News-Info-Alerts

Re: AFB Holds 24 Hour Vigil

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 22, 2002

"Goodfellow honors MIA/POWs

VICTOR WHITMAN Staff Writer

Goodfellow Air Force Base personnel began a 24-hour vigil on Thursday to honor all MIA/POWs and Medal of Honor recipients.

Col. Gary Sadler, vice commander of the 17th Training Wing, eulogized the missing before a monument on base memorializing POWs/MIAs. A four-person company will stand at the memorial until 4 p.m. today.

About 150 airmen and community members attended the annual ceremony, which coincided with National POW/MIA Recognition Day today.

“We’ve got to do everything to honor the memory of these people,” said Lee Roy Kiesling, commander of Post 32 of the American Legion. “This kind of ceremony puts it in perspective.”

Sadler emphasized the importance of accounting for missing servicemen. He later laid a wreath before the flag that read “You are not forgotten.” Some 1,905 Americans remain classified as MIAs from the Vietnam War and 8,100 from the Korean War.

The cost of finding them has been high. On April 7, 2001, seven U.S. servicemen and nine Vietnamese nationals were killed in a crash in the Quang Binh Province during Joint Taskforce Full Accounting. Among these were two servicemen once stationed at Goodfellow, Master Sgt. Steven Moser and Tech Sgt. Robert Flynn.

“The loss of Sgt. Moser and Flynn — the sacrifice they have made — underscores the importance we Americans attach to keeping faith with those who have served and risked everything on our behalf,” Sadler said. “It underscores the pledge our nation’s leaders have made to account for every serviceman who has not come home.

“This is a pledge that holds true for today’s servicemen and women, as well. They can bravely and confidently serve in Afghanistan and other theaters of the war on terror knowing that, if they are captured or if they fall in battle, our nation will do everything in its power to bring them home.”

Victor Whitman can be reached at vwhitman@texaswest.com and 659-8264. "