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yellowwing
05-28-04, 07:07 AM
One of 58,012 Vietnam Dead Joins the Unknowns

By ROBERT D. HERSHEY Jr., NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0528.html)

ARLINGTON, Va., May 28 -- His voice choking with emotion, President Reagan led the nation in a state funeral today for the only American known to have perished in the Vietnam War who is still unidentified. Under gray skies, which occasionally dripped with rain, the unknown Vietnam casualty was pulled on a black caisson along a crowded seven-mile route from the Capitol and, 11 years after the war ended, was interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

Awarded Medal of Honor

The serviceman, whom Mr. Reagan awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, now lies in a crypt near unknown servicemen from the two World Wars and the Korean War. They had been awarded Medals of Honor by other Presidents.

''The unknown soldier who has returned to us today and whom we lay to rest is symbolic of all our missing sons,'' the President said in his eulogy. In Vietnam, 58,012 United States servicemen died.

Mr. Reagan also sought to reassure the families of 2,447 servicemen and 42 civilians still listed as missing that the Government would not relax its efforts to account for them. Some of the families voiced concern recently that today's ceremony would lead to a slackening of the Government's efforts to account for those still listed as missing.

'We Close No Books'

''We write no last chapters, we close no books, we put away no final memories,'' Mr. Reagan declared. He called on the Vietnamese Government in Hanoi to ''return our sons to America,'' a plea that prompted vigorous applause, the only interruption in his nine-minute message.

Some of those in the audience of 4,000 invited guests, including military officials, veterans, members of Congress, members of the diplomatic corps and the families of 250 missing servicemen, rose from their seats in the white marble amphitheater to clap in approval.

Today's ceremonies marked the end of a long journey for the Unknown, who was formally designated as such at a service in Pearl Harbor on May 17. The body lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda beginning Friday afternoon. Tens of thousands of people, about 2,100 an hour on Saturday, according to Capitol police, filed by on either side of the coffin, which was atop the catafalque that had been used for all such occasions since the funeral of Lincoln in 1865.

At noon today the flag-covered, gray- metal coffin was put on a caisson drawn by six gray horses as a 21-gun salute was fired from Fort Myer and Fort McNair, one round a minute.

The procession made its way down Constitution Avenue past the Vietnam Memorial, where 55 veterans bearing flags from each state and territory saluted as it went by, toward Memorial Bridge and the cemetery on the Virginia hillside beyond.

Fly-Over Is Canceled

The only apparent hitch in today's official schedule was the cancellation of a fly-over by 21 F-15 jet fighters, which were to have swooped over the procession when it reached the midpoint of the bridge. A military spokesman attributed the cancellation to low cloud cover, but a security man at the cemetery said the pilots had had difficulty during practice sessions achieving the required split-second timing.

While the Vietnam Memorial and the Rotunda were the scenes this weekend of much private sorrow and commiseration, for many Americans the emotional peak came as President Reagan neared the end of his eulogy.

Just before placing the Medal of Honor in front of the coffin at his left side in the amphitheater apse, Mr. Reagan looked at the coffin and, his voice breaking, said of the Unknown:

''About him we may well wonder, as others have, as a child, did he play on some street in a great American city? Did he work beside his father on a farm in America's heartland? Did he marry? Did he have children? Did he look expectantly to return to a bride?

''We will never know the answers to these questions about his life. We do know, though, why he died. He saw the horrors of war but bravely faced them, certain his own cause and his country's cause was a noble one, that he was fighting for human dignity for free men everywhere.''

'Thank You, Dear Son'

A half-minute later, his voice giving way again, the President concluded, saying, ''Let us, if we must, debate the lessons learned at some other time. Today we simply say with pride: Thank you, dear son, and may God cradle you in his loving arms.''

With that, he laid a wreath in front of the coffin. The audience responded with a standing ovation. Then came hymns and other music, scripture readings, including the Twenty-Third Psalm, and the benediction. At the end of the funeral, the Marine and Army bands struck up the ringing postlude, ''Pershing's Own.''

The Vietnam Unknown was interred a few minutes later before a select group of participants, including Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and some Vietnam veterans in wheelchairs.

Crypt Excavated in 1973

The Unknown was designated after a process that took more than 10 years. Unlike the three other Unknowns, whose Arlington entombments were presided over in November 1921 by President Harding and in May 1958 by President Eisenhower, the process of finding a qualified Vietnam Unknown was long and frustrating. At one point it appeared that the crypt, excavated in 1973 at a spot between the World War II and Korean Unkowns and in front of the Unknown from World War I, would never be filled.

The mostly small-arms nature of the Vietnam war, the ambitious evacuation measures undertaken there and the enormous advances in forensic science allowed the Government to identify virtually every fallen American serviceman. The other wars had produced large numbers of unidentified dead and the task of finding a qualified Unknown involved a random selection from a small number of exhumed graves.

By 1982, military specialists had identified all the American remains from Vietnam except four that had been brought to the military's Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu. While this brought some relief to many families of servicemen who had been missing but were now identified, it also frustrated those who wanted a Vietnam representative for the Tomb of the Unknowns. It was thought that even these four might some day be identified.

Two of these were identified. One as Army Pvt. Alan K. Barton of Saginaw, Mich.; the family of the second has asked that his identity not be publicly disclosed. The fourth was designated as the Unknown when the third candidate was deemed ''possibly'' not an American.

The Pentagon, which waived its informal rule that 80 percent of a body must be recovered for it to be designated an Unknown, has now intentionally destroyed all identification records related to the Unknown to prevent inadvertent disclosure of information that might provide clues to the identity of the man intended to be a universal symbol of Vietnam battle dead.

Four Prayers by Chaplains

The 15-minute interment ceremony on the hillside just below the flag- draped amphitheater began with four prayers of committal - Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant - by military chaplains while the ramrod-straight bearers held the flag that had been draping the coffin above it.

Then President Reagan, who had stood solemnly with his hand over his heart, placed the wreath in front of the Unknown. Next came a 21-gun salute, which echoed dramatically in the distance, the benediction and the firing of three rifle volleys.

A bugler played taps. The bearers ceremoniously folded the flag while the band played ''America the Beautiful.'' President Reagan saluted and the remains of the fourth officially designated American soldier ''known but to God'' took his place in history.