Utah X

I mentioned in my last post, on Texas, that it had the distinction of having the third most losses in the war. Well, Utah holds a similar distinction.

Utah has the 5th most, per capita, participation in the effort. This as stated in the original post from Utah was especially unusual given the make-up of Utah's society. You can read the details about that here

Today, we will honor three of the 388 from the state who made the ultimate sacrifice.

George J. Economous

1LT George Economous was lost in Kontum Province on April 15, 1968. His records say he was lost to "hostile...small arms fire..." He was from Logan, Utah but was interred in Indiana. This is the

 sum total of everything I could find on an American hero. Appalling.

Ray Grant Jenkins

WO Ray Jenkins was refueling his helicopter at Soc Trang when the mortar attack began. He tried to get his chopper off the ground but took a direct hit from one of the more than 100 rounds falling from the sky. He was transported by ambulance but to no avail. He was lost on February 2, 1968. One of the many casualties of the infamous Tet offensive.

Randall Leroy Saunders

SP4 Randall Saunders was lost to "hostile... small arms fire at Quang Tri Province. He was lost on February 16, 1968, in the shadow of the Tet offensive. I know I whine about this all the time, but nobody seems to tell their stories in much detail Once in a while I run across something useful but not nearly enough. Who will tell their story? I fear that now; it is too late.

All of these lost heroes were from Logan, Utah.

Next time on June 17th, we will return to Vermont, so join me, as always, at 9 am.

If you are following along at all, you will have seen that a number of you, like Joan from Wisconsin, Tony from Texas, Mike from Maryland, Ron from Florida, Tim from Virginia, Molly from Florida, Colleen (now two) from Pennsylvania, Elli from Maryland, and Peg and Ray from Florida, among others, have responded to my request to send me memorials you have seen in your area or where you may have traveled. I even got one from Ireland! These submissions help expand the knowledge of how we have remembered the men and women who served and/or were lost in 'Nam, and you help to honor them. If you have any such photos, I would love to see them. Please send them along to the email at the left and I will gladly share them here. 

I hope all those listed here will encourage you to send along photos and join the group.

West Virginia II

In a small park in Logan, West Virginia are several memorials to the locals who fought our wars. These include a number of lost from Vietnam. If you look closely at the next to final pic you can see that several names have been added since it was first inscribed. the two columns begin in alphabetical order but the addition of the names has changed the "order" of the memorial. I don't know if this is a reach or not but it all just reminds me of the chaos and confusion of the war. We see different dates for the span of the war, there is still discussion about who gets included on some memorials and who doesn't, and names continue to be added, or not. Each year, in D.C, there is a reading, at The Wall, of the names of those who were lost in the preceding year to Agent Orange or other Vietnam connected injuries, etc, that are not considered Wall worthy, are read aloud, to remember and honor them. In a future post I will tell you about a guy who was just added to another West Virginia memorial after all this time.

Note the added names at the bottom of each column.

This last photo is of  a small , nearby, memorial to the two local Vietnam Medal of Honor awardees. It is unusual for anyplace to be the home of  a Medal of Honor awardee, but two from the same war, from the same fairly small county (less than 38,000 in the 2000 census) is really momentous.

Logan has the distinction of being home to two Medal of Honor awardees from the Vietnam War.

The next post, April 12th, will feature a site honoring heroes from eight counties in two states. Join me at 9:00am in Princeton, WV.