Soldier to be honored 41 years after going missing in Vietnam
By Shirley Dang
Contra Costa Times
The last time Jack Throckmorton saw Roger Cobb Hallberg alive was on Good Friday 1967 in the jungles of South Vietnam near the Cambodian border.
The Special Forces staff sergeant was running under fire. Draped in a camouflage tiger suit, he tore through a curtain of bullets that turned the surrounding ground and shrubs "into confetti." As two North Vietnamese battalions continued the onslaught, Hallberg led a counterattack and was never found.
"One of the most incredible displays of bravery I've ever seen," said Throckmorton, a second lieutenant.
Today, Hallberg will posthumously receive the Army's Silver Star, 41 years after he went missing in action. The award will be given to his mother, Doris Hallberg, 88, of Clayton aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter George Cobb. The ship was named for her father, who saved three drowning sailors off Point Bonita in 1896.
Doris Hallberg will be joined by daughter Anne Holt of Clayton and her son Bruce Hallberg, who lives near Los Gatos.
"I feel honored," Bruce Hallberg said. "Whether he was captured or paid the ultimate sacrifice that day, he did his job for his comrades in arms."
The son of a World War II bomber pilot, Hallberg grew up all over the United States. The family settled in California for a time, giving the young man a chance to earn his Eagle Scout badges and play high school water polo in Palo Alto.
A consummate outdoorsman, he went on to earn a degree in forestry from Oregon State University and shortly after enlisted in the Army. In 1966, as an member of the Green Berets, Company A, Detachment A-302, Fifth Special Forces Group, he flew out for Vietnam.
It was Roger Cobb Hallberg's birthday. Bruce Hallberg can still hear his brother's voice in his ears.
"He was telling me to be careful and to be safe. Can you believe it?" he said. "And he was going off to war."
After he went missing, the family mounted a search to find out what happened to their son. Decades later, Bruce Hallberg's son came across a retelling of the battle involving "Uncle Roger" on the Internet. The story was told by Throckmorton, the only known survivor of the attack.
Though the lieutenant provided a first-hand account that ultimately earned Hallberg his honor, the family continues to fight to learn where his remains may be.
Doris Hallberg has one of Roger's report cards from third grade. A plaid shirt he used to wear every day. A photo of her holding him when he was a baby, a single tooth peeking out from behind his upturned lips.
What she doesn't have is his ashes or any knowledge of how he perished.
"You don't know if they shot him," she said. "You don't know if they took him and tortured him."
The lack of closure has driven the family to fight for families of prisoners of war and those missing in action. Roughly 1,765 Americans remain missing, according to the Department of Defense.
"The war's not over for us until every American soldier comes home," Holt said. "They have the right to be buried in their soil."
AND
SILVER STAR TO BE AWARDED IN CEREMONY ON YERBA BUENA ISLAND
Military personnel will present a Silver Star today for extreme courage shown during battle in the name of a staff sergeant who went missing in action more than 40 years ago, according to the U.S. Coast Guard Sector San Francisco.
The Silver Star will be presented in the name of Staff Sgt. Roger Hallberg, a member of the Army Special Forces in Vietnam who went missing during a 1967 battle, according to the Coast Guard.
Hallberg's mother will receive the Silver Star on her son's behalf on the Coast Guard cutter George Cobb. The cutter was named for Hallberg's grandfather, George Cobb, who was a lighthouse keeper at the beginning of the 20th century and received a Silver Lifesaving Medal for rescuing a group of sailors whose ship sank near the Point Bonita Lighthouse.
The ceremony will be held at Yerba Buena Island at 11 a.m. on the pier next to the cutter.
(© 2007 The Associated Press