As I mentioned previously, the “Traveling Wall” is visiting our fair city this week and weekend. As I viewed the Vietnam War Memorial today, I touched the panels where the names of Airman Fuller and Jones were imprinted. These Air Force Security Policemen died thirty days before I was to leave the country, making my final month the longest month of my life. I was “short” and afraid I would not make it home myself.I just wanted to let them live once again, at least in our minds, and ask you to pray that the war against terrorism does not grow into another scare upon our land.
Gary Leroy Fuller - The Plains, Ohio – Married - 22 Years Old (Panel 15E Row 105)
Robert Henry Osborn Jones - Arlington, Virginia – Single - 21 Years Old (Panel 15E – Row 106)
Both died on February 27, 1967 at DaNang Airbase, South Vietnam during an early morning Katyusha rocket attack on the base. Fuller died as he sat up startled in his bunk from another explosion, about two hooches south of mine. Shrapnel caught the young man in the jugular and he almost surely died instantly. Airman Jones was wounded running for a bunker, catching shrapnel from the same rocket in his lower body. He died minutes later on a hospital ship in the China Sea.
This photo is of me next to the rocket crater that woke Gary
Fuller. It was to the rear of the hooches, while the one that fatally wounded both Fuller and Jones hit forward of the hooches.These are just two of the many young men (and women) who never got to experienced marriage, children, grandchildren, or any grand slice of life at all. The least we can do is remember them.
It seems we do not have enough time to heal from one war until there is another one - always an open wound on the land for one reason of the other. However, it is not as if we were not told – the Bible plainly says, there will always be wars and rumors of wars. And so it shall be!
