Vietnam war deaths confirmed
Families cope with positive IDs of crew members of plane that disappeared in 1969
By JAMES HANNAH
The Associated Press
DAYTON, Ohio - No bugler will sound taps, and no guns will be fired in salute for the burial of the recently identified remains of an Army captain lost during the Vietnam War.
The older brother of Capt. David Smith asked that the heart-tugging tributes be dropped from the service.
"I don't really know if I could take it or not," said 75-year-old Robert Smith of Cocoa, Fla.
Other families are coping with similar emotions since the positive identification of crew members of a plane that disappeared in 1969.
"It kind of built up for 36 years," said Mary Wagner, twin sister of Sgt. Michael Batt, who was buried July 25. "We're dealing with emotions that have kind of been put in little slots for a long time."
Smith's family held a memorial service after he was declared dead in 1973, putting a marker next to his mother's grave. He will be buried Wednesday in Dayton.
Also identified last month were the remains of Sgt. Raymond Bobe of Tarrant, Ala., and Col. Marvin Foster of Hubbard, Texas.
There are 1,800 U.S. soldiers still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. As remains are recovered, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii has confirmed the identities of about 40 soldiers each year.
Pauline Boss, professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota and author of "Ambiguous Loss," a book about the families of missing soldiers and other people with unresolved losses, said the trauma doesn't heal when loved ones are missing for a long time.
"It is not just one inflicted pain," Boss said. "It is the pain of not knowing. It's the lack of information. The human mind can't make sense of it. There's never closure with missing bodies. I think it's a cruel word to use."
Robert Smith is grateful for the identification effort.
"A lot of people are dedicated to do it; otherwise, we might never know," he said.
But it doesn't ease the pain of losing his little brother, 10 years his junior, who joined the Air Force at age 18.
During his second tour of duty - this time with the Army - David Smith flew VIPs around Vietnam in a U-21 passenger plane. Radar and radio contact with his plane was lost March 16, 1969, when he encountered low clouds and poor visibility while flying into an airport near Hue in the mountains of South Vietnam.
In 2000, a joint POW/MIA task force excavated an area about 25 miles northwest of Da Nang and found aircraft debris and human remains later identified as Smith and the others on his plane.
Foster's daughter, Debby Fraughton, was 14 when the plane vanished, and she still has the telegram informing the family of his disappearance.
Confirmation of his death was the end of a long painful journey.
"It was a relief," said Fraughton, 50, of Evanston, Wyo. "I wanted to know something."
Smith gave his niece, Darlene Grice, a silver friendship ring. Grice, 54, has worn it ever since in hopes that her uncle was still alive, but she probably will take it off after his funeral.
Confirmation of his death was difficult to take.
"That little flicker of hope died in the back of your mind," Grice said.