Category: We Remember

Last year, we talked about Medal of Honor recipient Gary Wetzel, when he had a motorcycle accident. He’s been in the hospital nearly a year recovering from laying down his bike at 60 miles/hour. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he got a homecoming fit for the king that he is;

It was a far different homecoming for Gary Wetzel than when he returned from Vietnam.

The South Milwaukee police and fire department escort, a couple dozen Patriot Guard motorcycle riders, children holding “Gary-thank you for your service” and “Welcome Home” signs, friends and neighbors waving small American flags on Wednesday.

It took the entire community to prepare his home for him;

Wetzel’s wife Kathy said a fellow Medal of Honor recipient got in touch with actor Sinise, who readily agreed to pay for the renovations through his foundation.

“Nobody wants any recognition. No one wants to be thanked,” said Kathy Wetzel.

Contractors spent six weeks widening doors to 34 inches, gutting the kitchen, removing carpeting and installing wheelchair- and walker-friendly flooring. The bathroom vanity was changed and a pocket door installed for easier access.

The kitchen, where avid cook Wetzel spends a lot of time, was outfitted with new appliances, cupboards, countertops, flooring and recessed lighting.

Some folks worked without pay;

Some contractors refused payment, said Don Mitchen, project manager for Bartelt, The Remodeling Resource.

“There were so many good people who came together for this,” said Mitchen. “My plumber wouldn’t take a dime. A lot of our sub(contractors) believed in this from the bottom of their hearts.”

RGR 4-78 sends us a link from MSN which tells the story of Tulsamerican, a B-25 bomber that went down in the Adriatic Sea in 1944 with it’s ten crew members. Seven were rescued, but three remained missing. They are Lieutenant Eugene Ford, Sergeant Charles Priest, and First Lieutenant Russell Landry. But DPAA has found the aircraft and there may be remains in the wreckage;

According to the report by Live Science, the team collected any material that looked like a bone. The report also stated that DNA analysis of the retrieved bone will be done to try and link any remains to those who went missing so they could receive proper burials. The divers also brought equipment and a clothing to the surface that could be related to the servicemen. They also brought several tons of soil that might contain smaller artifacts.

The mission was coordinated by the U.S. military’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), which is an agency launched by the United States Department of Defense.

The article says that the DPAA is working with Project Recover and their website has stories of other recent successful recoveries of remains around the world.

19-year-old Richard John Seadore enlisted in the Army in 1949 with his 17-year-old brother, Johnny. After a bout with the measles, he finished basic training. Both were sent to Korea that year, according to the North Platte Bulletin. Find-a-grave tells the story of his capture by the Chinese;

In December 1950, Seadore was a member of Company D, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, when all units of the United Nations Command were moving south after units of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces (CPVF) staged mass attacks during their Second Phase Offensive. On Dec. 14, the Regiment sent out a reconnaissance patrol. While Seadore’s company did not participate in the patrol, they remained in defensive positions north of Uijong-bu, South Korea. The CPVF attacked and penetrated the company’s defensive line. As the unit prepared to move the following day, Seadore could not be located and was he was reported absent without leave (AWOL). His status was later amended to missing in action.

A fellow-POW who was familiar with Richard reported to the Army that he had been killed while he was a prisoner. Despite the eye witness account, the Army left him classified as missing in action.

According to the Bulletin, Seadore’s remains came in two boxes – one turned over by the North Koreans in 1992 and another discovered in a former POW camp in Suan County, North Korea where Richard had been held by the Chinese at the time of his death. Those remains were recovered by DPAA teams that had been allowed into North Korea.

The DPAA notified his family in April that they had identified his remains thanks to a DNA sample from his brother, Al. Hondo told us that DPAA had identified him back in May. The Bulletin reports that a service will be held on August 4th when Richard finally makes it home;

Al Seadore told Mike Wendorff of the Callaway Courier that even after 60 some years, he gets pretty emotional when he tells the story.

“I shared it in church Sunday and I called my two sons (and told them),” he said. “Yeah, after all these years, you wouldn’t think it would touch home like that.”

The Seadore family sacrificed two sons to the cause of freedom — Richard in Korea and Larry in Vietnam.

Although MIAs and POWs are sometimes forgotten, they are remembered always by their families, and in many cases, by their country.

The Star-Tribune tells the story of Staff Sergeant Gerald “Jerry” Jacobsen, who joined the Army in 1942 and married his sweetheart, Catherine Burket, in 1943 and shipped to the war in Europe the following year with the 35th Infantry Division.

10 days after arriving in France, about a month after D-Day, Jerry was assigned to an isolated forward observation post. The position was shelled by German artillery and communications were lost. At the end of the battle, scores of soldiers were missing, including Jerry, and many of the fallen were unidentifiable. Jerry was officially listed as missing in action, and subsequently designated as deceased a year and a day later. Meanwhile, an unidentified body was interred in a grave in Normandy marked “A Comrade in Arms, Known But to God”; 73 years later exhumed and identified as S/SGT Gerald L. Jacobsen.

So, Gerald was returned to now-Catherine Tauer seventy-four years after their marriage on Friday and she recived his Bronze Star and Purple Heart;

The Star Tribune says that Jerry wasn’t the only member of his family to give the last full measure of devotion;

Six of Jerry’s brothers also served in combat, five in WWII and one in Korea and Vietnam; two of them, like Jerry, also gave their lives Robert in WWII and Donald in Vietnam.

Liberal Civvy tells us that a legend has passed. 93-year-old Samuel V. Wilson enlisted in the Virginia National Guard at the age of 16 in 1940, lying about his age. He rose through the ranks of the 116th Infantry as a squad leader, platoon sergeant and acting first sergeant until he went to Officer Candidate School becoming Second Lieutenant at the age of 19. He stayed at the Infantry School as an instructor until he volunteered for the precursor of the Ranger Battalions, 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), popularly known as Merrill’s Marauders, and was assigned with them in the India-Burma theater of operations as a captain. After his assignment there, he returned to the US, it was discovered that he’d lied about his age and he was demoted to 2nd Lieutenant.

From the Associated Press;

At the end of the war, he was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, in Southeast Asia. He later worked as a CIA officer in West Berlin and a defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War.

He retired as a Lieutenant General with two Silver Star Medals and a Bronze Star for valor. He passed on Saturday from his battle against lung cancer.

The actor who most famously portrayed Batman from 1966 – 1968 has passed today from leukemia, according to his family at the age of 88 years. Mentioning Batman isn’t really fair though since he had an acting career that spanned seven decades and thousands of roles.

Like most his generation West was a veteran according to Wiki;

Drafted into the United States Army, he served as an announcer on American Forces Network television.

He probably served between WWII and the Korean War, since he was born in 1928. Wiki says that when he left the Army, he was a milkman.

MCPO reminds us that June 8th is the 50th Anniversary of the day that the USS Liberty was attacked by an Israeli jet and two Israeli torpedo patrol boats during the Six Day War. US and Israeli investigations concluded that the attack was accidental and the Israeli government paid compensation for the wounded and for the 34 sailors who were killed in the attack.

Israel apologized and said that the ship was mistaken for an Egyptian ship.

Here’s a link to the crew list of the Liberty.