THE WALL OF FACES

Thank you for your service to our country so long ago sir. We should be forever thankful for the sacrifices of you and so many others to ensure the freedoms we so often take for granted.

Thank you so much for your service and sacrifice. May you be at peace with God now. God bless you! You will not be forgotten!

Semper Fi, Doc

Dear PO3C Charles Robertson, Thank you for your service as a Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class with the 7th Marines. Semper Fi. Thank you for the lives you saved. Saying thank you isn't enough, but it is from the heart. Yesterday was POW/MIA Recognition Day. Time passes quickly. Please watch over America, it stills needs your strength, courage, guidance and faithfulness, especially now. Rest in peace with the angels.

Operation Foster (November 13–30, 1967) was a 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, and 3rd Battalion, 11th Marines search and destroy operation in Quang Nam Province, RVN, conducted as a result of Viet Cong attacks on villages near the district headquarters of Di Loc. The mission was to rout the VC who murdered dozens of civilians and burned their villages. On November 19, 1967, a detachment consisting of 10-12 Marines from India Company, 3/7, was conducting a routine patrol when they walked into an L-shaped ambush in a rice paddy near Phu An (1), a hamlet two miles north of An Hoa Airfield. When the enemy opened fire, point man SGT Joel S. Williamson dropped to a knee and returned fire with his M16 on full-automatic. He was cut down after being hit in the head and body by a devastating barrage of enemy fire. The entrenched VC, estimated at company-strong (between 100-125), killed and wounded several other Marines and pinned down the rest. India Company’s Command Post, set up in a small ville about 2000 meters away, heard the gunfire. A reaction force quickly responded and doubled-timed their way to the point of contact. They arrived to find an impossible situation with Marines pinned down in a rice paddy and any attempt to reach them met with withering small arms fire. As the reaction force bravely inched forward, two members were fatally wounded. Sniper LCPL Anthony Vigil from Headquarters, 7/1, and CPL Frank Andrisano Jr. from C Company, 1st Shore Party Battalion, suffered fatal head wounds as they were moving towards the ambush area. The rest of India Company was dispatched to help, and all manner of supporting arms was brought to bear on the enemy position, including fixed-wing, helicopter gunship, artillery, and mortar fire. Only after the enemy had withdrawn later that day was India able to reach the beleaguered patrol. There they found four dead, three Marines and a Navy corpsman: point man Williamson, riflemen LCPL Robert B. Wilson and CPL Mark C. Petersen, and Navy hospitalman HM3 Charles E. Robertson. Another 18 Americans were reportedly wounded. The wounded were pulled from the field to a protected area and taken away by medivac helicopters. The dead remained in the rice paddy until dusk when they were removed and held overnight by the reaction forces. [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org and information provided by Larry Gibbs and Jack Baggette (May 2019)]