thedrifter
11-17-07, 04:51 AM
FRI., NOV 16, 2007 - 3:20 PM
MIA: The road to recovering Dick Fischer
Deborah Ziff
608-252-6234
dziff@madison.com
Among the rice paddies and bamboo huts of Vietnam, Lance Cpl. Richard Fischer and his patrol were setting up an ambush against Viet Cong guerilla forces. It was 1968.
The 20-year-old Madison man had joined the U.S. Marine Corps against his family 's wishes, insistent on serving on the front lines of the Vietnam War.
Stopped outside a village about 10 miles south of Da Nang, fellow Marines on the patrol remember watching him disappear down a trail.
That was the last they saw of him.
Insisted on signing up
Dick Fischer was 19 when he enlisted in the Marines in 1966. He was an avid sailor and a lifeguard for Madison beaches who loved to fry and eat scallops when he visited family in New York. A graduate of Madison East High School, he attended one year of college at UW-Madison before announcing to his family he wanted to join the military.
His grandparents and mother tried to talk him out of it, recalled his sister, Ann Fischer. He was the only remaining son in his immediate family. His father, John, and two brothers, Jay and Carl, were killed in a car crash on a family vacation in 1958. Only Dick, his mother, Eleanor, and sister, Ann, survived.
"He had to pull a lot of strings even to go to Vietnam, " Ann Fischer recalled. "They wouldn 't have sent him, I don 't think. "
A year later, he was there. Ann Fischer remembers being told he would only do clerical work. But Fischer, a machine gunner, begged his supervisor to serve in the field.
When Fischer wanted something, he wouldn 't give up until he got it, his sister said.
In January 1968, his unit -- M Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, First Division -- was setting up an ambush in the village of Ky Minh in the Quang Nam province. Fischer got separated from the other Marines. When his unit realized he was missing, they searched for two or three days, stopping only when ordered.
"The only information we got was from an old woman that said he had been shot and buried but didn 't know where, " said Ken Fields, then a corporal in the company. "A helicopter pilot reported seeing a small group of enemy leading what he thought to be an American prisoner but could not confirm. "
On Jan. 8, 1968, Ann Fischer, 10 days short of turning 17, was in the cafeteria at East High School when she was called into the office. Her brother was missing.
An empty grave
For the next 39 years, the Fischers waited in limbo.
The only sign of Dick Fischer was a letter he sent to his mother in 1968, written before he disappeared, but arriving after.
Ann Fischer said she would watch expectantly when planes returned to the U.S. with prisoners of war, hoping her brother would be among them. She would get notices every year from the U.S. government saying there was no further information on the search for Fischer.
Eventually -- as hope began to dwindle -- Ann Fischer and her mother took their names off government "next of kin " lists and cut back their involvement with veterans groups.
"We just had to not think about it just to get on with our daily lives, " she said.
Dick Fischer continued to be promoted as the years went on, eventually to the rank of gunnery sergeant, until his status was officially changed to "killed in action, body not recovered " in 1978.
The Fischers held a small memorial service and dedicated a gravestone to him at Forest Hill Cemetery, but the grave remained empty.
Still, Ann Fischer was reluctant to move from Madison, although she raised her daughter in Cross Plains and Middleton and now lives in Dubuque.
"There was always that little bit of hope, " she said.
In a Wisconsin State Journal story in 1988, Fischer 's mother, Eleanor, said if she could, she would send a message to her son saying, "We love him, and we hope he 'll come back. "
She died in 2002, not knowing what happened to him.
Solving a mystery
As of last month, 1,766 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Thirty are from Wisconsin. Remains have been found for 880 Vietnam service members once considered missing, according to the Defense Department POW/Missing Personnel Office.
Over the years, the U.S. government continued to return to Vietnam, interviewing witnesses and gathering information about Fischer.
In 1992 and 1993, officials made several trips to the province where Fischer was last seen, interviewing villagers. They found one of the women who buried him, said Hattie Johnson, a casualty/mortuary officer for the Marine Corps, and villagers led the U.S. team to a farm field. What was thought to be Fischer 's remains were excavated there in August 2004.
All that was left were a few bones and some fragments, degraded by acidic soil, and two buttons, matching the sort of uniform he would have worn.
In 1992, the Department of Defense began using a technique that allows scientists to match DNA in skeletal remains with relatives, said James Canik, deputy director for the Department of Defense DNA Registry and Laboratory.
Small bone samples from the remains were submitted for analysis in November 1995. They didn 't yield any results. But the techniques to procure results from small and degraded samples continued to improve over the next few years, Canik said.
More bone fragments were tested in 2002 and ultimately, scientists found something usable from that sample. Combined with physical evidence and interviews, scientists just needed to match Fischer 's DNA, a relatively unique strand, with someone who shared his maternal bloodline.
"From the standpoint of a case, it was not easy, " Canik said. "Sergeant Fischer was missing and nobody knew where he was. It 's a real sleuth mystery. Here you 're dealing with something 40 or 50 years old. "
In April 2007, the military hired a genealogist to track down Fischer 's family. And in May, Ann Fischer and her daughter, Jamie Fassbender, received a DNA kit in the mail.
Then, they waited.
'Just bring him home'
In September, Ann Fischer finally got word that the results of the DNA test were a match, a relief and closure on years of lingering questions.
"This summer of waiting has been really long, " she said. "I wanted it done. I wanted it to be positive so we could just bring him home. Whatever is left of him, just bring him home. "
It 's been 40 years and memories fade. But Fischer 's fellow Mike Company members still offer some recollections.
Michael "Turk " Wears remembered that everyone called him "Fish. " Wears, after hearing a few years ago that Fischer was still missing, offered to guide officials to the part of Vietnam where he had disappeared.
Then-Cpl. Fields remembers Fischer getting a bottle of Southern Comfort in the mail, stuffed in the middle of a loaf of bread. He shared the contraband beverage with everyone around.
Most years, Fields raises a glass of Southern Comfort to Fischer 's memory in January, the anniversary of when he disappeared.
Some of the Marines from Fischer 's company, like Fields and Wears, will come to Madison for the funeral Monday. Others who didn 't know him will come just to uphold the Marine Corps motto: Semper Fidelis, always faithful.
He 'll be given full military honors at a funeral Monday at 11:30 a.m. at Christ Presbyterian Church, 944 E. Gorham St. Then Fischer will finally be buried in Forest Hill Cemetery at the headstone dedicated to him in 1978.
Ellie
MIA: The road to recovering Dick Fischer
Deborah Ziff
608-252-6234
dziff@madison.com
Among the rice paddies and bamboo huts of Vietnam, Lance Cpl. Richard Fischer and his patrol were setting up an ambush against Viet Cong guerilla forces. It was 1968.
The 20-year-old Madison man had joined the U.S. Marine Corps against his family 's wishes, insistent on serving on the front lines of the Vietnam War.
Stopped outside a village about 10 miles south of Da Nang, fellow Marines on the patrol remember watching him disappear down a trail.
That was the last they saw of him.
Insisted on signing up
Dick Fischer was 19 when he enlisted in the Marines in 1966. He was an avid sailor and a lifeguard for Madison beaches who loved to fry and eat scallops when he visited family in New York. A graduate of Madison East High School, he attended one year of college at UW-Madison before announcing to his family he wanted to join the military.
His grandparents and mother tried to talk him out of it, recalled his sister, Ann Fischer. He was the only remaining son in his immediate family. His father, John, and two brothers, Jay and Carl, were killed in a car crash on a family vacation in 1958. Only Dick, his mother, Eleanor, and sister, Ann, survived.
"He had to pull a lot of strings even to go to Vietnam, " Ann Fischer recalled. "They wouldn 't have sent him, I don 't think. "
A year later, he was there. Ann Fischer remembers being told he would only do clerical work. But Fischer, a machine gunner, begged his supervisor to serve in the field.
When Fischer wanted something, he wouldn 't give up until he got it, his sister said.
In January 1968, his unit -- M Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, First Division -- was setting up an ambush in the village of Ky Minh in the Quang Nam province. Fischer got separated from the other Marines. When his unit realized he was missing, they searched for two or three days, stopping only when ordered.
"The only information we got was from an old woman that said he had been shot and buried but didn 't know where, " said Ken Fields, then a corporal in the company. "A helicopter pilot reported seeing a small group of enemy leading what he thought to be an American prisoner but could not confirm. "
On Jan. 8, 1968, Ann Fischer, 10 days short of turning 17, was in the cafeteria at East High School when she was called into the office. Her brother was missing.
An empty grave
For the next 39 years, the Fischers waited in limbo.
The only sign of Dick Fischer was a letter he sent to his mother in 1968, written before he disappeared, but arriving after.
Ann Fischer said she would watch expectantly when planes returned to the U.S. with prisoners of war, hoping her brother would be among them. She would get notices every year from the U.S. government saying there was no further information on the search for Fischer.
Eventually -- as hope began to dwindle -- Ann Fischer and her mother took their names off government "next of kin " lists and cut back their involvement with veterans groups.
"We just had to not think about it just to get on with our daily lives, " she said.
Dick Fischer continued to be promoted as the years went on, eventually to the rank of gunnery sergeant, until his status was officially changed to "killed in action, body not recovered " in 1978.
The Fischers held a small memorial service and dedicated a gravestone to him at Forest Hill Cemetery, but the grave remained empty.
Still, Ann Fischer was reluctant to move from Madison, although she raised her daughter in Cross Plains and Middleton and now lives in Dubuque.
"There was always that little bit of hope, " she said.
In a Wisconsin State Journal story in 1988, Fischer 's mother, Eleanor, said if she could, she would send a message to her son saying, "We love him, and we hope he 'll come back. "
She died in 2002, not knowing what happened to him.
Solving a mystery
As of last month, 1,766 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Thirty are from Wisconsin. Remains have been found for 880 Vietnam service members once considered missing, according to the Defense Department POW/Missing Personnel Office.
Over the years, the U.S. government continued to return to Vietnam, interviewing witnesses and gathering information about Fischer.
In 1992 and 1993, officials made several trips to the province where Fischer was last seen, interviewing villagers. They found one of the women who buried him, said Hattie Johnson, a casualty/mortuary officer for the Marine Corps, and villagers led the U.S. team to a farm field. What was thought to be Fischer 's remains were excavated there in August 2004.
All that was left were a few bones and some fragments, degraded by acidic soil, and two buttons, matching the sort of uniform he would have worn.
In 1992, the Department of Defense began using a technique that allows scientists to match DNA in skeletal remains with relatives, said James Canik, deputy director for the Department of Defense DNA Registry and Laboratory.
Small bone samples from the remains were submitted for analysis in November 1995. They didn 't yield any results. But the techniques to procure results from small and degraded samples continued to improve over the next few years, Canik said.
More bone fragments were tested in 2002 and ultimately, scientists found something usable from that sample. Combined with physical evidence and interviews, scientists just needed to match Fischer 's DNA, a relatively unique strand, with someone who shared his maternal bloodline.
"From the standpoint of a case, it was not easy, " Canik said. "Sergeant Fischer was missing and nobody knew where he was. It 's a real sleuth mystery. Here you 're dealing with something 40 or 50 years old. "
In April 2007, the military hired a genealogist to track down Fischer 's family. And in May, Ann Fischer and her daughter, Jamie Fassbender, received a DNA kit in the mail.
Then, they waited.
'Just bring him home'
In September, Ann Fischer finally got word that the results of the DNA test were a match, a relief and closure on years of lingering questions.
"This summer of waiting has been really long, " she said. "I wanted it done. I wanted it to be positive so we could just bring him home. Whatever is left of him, just bring him home. "
It 's been 40 years and memories fade. But Fischer 's fellow Mike Company members still offer some recollections.
Michael "Turk " Wears remembered that everyone called him "Fish. " Wears, after hearing a few years ago that Fischer was still missing, offered to guide officials to the part of Vietnam where he had disappeared.
Then-Cpl. Fields remembers Fischer getting a bottle of Southern Comfort in the mail, stuffed in the middle of a loaf of bread. He shared the contraband beverage with everyone around.
Most years, Fields raises a glass of Southern Comfort to Fischer 's memory in January, the anniversary of when he disappeared.
Some of the Marines from Fischer 's company, like Fields and Wears, will come to Madison for the funeral Monday. Others who didn 't know him will come just to uphold the Marine Corps motto: Semper Fidelis, always faithful.
He 'll be given full military honors at a funeral Monday at 11:30 a.m. at Christ Presbyterian Church, 944 E. Gorham St. Then Fischer will finally be buried in Forest Hill Cemetery at the headstone dedicated to him in 1978.
Ellie