THE WALL OF FACES

Thank you for your service to our country so long ago sir. I am relieved to see you have been returned home. Rest in eternal peace.

When I was in high school in 1969, I bought an MIA bracelet with the name Leo Sydney Boston, and I didn't take it off for years. Eventually, the metal began to degrade, and started scratching my arm, so I took it off, but still have it. I always wondered about him, and am glad he was found...I thank him for his service!!! Dawn

According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) website at the below link, the remains of former MIA Colonel Leo Sydney Boston were positively identified on 25 April 2011:

https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000000ofSTkEAM

On the date of his loss, 29 April 1966, Captain Boston was the pilot of an A-1E Skyraider from the 602nd Air Commando Squadron flying out of Udorn RTAB participating in a search and rescue mission over North Vietnam. His aircraft went down in Son La Province in NVN (possibly shot down by a MIG-17). He was maintained as missing until 27 April 1978 when the Air Force made a Presumptive Finding of Death (PFoD) determination. While in MIA status, the U.S. Air Force promoted him with his contemporaries from Captain to Colonel. Between 1996 and 2005, several joint US/Vietnamese investigations and excavations of a crash site recovered aircraft wreckage, human remains and crew-related equipment. In 2011, modern advances in forensic techniques allowed for the positive identification of (now) Col. Boston from among the remains recovered there.

As of the date of this remembrance, there are 1,587 Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War.

Former MIA Colonel Leo Sydney Boston has his name chiseled into one of the stone "Courts of the Missing" at the Honolulu Memorial (Vietnam War Section - Air Force Court "A") in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (the "Punchbowl") on the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii. See the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) website at this link:

https://www.abmc.gov/decedent-search/boston%3Dleo

Information about former MIA Colonel Leo Sydney Boston from the POW Network website is at this link:

https://www.pownetwork.org/bios/b/b040.htm