In a span of 16 dark days in late 1967, all three would be killed. The remaining 70 percent of our Vietnam enlisted casualties were of English/Scottish/Welsh, German, Irish and Scandinavian-American ancestries, more from the South and Midwest than the other regions, many from small towns with a family military tradition. This memorial was built with private contributions from the American people. ARMY AND MARINE OFFICER CASUALTIES BY RANK AND AGE. There was no need to embellish. 8 Women are on the Wall. It is more notable, perhaps, only because his was the first name engraved into The Wall. . The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. The Air Force lost the highest percentage of officers. The figures show that on average 65 percent of white enlisted men and 60 percent of black enlisted men were high school graduates. https://www.historynet.com/names-on-the-wall-a-closer-look-at-those-who-died-in-vietnam/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. Be the first to learn about news, service member stories and fundraising updates from USO. Though blessed with talent, his life wasnt without struggles. Beallsville, Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons. As a result, the black casualty rate was reduced to 11.5 percent by 1969. If a name was particularly long, it would be swapped with a shorter name. Of course, the Marine, Navy, and Air Force enlisted casualties were all volunteers, but as it turned out, almost 50 percent of Army enlisted casualties were also volunteers. The Reading of the Names is an in-person event where every single name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is read in order of which it appears on The Wall. The Wall of Faces allows family and friends to share memories, post pictures and connect with each other. Most of the young American enlisted men who served in Vietnam were not college prospects at the time they entered the service. The names of the 2,504 Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War are on the Tablets of the Missing at the ABMC Honolulu Memorial. Army Center of Military History103 3rd AvenueFort Lesley J. McNair, DC 20319-5058Telephone: (202) 685-4042, NavyU.S. Forces in Southeast Asia, 1950 - 1976 NAID 745, RG, 472, Meritorious Unit Commendations, 1967 - 1971 NAID 4726287, Medal of Honor Awards Case Files, 1965 - ca. He accepted the tradition of military service passed on to him by the popular culture and by President John F. Kennedys ringing words, Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty. However, there have been no such cases. Less than 1 percent (0.8) were Jewish, Hindu, Thai, Buddhist or Muslim combined, and 5.7 listed no religion. No other American war has presented such a young profile in combat. It forces us to the conclusion that many of those names on the wall were kids who just couldnt quite get it together in high school, a little late in maturing intellectually, and didnt have the resources or the guile to get out of the way when the war came. It should be noted, however, that the draft was specifically designed to trigger volunteer enlistments. Its still fought in the bodies and minds of the men who waged it all those decades ago. Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics, Korean War and Vietnam War casualties listed at the National Archives, Hospital Admission Card Files, ca. He tried to make the best call he could when adding names to the list. These casualties came largely from the Northeast and North Central regions of the United States, many from the traditionally patriotic, Catholic working class neighborhoods. Together, we can make sure our heroes will get the reverence they deserve and the stories and sacrifices of our heroes will never be forgotten. Please be patient However, if officer casualties are added to the total, then this overrepresentation is reduced to 12.5 percent of all casualties. How to Order a Draft Record. In many of these families it was considered unpatriotic and indeed reprehensible to avoid active duty by requesting a status deferment or seeking out a draft counselor for advice on how to avoid the draft. 12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old. Locate the corresponding panel at the Memorial. VVMF receives numerous requests each year from individuals who wish to have particular names added to the Memorial. With this list in hand, he went to the various locations where individual service records were kept to review files. They went for a ride and she gently told them that their father would not be coming home. the person they know. These were Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Latino-Americans with ancestries based in Central and South America. Non-Archival records are those of service members who separated from the military less than 62 years ago. The vision of VVMF is to ensure a society in which all who have served and sacrificed in our nation's Armed Forces are properly honored and receive the recognition they justly deserve. 1970 NAID 570973, State-Level Fatal Casualty Lists sorted Alphabetically by Last Name, List of United States servicemembers and civilians missing in action during the Vietnam War (196165) Wikipedia, U.S., Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Unaccounted-for Remains, Group A (Recoverable), 1941-1975, U.S., Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Unaccounted-for Remains, Group B (Unrecoverable), 1941-1975, Vietnamw-Era POW/MIA Databases & Documents. 26 Similar Questions All classes were drafted or volunteered and all served and died equally, although it must be noted that most blacks died separately. Inscription at the beginning of The Wall. This index includes those who died or who were declared dead from 1950 to 1957 in Korea and from 1957 to 1975 in Southeast Asia. EIN: 52-1149668, Copyright 2023 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display, Look up the name in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. More Info At www.themovingwall.org Visit site Gather facts from sources at home,and talk to relatives. A diamond symbol signifies that the service members death was confirmed. In a massive sampling of the database, it was established that between 5 and 6 percent of Vietnam dead had identifiable Hispanic surnames. Since the days of Alexander the Great and the Roman Legions, it has always been the young, inexperienced, low-ranking enlisted man who has taken the brunt of combat casualties. The directory can be purchased on the VVMF store. And there is an end. Lins vision prevailed. On Patrol caught up with Pete Peterson to find out how the U.S.-Vietnam relationship has progressed since the normalization of ties in 1995. The slabs meet at a vertex of 125 degrees, 10 feet above ground level to form the Wall. The 58,152 names of those who died in Vietnam are etched onto the two rising black marble slabs of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The appearance of DoD visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. All heroes are listed alphabetically by their last name. The lists are based on the "home of record - state" data provided by the serviceman or woman upon last entrance into military service. The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date and within each date the names are alphabetized. Officers of all services, by tradition largely Protestant, remained so during the Vietnam war, sustaining casualties in comparison with Catholics by a 5 to 2 ratio. The trigger came when the recruiters pointed out that the volunteer could enlist as early as 17 (with parental consent); that he was allowed to select his branch of service; that he would receive specialized training if he qualified; that he could request a specific overseas assignment; and that his three year enlistment followed by three years in the inactive reserves satisfied his military obligation immediately. Vietnam War, Awards and Decorations of Honor, 1965-1972. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense and the individual service branches maintained separate casualty lists with slightly differing criteria. With the end of the Cold War, many now believe that at its outset the Vietnam War was a quite honorable extension of our ultimately successful policy of Communist containment; that our effort in Vietnam became flawed because of political and strategic failures having nothing to do with those who died there; and that these young Americans were asked by three presidents and six Congresses to give up their lives so that freedom would have a better chance in the world. readers. Brothers Marlin and Norman Eversgerd were both killed in Vietnam. An estimated 11,000 women served in Vietnam. Who were they? And they are so respectful when they do the engraving. They drew on every segment of American society. A correspondingly greater tradition of military service in the other regions had its effect on U.S. regional casualties. The Buddies of Midvale LeRoy Tafoya, Jimmy Martinez, Tom Gonzales were all boyhood friends and lived on three consecutive streets in Midvale, Utah on Fifth, Sixth and Seventh avenues. The names are listed in chronological order, according to the date of casualty. Concerning, How do I find a name on the Vietnam War Memorial wall? Coast Guard casualties are included in the Navy totals. She wanted the names to tell the journey, or the timeline, of the war. There are officially 58,228 names on the Wall, but the database these files were derived . | As of 2017, there are 58,318 names inscribed on The Wall. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act, creating the countrys first peacetime draft and officially establishing the Selective Service System. These names are followed by the inscription: Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans. It specified the geographic areas of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and surrounding coastal areas as combat zones. And mores the pity, because many of them were trying to escape this background and didnt make it. Access to Non-Archival Military Service Records is limited. The names are inscribed in the chronological order of their dates of casualty, showing the war as a series of individual human sacrifices and giving each name a special place in history. Of the 8000 Coast guardsmen who served in Vietnam, 3 officers and 4 enlisted men were killed and 59 were wounded. The wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington is 493 feet and 6 inches long, built of thick, polished black Bangalore granite. By providing your mobile phone number, you opt in to receive calls and texts from USO. We were being fired upon by anti-aircraft guns. The National Park Service offers these steps for locating a name: National Park Service rangers and volunteers are available to assist in locating names at the Memorial. What will be the evolving historical judgment for those names on the Wall? When the Wall was dedicated in 1982, there were 57,939 names inscribed. Perhaps more important, many of them probably did not yet fully understand their own mortality and were therefore less likely to be hesitant in combat. The names are listed chronologically by date of death, the first to last. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on November 10, 1982, with 57,939 names. At the time, approximately 1,300 names were designated as servicemen who were either missing or prisoners of war. The mission of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) is to honor and preserve the legacy of service and educate all generations about the impact of the Vietnam War. As Maya Ling Lin, the architect of the Wall, has said: It was as if the black-brown earth were polished and made into an interface between the sunny world and the quiet dark world beyond that we cannot enter. It is located north of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. along Constitution Avenue NW between 21st and 23rd streets. The affected record collections are described below. In high school, he joined ROTC and kept his fathers medals pinned next to his own awards on a piece of crimson cloth. Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund | 3033 Wilson Blvd, Suite 300 | Arlington VA 22201 | 202.393.0090 This page was last edited on 12 December 2022, at 18:28. Marlin on March 19, 1967 and Norman on August 18, 1968 Brothers Bennett and Dennis Herrick were both killed in Vietnam. This came at a time when blacks made up 11 percent of the male population nationwide. In terms of national origin/ancestries, an extensive sampling of the data-base reveals that Americans of French Canadian, Polish, Italian and other Southern and Eastern European surnames made up about 10 percent of the Vietnam casualties. Full casualty records may be retrieved online through the National Archives' Access to Archival Databases resource. Although valuable, this study was almost certainly misinterpreted by its authors when they said that their data showed that most privileged and influential segments of American society were not insulated from the perils of Vietnam conflict. In the event a service members remains are returned or accounted for, then a diamond symbol is engraved over the plus sign. There were 667; How many Andersons?, 178; Garcias?, 102; Murphys?, 82; Jenkins?, 66; One wants to know more about these Americans. Your donation to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will help expand our mission to honor, educate and heal. Making these arrangements and printing the pages takes considerable I could tell you about how real the fear was that I felt, since from the time we crossed the Delta and made the run into Saigon, we were over enemy territory. Only the Navy, with 50 percent of its enlisted casualties over 21, and the Air Force, with 75 percent over 21, showed an older, more experienced age demographic. In this study we will refer to casualties as the 58,152 who died in Vietnam, but it should be emphasized that there were 153,303 who were wounded seriously enough to be hospitalized. There are the tourists who make the circuit of all the various monuments and landmarks in our nations capital. 1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam. A relatively small number refused to register for the draft at all. Her name? Authority Record - NARA, Records of the U.S. On that panel, above the names is this inscription: In honor of the men and women of the armed forces of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. Vietnam War: in Country, Notice: Scanning of Vietnam-era Deck Logs, Vietnam War, 1961-1975. LeRoy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of President John F. Kennedys assassination. Buis was in Vietnam by his own volition. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. Colleen Pontes, whose father Kevin Joyce was added in 2003, remembered the rush of emotions she felt as she and her brother watched their dads name being inscribed in the granite. As a result, it was mainly the families of Navy and Air Force pilots and crewmen who suffered the great agony of the POW (prisoner of war) and MIA (missing in action) experience that came out of the Vietnam War. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Air Force Historical Research Agency 600 Chenault Circle Maxwell AFB, AL 36112-6424Telephone: (334) 953-2395, ArmyU.S. At some The Moving Wall sites, the sponsor makes arrangements Thirty one sets of parents lost two of their sons. For information regarding official military unit histories, contact: Air ForceU.S. During the Vietnam War, the Navy and Air Force became substantially white enclaves enlisted and officer casualties were 96 percent white. Though the memorial continues to grow and evolve, the last name on the wall still belongs to Air Force Second Lieutenant Richard Vandegeer, a pilot who died after his helicopter crashed on May 15, 1975, during the wars final combat action. Some have tried for years before receiving approval from DoD. And there are the Vietnam veterans, who come to recognize the sacrifice of their fellow warriors, wondering why their own names are not there, too. The virtual Wall of Faces features a page dedicated to honoring and remembering every person whose name is inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. For more information on this index on, Records relating to American prisoners of war and missing in action from the Vietnam War, including lists and descriptions of the record groups covering the Vietnam War that are held by the National Archives are also found in the FS Library US/CAN Book. The Air Force lost 2,580 or l percent. How many women soldiers died in the Vietnam War? The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed in the order they were taken from us. This uneven impact was caused by a number of factors: (1) While the South was home to some 53 percent of all blacks in the 1970 census, almost 60 percent of black casualties came from the South; (2) Although we cannot be as precise, we do know that a considerable majority of Hispanic-American casualties came from the West, (California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado) and the South (Texas); (3) Better employment opportunities in the Northeast reduced the number of volunteers; (4) Greater college matriculation in the Northeast increased the number of status deferments for the regions 17- to 24- year olds; (5) More anti-war sentiment in the media and on college campuses in the Northeast. Today, more than 58,000 names are engraved in the wall, and more were added in May. Thus it is safe to say that Hispanic-Americans were over-represented among Vietnam casualties an estimated 5.5 percent of the dead against 4.5 percent of the 1970 population. The draftee, if found physically and mentally fit, would be inducted for a period of two years, to be followed by another two year period in the active reserves and a subsequent two years in the inactive reserves. The burden of combat fell on the very available non-college-bound young. A new Department of Defense (DOD) database computer tape released through the National Archives allows researchers to take a much closer look at our 58,152 Vietnam casualties. Through the AFQT process, the men scoring in the higher categories were more likely to be channeled into further specialized training and eventually assigned to technical and administrative units. offer to read the block of names that includes their special names. This is close to, but not exactly in the same order Nevertheless, 336,111 men were phased into the service under this plan (mostly the Army) and 2,072 were killed. As the Vietnam War dragged on, Kurt tried twice to enlist. NAVY AND AIR FORCE OFFICER CASUALTIES BY RANK AND AGE. And they all went to Vietnam. In the military it can be somewhat more deadly. Each entry includes a panel number and letter; "W" is for "west" or the left half of the memorial, "E" is for east, or the right half of the memorial. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. The memorial consists of three separate parts: The Three Soldiers statue, the Vietnam Women's Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, also known as The Wall That Heals, which is the most popular feature. The same profile holds true for the Marine Corps, where 87 percent of all officer casualties (821 of 938) were warrant officers, lieutenants or captains. VVMF does not have the authority to overrule those who adjudicate these matters. This approach would allow veterans, friends and family members to find a loved one by his or her date of casualty. Some recent studies tend to refute what had been the perceived wisdom of social scientists and other commentators that our Vietnam dead came overwhelmingly from the poor communities. Those designated by a plus sign were considered to be missing in action when the war ended. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands as a symbol of America's honor and recognition of the men and women who served and sacrificed their lives in the Vietnam War. In an effort to further preserve the legacy of those who sacrificed all in Vietnam, VVMF is committed to finding a photo to go with each of the more than 58,000 names on The Wall. Certainly, some who died did come from poor and broken homes in the urban ghettos and barrios, or were from dirt-poor farm homes in the South and Midwest. The ship had been taken to the island of Koh Tang. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest. This is close to, but not exactly in the same order as the names on the Wall. There are over 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. ".for those who have died." The directories are organized alphabetically by last name. Buis can be found at the top middle of a slab designated Panel 1E. Richard Sandza received the message on the morning of May 15, 1975, the day his friend became the last American to die in combat during the Vietnam War.