy was one of 21 soldiers killed in a flaming crash. 110 miles northeast of Saigon, while enroute with reinforcements sent to strengthen elements of the 101st Airborne. He had been an Army chaplain since 1953 and previously had served in Korea, Germany, and Okinawa.

From The Witness (official publication of the Archdiocese of Dubuque) on December 8, 1966

PRESIDENTIAL CITATION FOR CHAPLAIN BARRAGY

WASHINGTON, DC – Chaplain William C. Barragy, a priest of the Archdiocese of Dubuque killed last May in Vietnam, has been awarded posthumously the Legion of Merit by President Johnson. Father Barragy died in a helicopter crash on May 4 along with 21 other soldiers. He had been an Army chaplain since 1953.

The presidential citation reads as follows:

“Chaplain (Major) William J. Barragy, O-2268967, Chaplain Corps, United States Army, distinguished himself by exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services during the period January 1965 through May 1906 while serving as Brigade Chaplain of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and in the Republic of Vietnam.

“Chaplain Barragy, through his personal devotion and professionalism, inspired the highest type of service from his fellow chaplains and dedication to duty from the troops during his tenure as brigade chaplain. He was always available when needed, whether in garrison or combat, and so

provided spiritual comfort and personal counseling in a clearly outstanding manner. After the brigade was alerted for movement to the Republic of Vietnam, Chaplain Barragy efficiently and conscientiously resolved the increased personal problems, as well as forming a special society for paratroopers – the Catholic Trooper Society—at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.”

The chaplain arranged for a visit to the brigade by His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Bishop of the Military Ordinariate and the Archdiocese of New York. This event gave the entire brigade a heightened awareness that the spiritual leadership of the nation was behind their mission.”

Once in the Republic of Vietnam, Chaplain Barragy maintained contact with local missionaries and benevolent groups as an aid to the brigade in its civic action programs. With few exceptions, Chaplain Barragy personally provided Catholic services for the entire brigade in the Republic of Vietnam. He was constantly with the troops, whether under fire, encouraging the men to renewed efforts, or at an aid station consoling the wounded and administering to the dying.”

“Chaplain Barragy’s personal bravery inspired the troops to carry on under the most adverse conditions. His dedication and untiring devotion enkindled in them a deep respect for the ideals for which the brigade was fighting. Chaplain Barragy’s professional competence and outstanding services were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

From The Witness (official publication of the Archdiocese of Dubuque) on May 8, 2011
By Steve McMahon   |   Witness Staff Writer

DUBUQUE — Like the title of his documentary suggests, the first chaplain to die in the Vietnam War has not been forgotten.

Father William Barragy, a Dubuque Archdiocesan priest, was killed 45 years ago — May 4, 1966 — in a helicopter crash with 20 men on a mission for the 101st Airborne Division  – the “Screaming Eagles.” The incident took place northeast of Saigon in South Vietnam. Burial was in Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Waterloo.

A 35-minute documentary on the priest, “..But Not Forgotten,” released in 2009, is still available from the Educational Resource Center at the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center; part of a series of documentaries on archdiocesan priests co-produced by Loras College Productions and the Archdiocese of Dubuque.

A monument to 83 Catholic chaplains who died in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam was dedicated on May 21, 1989, in the Memorial Amphitheater, Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Father Barragy’s name is among those etched on the monument.

The priest was posthumously honored with the Legion of Merit. The monument’s inscription reads, “May God Grant Peace To Them And To The Nation They Served So Well.”

Father Barragy was born on October 13, 1923, in Kansas City, Missouri. As a boy, he lived in

Mason City, where he attended Holy Family School. His family moved to Rockwell, where he attended Sacred Heart Academy. He later attended St. Mary’s High School in Waterloo, then Loras College. After completing his theological studies at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland, he was ordained on May 22, 1948, at Christ the King Chapel at Loras College.

He served as associate pastor of St. Raphael Cathedral in Dubuque, 1948-50, and St. Edward Parish in Waterloo, 1950-53. He joined the Army Chaplain Corps in 1953 and served in Korea in addition to Vietnam.

As a paratrooper with the rank of major, he provided spiritual support for the troops. He helped build morale and offered a sense of normalcy, saying Mass and hearing confessions. He was aboard a CH-47 Chinook, bringing reinforcements to the front lines of a battle, when he lost his

life at the age of 42 as the helicopter exploded in midair and went down. His tour almost complete, he was due to return to Waterloo in July 1966.

From The Courier (Waterloo, IA) on November 8, 2020
By Pat Kinney

WATERLOO – Roman Catholic Father William Joseph Barragy of Waterloo was not a rookie chaplain when he flew into battle on May 4, 1966 — the last day of his life. He’d served 13 years in the Army and had attained the rank of major. He’d served overseas in Germany. By May 1966, he was in South Vietnam, a chaplain attached to the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, known as “the Screaming Eagles” for their divisional patch. The storied unit had served from D-Day to Holland to Bastogne to Berchtesgaden in World War II. He arrived in Vietnam with them in 1965, after Congress adopted a resolution authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to escalate U.S. military involvement there following an August 1964 incident involving U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam. He’d done humanitarian work and served troops as well as Vietnamese civilians, many of whom were Roman Catholic.

On May 4, 1966, he was flying into battle with about 20 fresh soldiers who’d just arrived “in country.” They didn’t make it. According to eyewitnesses and investigators, the helicopter caught fire from an overheated combining transmission, lost power, and crashed, 110 miles northwest of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. Father Barragy and everyone aboard were killed.

He was the first U.S. military chaplain killed in a combat action in Vietnam. It was the second time a priest from the Archdiocese of Dubuque would be the first U.S. military chaplain to die in one of our nation’s wars. A generation earlier, a Navy chaplain, Father Aloysius Schmitt of St. Lucas in Fayette County, died aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma in the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the United States into World War II.

According to files of the Courier, the Witness newspaper of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, and the archives of Loras College, Barragy, was a native of Kansas City, Missouri, but also lived in Mason City, Rockwell, and then Waterloo, where he attended St. Mary’s High School, one of three Waterloo Catholic high schools which later consolidated to form Columbus High School.

He attended Loras College in Dubuque, St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and was ordained on May 22, 1948, at Loras. His parents, the late Dr. J.C. and Alice Meany Barragy, lived on Prospect Boulevard on the city’s west side. He served parish assignments at St. Raphael’s Cathedral in Dubuque from 1948 to 1950 and at St. Edward Catholic Church in Waterloo from 1950 to 1953, after which he joined the Army.

He was also one of the first Black Hawk County residents to die in Vietnam. The first, U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Robert Hibbs of Cedar Falls, had been killed in combat two months earlier, on March 5, 1966, in an action for which he would receive the Medal of Honor.

A requiem funeral Mass was held for Father Barragy at St. Edward in Waterloo. Archbishop James J. Byrne presided. Father Barragy was laid to rest at Waterloo’s Calvary Cemetery. He was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit, one of the nation’s highest military honors, for his service during his nearly year and a half in Vietnam.

His name is on the Black Hawk County Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Paramount Park outside the Courier building, as well as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and at Chaplain’s Hill at Arlington National Cemetery.

On the Iowa Vietnam Veterans Memorial, parking at 1112 E. Walnut Street, Des Moines, Iowa.

Photos courtesy of HMDB.org and contributor Juris Bets

Buried in Calvary Cemetery, Falls Ave & Fletcher St, Waterloo, Iowa; Lot 2, 82, Space 8.

Photo from FindAGrave.com and contributor Templarion.

END

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS MARIAN SARAH JACKSON

DOB/DOD: April 12, 1917 (Hartford, CT) – November 5, 1984 (West Hartford, CT); 67 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Married Charles Otis Gill [Army Veteran; 1942-1945] (1916-1976)
CHILDREN: Gloria Hodgson-Brooks (1942-)
LOCAL ADDRESS: 29 Gilbert Avenue, Bloomfield
ENLISTMENT: March 23, 1943, in Hartford, into the Air Corps
SERVICE NUMBER: A-125674
DISCHARGE: Unknown

FAMILY: Born to Joseph J. Jackson (1897-?) and Georgie E. Tillman Jackson (1897-1977). One brother, William E. (1921-1977).

Bloomfield High School, Class of 1936

1936 yearbook; photo by the webmaster with thanks to the Bloomfield Public Library
Typo in the last name. Should be Marion Jackson.

From The Hartford Courant May 8, 1943

Marian Jackson of 29 Gilbert Avenue and Christine Antiuk of 410 Duncaster Road will leave Monday for Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for service in the WAAC.

From The Hartford Courant November 7, 1984

Marian S. Gill, 67, widow of Charles O. Gill, died Monday, November 5, at a local convalescent home. Born in Hartford, she lived in the Hartford area most of her life. She retired after nearly 35 years of service with the IRS as a tax examiner. Mrs. Gill was a member of Metropolitan AME Zion Church, where she served on the Carrie P. Wilson Missionary Society. She was a veteran of World War II and the Ladies Auxiliary of the VFW No. 9992. She was a past commandress of Makalia Temple No. 137, Daughters of Isis, a charter member of the Past Commandress Council, a member of Stella Chapter No. 16 Order of Eastern Star, and a member of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rife of Free Masonry Order of the Golden Circle, a member of the Gideon Wells Senior Citizens Association, the Remembrance Club, and was appointed by Senator Dodd to the Military Selection Board. She leaves to mourn her passing: one daughter, Mrs. Gloria Hodgson-Brooks of Hartford; two nephews; four nieces; many other relatives; and a host of friends. The funeral service will be on Thursday at 11 a.m. at Metropolitan AME Zion Church. Interment in Green Cemetery, Glastonbury. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Glastonbury Visiting Nurses Association. James Funeral Home, 2016 Main St., Hartford, has charge of arrangements.

Private Gill is buried in Green Cemetery, 99 Hubbard Street, Glastonbury, Connecticut; Section 9, Row 24, Plot 439, Lot 7.

Photo from FindAGrave.com and contributor LC Brown.

END

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS AUDREY ELIZABETH HARRIS

DOB/DOD: July 13, 1920 (?, Connecticut) – March 14, 2015 (Fayetteville, NC); 94 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried
GODCHILD: Daughter Mary Lowery
LOCAL ADDRESS: 763 George Street, New Haven
ENLISTMENT: March 29, 1944, in New Haven
SERVICE NUMBER: A-130527

FAMILY: Born to William Henry Harris (1878-1924) and Sadie Juanita Bowman Harris (1885-1969). Five brothers, William H. Jr. (1909-1994), Adrian C. (1910-1992), Leighton F. (1911-1992), Andrew (1914-1987), and Harvey E. (1917-1994). One sister, Sadie L. Harris (1915-1977). Audrey was the youngest of seven.

From HerringFuneralCare.com March 14, 2015

Retired Army Major Audrey Harris, 94, of Fayetteville, died Saturday, March 14, 2015. Private services will be held at Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake. She is survived by a goddaughter, Mary Lowery of Fayetteville.

Private Harris is buried in Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery, 300 Murchinson Road, Spring Lake, North Carolina; Section 10B, Plot 115

Photo from FindAGrave.com and contributor Mel.

END

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS BURNARDINE ELIZABETH FRASER

DOB/DOD: December 14, 1921 (Key West, FL) – August 6, 2017 (Houston, TX); 95 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Married Thelmer “Terrill” Flanagan (1926-1988) on December 27, 1947, in Groton, Connecticut
CHILDREN: One son, Edward Terrill (1950-). Three daughters, Aundrea Flanagan Clemons (1944-), Denean Flanagan (1956-), and Darcelle L. Flanagan (1959-).
LOCAL ADDRESS: 48 Reed Street, New London
ENLISTMENT: February 4, 1943, in Hartford; she enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, later changed to the Women’s Army Corps, on April 6, 1943.
SERVICE NUMBER: A-125431
DISCHARGE: December 6, 1945

FAMILY: Born to Edward (1900-1979) and Kathleen Z. Moss Fraser (1902-1988). No siblings. Edward was listed in the 1940 census as being born in the British West Indies. He was born in Nassau, Bahamas.

OTHER: Shortly after graduating from high school, she attended basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. After completing basic training, she was assigned to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, as an assistant librarian. Several months after arriving in Louisiana, she received orders for overseas deployment with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. In November 1944, she transferred to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, and joined the 6888th. After the service, she attended the Baucus School of Nursing and became a Licensed Practical Nurse, LPN. She worked at the Submarine Base Hospital in New London, Connecticut, for 15 years. After retirement, she moved to Houston, Texas, to live with her daughter.

Williams Memorial Institute High School (New London, CT) Class of 1940

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

From The Day (New London, CT) August 13, 1992
By Bob Colby

SHE WOULDN’T TRADE ONE MINUTE

The 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor last year stirred a lot of memories for Burnardine Flanagan of New London. The other day, I received a packet of photographs from her, showing her in uniform during World War II. I learned that Mrs. Flanagan was the first black woman from New London to serve in the Army during World War II, the first black woman to graduate from New London Junior College, now Mitchell College, and the first black woman to work for the Connecticut State Employment Service. Her children live in New Jersey, New London and Texas. After the war, Mrs. Flanagan earned her licensed practical nursing degree from William W. Backus Hospital (in 1963) and worked at the Submarine Base Medical Center for 15 years. She was born in Key West, Florida, but raised in New London and graduated from the former Williams Memorial Institute in 1940. After graduation, Mrs. Flanagan went to work for Mr. McKenna, who worked for U.S. Congresswoman Chase Going Woodhouse. “Mrs. Woodhouse was writing a book, so she would send the typed pages to us, and we would proofread them, collate them, and send them back to her…” recalls Mrs. Flanagan. “When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, everyone in the office was quite upset, and I think that is what motivated me about two years later to join the WAACs, Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps.” Mrs. Flanagan reported for duty in Des Moines, Iowa, with about 100 other women. They were issued uniforms, bedding, and underwear. “Even our underwear was olive drab, and we all laughed about that… Imagine my surprise when all I saw were black women. I couldn’t believe that the Army was segregated, but it truly was. We had white officers, and that was all.” At Des Moines, the unit received six weeks of basic training, but there was also time for fun. “For recreation, we had an Amateur Talent night. We put on plays. We had readings, played cards and ping pong, and went to church on Sunday — sometimes on the post, sometimes off. The people in Des Moines were friendly and outgoing and treated us kindly and with respect. We had an inspection once a week.” After graduation from basic training, the new recruits crowded around the bulletin board where their next assignments were posted. “It was a sad day because we had become good friends, marched in the parades together, and were the first black company of WAACs in Des Moines. Our officers called us in formation and told us what a great unit we were and we had made them proud to be our commanders. Then, we were dismissed. Mrs. Flanagan received orders for Fort Clark, Texas, where she arrived on May 10, 1043. “Our officers were there to meet us. However, the Army had black officers now. We marched to our barracks and in the day room where it was explained what was expected of us.” Mrs. Flanagan served as a clerk typist, working for Lieutenant Newell, the sanitation officer, and Lieutenant Roy, the nutrition officer. But all was not work. “There was more after-work activity because there were men on this fort, and there would be dances and eating at their mess hall and watching the cavalry drills.”  On August 2, 1943, Mrs. Flanagan became a member of the Army and officially became a member of the WACs (Women’s Army Corps).

In December 1944, she was transferred to Camp Clairborne, Louisiana, where she worked as a library assistant. In October, she was called into the commanding officer’s office and told she was chosen to go overseas. But first, she was sent to Fort Oglethorpe for training. She tells of her experiences: “We were orientated about what it would be like in England. We had to climb the cargo net. We had to learn how to use the gas mask and go through a small cabin with mustard gas. How to survive in the woods, etc. The training was hard, but it got us ready. The town was off-limits to WACs. “On February 3, we went to a staging area in New York, and from there, we boarded a ship and started our journey to England. The crossing was rough and most all the WACs became seasick. The water was rationed; it could only be used three times a day. We had to sleep in hammocks just like the sailors. We had certain times to eat. “The trip wasn’t a pleasure trip at all. At last, we were in England. We arrived, and it was foggy. We were stationed in what used to be a boarding school. We were shown to our quarters and went right to bed. “I think there were about three hundred women in all. Our commanding officer was Lt Adams she told us we were given the job to work the mail. When we saw all the mail, we were heartsick. The room was as large as a huge auditorium and mail and packages were stacked to the ceiling. Lt Adams had us working three shifts: 7-3, 3-11, and 11-7. We were Company 6888.

“We were given a citation because they expected us to have all the mail out of there in a year, but we finished the job in four months.” Mrs. Flanagan was in England on V.E. Day (Victory in Europe). “What an experience.” She recalls, “The English people were so happy. Everyone was hugging and kissing. Bands were playing. It was just a joyous occasion. While in England, I got a three day pass and went to see Buckingham Palace, the changing of the guards, 10 Downing Street, Big Ben, the Tower of London.” She was honorably discharged on December 6, 1945.

Concludes Mrs. Flanagan: “I wouldn’t trade one minute of my life in the service, and I was happy to contribute to the war effort.”

Private Flanagan is buried in Houston National Cemetery, 10410 Veterans Memorial Drive, Houston, Texas; Section Q, Row O, Plot 2294

Photo from vlm.cem.va.gov

END

MARINE CORPS LANCE CORPORAL DWAYNE WILLIS WIGGLESWORTH

DOB/DOD: November 8, 1963 (Danbury, CT) – October 23, 1983; 19 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Unmarried
LOCAL ADDRESS: 52 Ridge Road, Naugatuck
ENLISTMENT: April 15, 1982
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 2512, Field Wireman
UNIT: 1st Battalion, 8th Marines

FAMILY: Born to Henry L. “Bub” Jr. [Marine Corps veteran] (1939-2023) and Sandra L. Rice Wigglesworth (1940-2021). Five brothers, Mark H., Gary L. [Army veteran; 1983-1985] (1961-1994), Robyn H., Shawn M., Darrin A., and Daryl G.. One sister, Candace L. Wigglesworth Campbell.

Graduated from Kennedy High School (Willingboro, New Jersey), Class of 1981. Photo from the 1979 yearbook.

The previous two pictures are from Facebook.com. Used with permission.

From The Hartford Courant on October 25, 1983

Henry Wigglesworth, father of the late Corporal Dwayne Wigglesworth, said Monday afternoon that his family had gotten the news of his son’s death shortly after lunch when a Marine contingent came to his house with the word.

Wigglesworth said his son, 19, went to Lebanon in May and had been due home in three weeks. “He wrote regularly. He said he was scared to death,” Wigglesworth said.

The family’s other son, Robyn, 21, enlisted in the Marines at the same time as his brother but was sent to Japan. Asked his feelings if his other son is sent to Beirut, Wigglesworth said: “I won’t let him go. I won’t let him go.”

Wigglesworth said he had one message: “Just get our boys out of Lebanon. We don’t want our Marines in Lebanon. People don’t want them over there. Tell them to do a Gallup Poll and see what the people want. They don’t want them there.”

Memorialized on the Naugatuck Veterans Monument, 8 Division Street, Naugatuck, Connecticut. Photos by Jeff DeWitt

Buried in Riverside Cemetery, 284 River Road, Shelton, Connecticut; Section 10, Row J10. Photos by Jeff DeWitt.

END