DOB/DOD: March 11, 1936 (Dubuque, Iowa) – December 9, 1969; 33 years old
RELIGION: Missouri Synod Lutheran
MARITAL STATUS: Married Lois J. Hellwege (1938-), on August 5, 1961, in Stuttgart, Arkansas.
CHILDREN: Two daughters, Deborah Heinz Primerano (1963-) and Deidre “Dee Dee” A. Heinz Thurber (1964-).
COLLEGE: B.A. and B.D. degrees from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. Ordained in the Lutheran (Missouri Synod) ministry on June 4, 1961.
SERVICE NUMBER: O-5501556
ENLISTMENT: September 14, 1964
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 35310 = Chaplain (Special Forces Qualified)
TOUR START DATE: August 11, 1969
UNIT: Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 5th Special Forces Group
CASUALTY LOCATION: Quang Ngai Province
ON THE WALL: Panel 15W, Line 42
FAMILY: Born to William V. (1909-1987) and Stella L. Nagel Heinz (1911-1994). Sisters Beverly J. Heinz Gerdes (1932-2021) and Sandra L. Heinz Loyer (1943-). One brother, Donald J. (1940-).
DECORATIONS: Awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor, a second Bronze Star medal with Merit, and the Air Medal.
OTHER: He was the first pastor of the Lutheran Church in Coventry, Connecticut. He left in July 1964 to join the Army.
CIRCUMSTANCES: On December 9, 1969, a U.S. Army helicopter UH-1H (tail number 68-16220) from Company A, 123rd Aviation Battalion, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) was conducting a routine shuttle mission for support command when it crashed in bad weather into a hilltop three miles southwest of Minh Long Airfield in Quang Ngai Province, RVN. Three crewmen and three passengers were killed. The aircraft commander survived with injuries. The flight initiated at 7:15 AM from Ky Ha Heliport, where the crew picked up passengers at the Division Administration pad, then departed for Minh Long. Following a change in passengers, the aircraft departed Minh Long in light rain enroute to Ba To. The helicopter was on a heading that would enable it to follow a valley to Ba To after passing through a saddle in a mountain. As the aircraft passed through the saddle, poor visibility caused the pilots to switch to Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). The aircraft commander assumed control of the ship from the co-pilot. He turned left and initiated a climb. After completing his turn, the aircraft commander looked through the chin bubble when he saw the mountainside approaching rapidly. As he attempted to climb over the hill, the main rotor’s retreating blade contacted small shrubs and tall elephant grass on the uphill side of the mountain. As the helicopter continued forward, the skids struck the ground and were sheared off, causing the fuel cells to burst. The main rotor struck the ground and was sheared from the transmission. The tail boom was also severed from the fuselage of the aircraft. Momentum carried the aircraft forward another 150 feet. The destroyed helicopter burned in place; however, it was impossible to determine the exact final resting position of the aircraft because the slope where the accident occurred was approximately 60 degrees, and many of the components rolled down the hill following the fire.
The six soldiers killed in the crash:
Air crew:
WO Ward L. Hooper, copilot, Santa Ana, CA (A Co, 123rd Avn Bn)
SP4 Michael J. McClane, crew chief, Mount Carmel, IL (A Co, 123rd Avn Bn)
SP5 Edward F. Fratus, gunner, Concord, NH (E Co, 73rd Maint Bn)
Passengers:
LTC Karl F. Lange, West Allis, WI (1st Log Cmd)
MAJ Roger W. Heinz, Coventry, CT (5th Special Forces Group)
CPT Eugene P. Shumbris, Bayside, NY (HHC, 23rd Div Spt Cmd)
[From coffeltdatabase.org, army.togetherweserved, and vhpa.org]
Images courtesy of Concordia Historical Institute, St. Louis, Missouri.
From “Confidence in Battle, Inspiration in Peace” by the U.S. Army Chaplaincy
Excerpt related to chaplains who deployed to the Dominican Republic during an attempted coup in mid-1965: Among the numerous chaplains who served there, Chaplain Arthur F. Bell, Southern Baptist, recalled that fellow-Chaplain Roger W. Heinz, Missouri Synod Lutheran, seemed to have a knack for ending up in the hottest spots. Returning to his headquarters from conducting a service at an outlying unit one day, Heinz’s jeep was stormed by a stone-throwing mob, which slashed the vehicle’s tires and wounded the driver. Somehow, they managed to escape, and Heinz’s fellow chaplains included a unique, jesting phrase in the day’s incident report: “Chaplain stoned.”
From The Hartford Courant on May 25, 2003
A CHURCH IN COVENTRY
Lois Hellwege and Roger W. Heinz met in St. Louis, where she was working as a nurse and he was training to be a minister. A friend fixed them up on a blind date in 1960. He was tall with dark hair, and she thought he was good-looking. She was blond and peppy and made him laugh.
They fell in love. From the seminary, Heinz was sent to Coventry to establish a Lutheran church. Roger and Lois married and took a month-long honeymoon, driving through the Smoky Mountains, then on to the small eastern Connecticut town neither had ever been to. Roger Heinz went door to door to find Lutherans in the town. Lois Heinz taught herself to play the organ. “We did get the church established with the help of God. It wasn’t easy,” Heinz recalled. While he was in the seminary, Heinz had joined ROTC, and four years later, he got a call from the armed services that they needed him. They moved to Fort Bragg in 1964, leaving behind their new church and friends. Heinz, who never did anything halfway, enrolled in the paratroopers and was always one of the first soldiers out of the plane. Eventually, he joined the Green Berets and left Fort Bragg on August 6, 1969. Lois Heinz walked her husband out to the airplane that would carry him overseas. He kissed his daughters, then 5 and 3, goodbye. “He said he loved me and that he would miss me terribly, the usual things,” Heinz said, wiping away tears as she recalled the last time she embraced her husband. “I had a feeling like I wasn’t that worried about him. We knew he was only going to be gone a year, and his next assignment was Germany. I left it in God’s hands,” Heinz said. Two weeks after he was declared missing in action, Heinz’s remains were found and identified in the burnt remnants of a helicopter that had crashed into the side of a mountain in Vietnam. She wasn’t even sure she could make it through the memorial service at Fort Bragg, let alone raise two children. But when she heard “For All the Saints” and “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” being sung by the congregation, her husband’s favorites, she found herself singing along. Her faith in Jesus Christ carried her through the years that followed. “When it first happened, I said ‘Why’ a lot. Then, after a while, I said it was God’s will, so I kicked myself in the rump and said it’s time to start living,” she said. In 1972, Heinz packed up her belongings and moved her family back to Coventry to build a house on a winding country road and return to the
church her husband had helped establish. The first time in the church, she sat behind the organ, put her fingers on the keys, and just began to play. Heinz, now 64, has played every Sunday since, except when she is on vacation. She rarely speaks of the war. “When I moved back up here, nothing was said about it,” she said. “It was such a sore subject.” Then in 1989, she got a call from a classmate of her husband’s who told her about a church youth group that would be visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He asked her to speak there. “I hemmed and I hawed, and I said, what can I say about such an unpopular war?” she said. When she spoke, she didn’t break down. For the first time publicly, she told the story of how six months after her husband’s death, she received a call from a woman in Ohio who told her Roger Heinz had helped her husband, who was also in the Green Berets, stop drinking. Their last counseling session was hours before Heinz died. A homeless veteran in torn Fatigues who lived in a tent near the memorial shook her hand and hugged her. “I ended up giving my presentation five times,” she said, shaking her head with disbelief that so many wanted to listen to what she had to say. Heinz spoke again in 2002 in Coventry when a replica of the wall came to town, this time about the 612 from Connecticut killed in the war. Heinz, who never remarried, knows her husband lives within their children and five grandchildren. Atop her mantle, she keeps his Green Beret picture, still baby-faced and shy-looking, still in love with her. Sometimes when she is sitting at the organ in church playing, his fae will come to her. “You don’t have much time to think about anything other than your music,” she said. “I’m not saying he’s not there with me. Because I know he is.”
Buried at Arlington National Cemetery, 1 Memorial Drive, Arlington, Virginia; Section 2, Grave E-53-RH. Photo courtesy of ancexplorer.army.mil
END