GREENFIELD — Kurt Vetters’ voice caught in his throat.
There’s something warriors often tell each other, he said to the crowd; a montra of sorts, a promise, that they wear as a badge of honor: No man left behind.
Private First Class Vaughn Brown — “Skip” to his friends and family — lived that mantra, Vetters said. The 19-year-old, who was killed in action in Vietnam 50 years ago, was likely working to recover the bodies of his fallen comrades when he was gunned down.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
Vetters learned this about Brown as he was researching the young man’s life, he said Sunday, surrounded by veterans and about 50 community members, who gathered to remember Brown.
The service, held Sunday at the Hancock County Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was part of the Greenfield American Legion Post’s ongoing series of ceremonies to honor the local Vietnam War casualties, who took their final breaths 50 years ago.
More than 58,000 men and women were killed in battle between February 1961, when the United States’ military involvement in the war began, and May 1975, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Among the dead were 11 Hancock County men; one more was missing in action.
Local veterans began hosting the services a year ago. They’ll continue to come together several more times in the next few years to honor the other county servicemen who died in the war — all to ensure their sacrifices, and those made by their families, are never forgotten, said Vetters, the vice commander of the local American Legion.
That’s the veterans’ mission at each of these services, he said.
Speaking in front of the crowd Sunday evening, Vetters became emotional as he talked about the sacrifice Brown made.
The teenager from New Palestine was a Marine stationed in the Quang Tri Province of Vietnam on July 8, 1968, the day he died, Vetters said. His death came in the wake of a particularly bloody battle between the Marines and the Vietnamese that officially ended just a few days after Brown’s death, he said.
A dozen Marines and more than 100 Vietnamese had died in the days before Brown was killed, Vetters said. And as the rest of the troops prepared to leave the area, to move on to their next battlefield, Brown’s regiment was asked to collect the bodies of the fallen, Vetters said.
That’s what Brown would have been doing when he was killed, Vetters said; fulfilling that solemn vow that soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines make to one another.
Brown’s story really hit home with him, Vetters told the crowd, because anyone who has ever worn a uniform knows the importance of the mantra, “no man left behind.”
“This is an absolute indication and example that it matters to those Marines and that it mattered to Skip,” Vetters said, after a brief pause to collect his emotions.
A crowd of Brown’s relatives came out to watch the ceremony, to stand in the shade-covered grass clearing in front of the little stone table that is the county’s Vietnam veterans’ memorial.
Engraved on the table are the names of each of the men who died in the war. The families they left behind are connected by a single, solemn tragedy.
Debbie Marks-Anderson of Fortville knows that truth, she said.
Her brother, Frank Marks, died in Vietnam on March 9, 1968, and he was one of the first honored by the American Legion this year. Since then, she’d made it a mission to attend each of the 50th anniversary services held at the memorial.
To remember. To stand alongside others who know her pain.
“We need to let them know they aren’t forgotten,” she said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Remembering the fallen” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Eleven Hancock County men died during the Vietnam War, and one was missing in action. They were:
John Modglin on July 18, 1967
Rodger Haste on December 22, 1967
Frank W. Marks on March 9, 1968
Elvin Gose on March 18, 1968
Michael Ebert on March 21, 1968
Vaughn Brown on July 1, 1968
William Brees Jr. on Feb. 10, 1969
Huger Phelps on Feb. 10, 1969
Michael Terry on Oct. 12, 1969
Norris Borgman on Jan. 6, 1970
Mark Draper on July 22, 1970
Robert Harlan II, missing in action on Oct. 25, 1965
[sc:pullout-text-end]