THE WALL OF FACES

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
(Public Affairs)

NEWS RELEASE

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 380-06

01 May 2006

MISSING IN ACTION AIR FORCE SERGEANTS FROM VIETNAM WAR ARE

IDENTIFIED AND RETURNED TO FAMILIES FOR FULL MILITARY HONORS


The Department of Defense POW/ Missing Personnel Office ( DPMO ) announced today that the remains of two servicemen, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified.

They are ...

Technical Sergeant

DONALD RUSSELL HOSKINS

of Madison, Indiana

and

Staff Sergeant

CALVIN COOLIDGE COOKE JR

of Washington, D.C.

A third person from the crew,

Major

HARRY ARLO AMESBURY JR

has been previously identified.

The funeral for Calvin Cooke will be at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington Virginia, near Washington D.C. on 20 June, with full military honors.

On 26 April 1972, Amesbury was piloting a C-130E Hercules to An Loc City, South Vietnam for an emergency resupply mission.

Hoskins and Cooke were among those aboard the aircraft when it was hit by enemy fire and crashed.

Enemy activity prevented any recovery attempts until three years later in 1975 when a Vietnamese search team recovered artifacts and remains that were later identified as belonging to another crewman.

In 1988, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam ( SRV ) confiscated remains from a Vietnamese national in Ho Chi Minh City and returned them to U.S. custody.

The Vietnamese attributed the remains to Cooke.

In April 1989, a Vietnamese woman living in Thailand told U.S. interviewers that she witnessed the crash of a C-130 Hercules in 1972 near An Loc City.

She was a schoolteacher at the time of the incident but moved due to hostilities in the area.

She told interviewers that two of her former students found the complete remains of one of the crewmen, a uniform, identification tags and other items they were keeping at one of their homes.

The students gave her a bone fragment and information from the identification tag of Amesbury, both of which she turned over to the interviewers.

The SRV repatriated additional remains to the United States in June 1989, and in January and November of 1991 which were attributed to Cooke and Amesbury.

In 1992, a joint U.S.-SRV team, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), interviewed several Vietnamese nationals who claimed to have recovered remains from a C-130 crash site near An Loc.

The villagers recalled finding a flight suit and almost the complete skeletal remains of one of the crewmen.

One of them led the joint team to the crash site and another turned over several small fragments of bone and an identification tag rubbing for Amesbury.

Another joint team returned to the crash site for excavation in 1993 where they recovered additional remains, personal effects and crew related artifacts.

The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia contacted JPAC officials in 1998 about a woman living in Georgia who had remains and personal artifacts attributed to Amesbury.

Those were turned over to JPAC as part of the evidence associated with this case.

JPAC scientists and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory ( AFDIL ) specialists used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to help identify the remains. Laboratory analysis of dental remains also confirmed their identifications.

Of those Americans unaccounted for from all conflicts, 1,805 are from the Vietnam War.

Another 841 Americans have been accounted for in Southeast Asia since the end of the war, with 601 of those from Vietnam.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO Website at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703)-699-1169.


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Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Mary Frye – 1932

Harry--I have three children now. I wish you could see them.

Everything that you have done for our country will never be forgotten. You are a hero to many people and thank you for your devotion to the U.S. Rest in Peace.

"An God said who shall we send.I answered I am here,send me."

Isaiah 6:8