THE WALL OF FACES

Thank you for your service to our country so long ago sir. I am 73 and have lived a long and fulfilling life. It is tragic you never had that same opportunity. May you rest in eternal peace.

SGT Dwight Hayes was a Field Illumination Crewman serving with I Battery, 29th Artillery, 23rd Artillery Group, II Field Force, U.S. Army Vietnam. Hayes’ unit conducted combat surveillance using searchlight illumination and infrared scanning. When enemy combatants were detected by the illumination teams, they would pass that information on to artillery units which engaged the hostile forces with stationary or self-propelled tube artillery. At 4:30 PM on February 6, 1970, Hayes was found in his bunk in the barracks of his base camp on Horseshoe Mountain in Phoc Tuy Province, RVN, with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the left chest. Lying at his side was an M16 rifle. He was treated by medics then admitted to the 1st Australian Field Hospital at Vung Tau where he later expired. Hayes was 18 years old. His body was forwarded to the U.S. Army Mortuary at Tan Son Nhut Air Base where Graves Registration personnel prepared the remains for shipment back to Travis Air Force Base in California before being returned to his family in Oregon. Hayes’ death initially was reported a suicide; however, an Army investigation later ruled the cause “Accidental self-destruction.” [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org; obituary from The Hondo Anvil Herald (Hondo, TX), February 12, 1970, courtesy of Johnnie Heintz, Clackamas County Historical Society, Oregon City, OR]

Image courtesy of Redbird Research LLC, Saint Charles, MO.

Never forgotten.

HOOAH

Sergeant Dwight Hayes, Served with Battery I, 29th Artillery Regiment, 23rd Artillery Group, Second Field Force, United States Army Vietnam.