Helicopter crew home at last
By HERB JACKSON
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
ARLINGTON, Va. -- An infant startled by the 21-gun salute cried in its mother's arms as a lone bugler played taps.
And after they both were done, the remains of a helicopter crew were lowered into graves in Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, more than 35 years after being shot down during a mission to rescue Vietnamese troops in Laos.
The four-man crew from the 101st Airborne Division, including Capt. John F. Dugan of Roselle, received full military honors, including an Army band that played "Amazing Grace" and "America the Beautiful" and a flyover by four Black Hawk helicopters in "missing man" formation. A crowd of nearly 200 mourners stood and sat behind four flag-draped coffins.
Along with Dugan's, the coffins held remains of Sgt. William E. Dillender of Naples, Fla.; Maj. Jack L. Barker of Waycross, Ga.; and comingled remains that included the fourth member from the crew, Pfc. John J. Chubb of Gardena, Calif.
Chubb had previously been buried separately in California, but his family was also represented at the Arlington funeral.
Dugan, 23 and a graduate of Roselle Catholic High School, was on his second tour in Vietnam on March 20, 1971, and volunteered when Barker said he needed men for a troop extraction in Savanakhet province, Laos.
"John was a leader," Pete Federovich of Gulf Breeze, Fla., who served with Dugan, told The Record in February. "He stepped forward and said, 'I'll go.' "
Barker and Dugan were flying the Huey helicopter, with Dillender and Chubb onboard, when they were hit by enemy fire as they approached the landing zone. The Huey exploded in the air, and enemy activity in the area prevented any recovery attempt, the Defense Department reported.
A refugee in Thailand showed Chubb's identification tag to a U.S. interviewer in 1986 and said it had been recovered near a site where an F-105 jet had crashed. From 1988 to 2001, joint U.S. and Laotian teams did four investigations and three excavations, but did not find the crew's remains.
In October and November, however, another team found wreckage of a Huey and insignia of the 101st. It also found remains that forensic anthropologists at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command were able to match with the missing crewmen.
Tom Shrelock, the historian at Arlington National Cemetery, said burials for long-missing soldiers and airmen happen about 10 to 12 times a year.
"There's even some from World War II, mostly involving those who fought in the Pacific, but some in Europe, too," he said.
The Pentagon still cannot account for 1,807 Americans who fought in the Vietnam War.
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