THE WALL OF FACES

Dear Sp5 James Gabriel,
Thank you for your service with the Airborne Engineers. Happy Halloween. It has been too long, and it's about time for us all to acknowledge the sacrifices of those like you who answered our nation's call. Please watch over America, it stills needs your strength, courage and faithfulness. Rest in peace with the angels.

SIMPER FI

SIMPER FI!!!!!!!

We both served in A company 307th Airborne Engineers with the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg in 1960 and 1961. He was my squad leader and a soldiers soldier. Always spit shined from head to toe and a true leader. I got out in July of 1961 and he re-upped and headed to Okinawa with Special Forces.
No purer example of someone to honor on any Memorial Day.I was honored to serve with "Gabe".falcone.larry@yahoo.com

SP5 James Gabriel Jr. and SSGT Wayne E. Marchand were Special Forces infantryman assigned to Detachment A1-213 (Da Nang), C Company, 1ST Special Forces Group, Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam (MAAGV). On April 8, 1962, both soldiers were seized after their training camp was overrun by Viet Cong guerrillas. They were found two days later murdered by their capturers. The following is an account of the battle from the Friday, April 20, 1962 edition of Time magazine which reported this story under the title ‘South Viet Nam: We Are Being Overrun': The first Americans to die in battle against the Communist Viet Cong guerrillas fell in a remote valley of South Viet Nam last week. Scene of the struggle was a jungle clearing outside An Chau, a village 360 miles north of Saigon. There, Sergeants James Gabriel and Wayne E. Marchand were drilling 31 local Vietnamese volunteers in a two-week field exercise. All went well until the third night of the exercise. Suddenly at 10 PM, there was a rustling in the saw grass across a nearby river. Concerned, Sgt. Gabriel fired warning shots, sent up flares in the direction of the noise. For a long time there was silence. Then came what sounded like a dog's bark. From a different direction, a cock crowed. At last came the tap of a bamboo tocsin, and the VC came running out of the dark. This first attack was quickly repulsed, but shortly after daybreak the guerrillas came back in earnest. “I saw SGT Gabriel phoning and shooting and changing clips all at the same time,” said a Vietnamese villager. “Three times he was wounded and knocked down. The third time he didn't get up.” Before he fell, Gabriel radioed a final message to the U.S. base at Da Nang seven miles away: “Under heavy attack from all sides. Completely encircled by enemy...ammunition expended. We are being overrun.” When 20 Americans rushed down from Da Nang in helicopters, they found the bodies of Gabriel and Marchand, hands tied behind their backs with their shirts, each shot in the back of the head. [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org and ‘South Viet Nam: We Are Being Overrun.' Time, April 20, 1962]