THE WALL OF FACES

Dear Caniford family,
Thank you for your sacrifice for our country. I found the POW bracelet for James K Caniford and would like to give this to his family. Please contact me so I can get it to you.
Very truly yours,
Louise Roberts

Dear SMS James Kenneth Caniford, sir

As an American, I would like to thank you for your service and for your sacrifice made on behalf of our wonderful country. The youth of today could gain much by learning of heroes such as yourself, men and women whose courage and heart can never be questioned.

May God allow you to read this, and may He allow me to someday shake your hand when I get to Heaven to personally thank you. May he also allow my father to find you and shake your hand now to say thank you; for America, and for those who love you.

With respect, and the best salute a civilian can muster for you, Sir

Curt Carter

Rest in peace with the warriors.

James is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The November 1986 edition of National Geographic magazine reported on the previous February’s ten-day recovery effort of a four-engined U.S. Air Force AC-130 (call sign Spectre 13) that took place 80 miles east of the city of Savannakhet, Laos. This U.S./Lao joint crash-site search fielded a six-man team from the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii accompanied by a medic and two explosives-disposal experts. Fifteen Lao assisted in the search; Laos also supplied cooks, radio operators, and guards, some 200 people in all. Ten days of searching yielded some 5,000 bone fragments, many no larger than a rice kernel due to the plane’s high speed impact and secondary explosions. Despite that, at the time of the article’s writing, the 60 teeth and other fragments helped provide six identifications of the Spectre 13’s 14 crew members.



In the above image, United States Army team members seek what can be found of the 14-man crew of a U.S. Air Force AC-130, brought down by a surface-to-air missile in Laos on March 29, 1972. While one member of the team holds back an aluminum fuselage section, another attaches a cable so that the pile of wreckage can be pulled apart with block and tackle.