News-Info-Alerts

Re: No Longer Lost In the Jungles

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 16, 2003

"Vietnam War victim 'is no longer lost in the jungles'

By RICK NEALE Staff writer

PORT CLINTON -- For 35 years, Port Clinton native Arthur Charles Buck has waited on the side of an isolated cliff, a mile above the green jungles of Laos at the other side of the world.

Saturday morning, he's finally coming home.

"Charlie" Buck, a U.S. Navy Reserves lieutenant bombardier, was killed Jan. 11, 1968, during the Vietnam War when his OP-2E Neptune patrol plane plowed into the side of a foggy mountain. Eight other crew members died, and their remains were never recovered -- the crash site wasn't even discovered until April 1996, and the steep terrain was deemed too dangerous for American search teams to tackle.

But in March 2001 and March 2002, U.S. Navy recovery workers rappelled on ropes and used helicopter airlifts to finish an archaeological project at the site, retrieving bones, wreckage and personal effects. Buck's remains were identified at a Hawaii military laboratory in December, and he will be buried Saturday in Lakeview Cemetery.

"He's no longer lost in the jungles of Southeast Asia," Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said Thursday from his Hawaii office. "He's going to be laid to rest in American soil."

Buck was born in Magruder Hospital in 1941 to Wilson and Edith (Mills) Buck. The family lived in Gypsum until 1943, then moved to Sandusky, said his older brother, Gary Buck.

"Charlie" Buck graduated from Sandusky High School in 1961, attending St. Paul Lutheran Church in Danbury Township. He played football at Baldwin-Wallace College and enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserves in 1965.

He was soon shipped to Thailand, where he joined an air squadron that dropped surveillance devices along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and other enemy supply lines.

On the morning of the 1968 crash -- during a spy mission shrouded in overcast, foggy weather -- the OP-2E Neptune's pilot radioed that he was going to drop through a hole in the clouds, according to a synopsis from Task Force Omega Inc., a POW-MIA organization. At 9:57 a.m., the gunship vanished from radar and radio contact -- it had slammed into the side of Phou Louang Mountain near its 4,583-foot summit, far above the triple-canopied jungle below. All nine men aboard were killed, including the crew's mascot, a dog named Snoopy.

The cause of the crash is still a mystery.

On Feb. 23, 1968, Charlie and his crew mates were listed as Presumed Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered by a military review board. Gary Buck said he and his family were devastated by the news.

"We were close, and I'll always miss him," the 64-year-old retiree said Thursday, shaking his head in his Sandusky apartment. "And that's the best I can say."

Their mother died a few years after Charlie's death, Buck said, and their father passed away three years ago. "Most of the family members are gone. Most of the ones that are left are elderly and have physical health problems," he said.

In fact, Gary Buck only has one remaining photograph of his brother -- a U.S. Navy picture from 1967, he believes. "We had a house fire. I'm lucky to have that. All the records and everything were burned."

The recovery effort at the rugged Laos crash site has attracted national attention, including a July 2001 front page Parade Magazine article describing Buck and the other victims. The extensive effort was handled by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting department, formed in 1992 to scour Southeast Asia for remains of missing American servicemen, and the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii.

The Phou Louang Mountain expedition was "the most dangerous site JTF-FA and CILHI have ever attempted to excavate," according to the JTF-FA Web site. O'Hara, a spokesman for the group, said the plane's wreckage was strewn on and embedded in a towering cliff with a 35-degree slope.

"You know, for a while this case was looked at as a 'safety case.' We thought we would lose guys trying to find guys," O'Hara said. "The area we were working on was on the side of a very big mountain. This wasn't in a jungle. This was on the side of a cliff.

"We had to send guys to mountain climbing school before we even thought about a recovery operation to retrieve these guys."

During a final March 2002 recovery effort, O'Hara said investigators used ropes, bamboo platforms and helicopter airlifts to sift through the crash site. They found teeth and bone fragments, along with wrist watches, car keys, a pistol, coins and a camera, the Navy News Service reported.

The airmen's remains were shipped to CILHI for months of testing and analysis. Results were released in December, and Buck was identified -- three and a half decades after the accident.

"I'm just glad to have him home," Gary Buck said. "It's been very difficult."

Remains of all nine crew members and Snoopy were identified. Additional unidentified remains recovered from the crash site will receive a group burial June 18 in Arlington National Cemetery.

Buck's remains were flown from Hawaii to the mainland Wednesday, CILHI spokeswoman Ginger Couden said. He will be buried at 11 a.m. Saturday in Lakeview Cemetery.

A U.S. Navy honor guard from Toledo and VFW Post 2480 will perform military graveside services. Rev. Paul Birmingham of Ohio Veterans Home will officiate the ceremony.

Contact staff writer Rick Neale at 419-734-7506 or rneale@fremont.gannett.com.

©2003 The News-Messenger"