Ceremony Commemorates Vietnam War's First Combat Casualties
(July 12, 2009) |
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U.S. Army Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand and Maj. Dale Buis were the first two U.S. servicemembers killed in the Vietnam War. Their sacrifice was honored in Washington, D.C., Jyly 8, 2009, in a ceremony commemorating the 50th Anniversary of their deaths. |
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WASHINGTON, July 8, 2009 – Bright blue
skies above the National Mall today belied the solemnity of
the ceremony commemorating the first two American combat
casualties of the Vietnam War.
“On this date 50 years ago, two men lost their lives in a
country that most of us here in the United States had never
heard of at the time,” said Jan C. Scruggs, founder of the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. “The deaths of U.S. Army
military advisors Maj. Dale Buis and Master Sgt. Chester
Ovnand marked the beginning of a lengthy war, which became a
very divisive event for our society.”
U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended in 1975. By then, the fighting had claimed the lives of more than
58,000 U.S. servicemembers and nearly 2 million Vietnamese. |
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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stanley
Karnow, a World War II veteran, was there from the
beginning, covering Asia for Time and Life magazines. In
July 1959, he happened to be in Saigon, then the capital of
South Vietnam and now known as Ho Chi Minh City, when he
heard about an incident at a South Vietnamese army camp in
the small town of Bien Hoa, about 25 miles to the north.
After a taxi ride to the camp, he discovered two Americans
had been killed in an ambush as they watched a movie during
a break in their duties as part of the U.S. Military
Assistance Advisory Group.
The movie, “The Tattered Dress,” was two reels long, and
when Ovnand turned on the lights to change the reel, the
enemy, who had surrounded the building and pushed gun
muzzles through windows, opened fire.
Buis, 38, of California, had been in Bien Hoa just two days
when he died in the hail of bullets. Ovnand, of Texas, was a
hair's breadth from retirement and exactly two months shy of
his 45th birthday.
Army Capt. Howard Boston of Iowa was seriously wounded in
the incident, and two Vietnamese guards were killed. |
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| Retired U.S. Army Capt. Nathaniel P. Ward IV, left, and retired Army Maj. Sam Ratcliffe stand in front of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall July 8, 2009, in Washington, D.C., after laying a wreath in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the first two American servicemembers to be killed in the Vietnam War. Ward and Ratcliffe are also holding photographs of the two soldiers: Army Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand and Maj. Dale Buis. They were killed when their compound in Bien Hoa, just north of Saigon, was attacked. |
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Karnow wrote in his Time article that if it hadn't been for
Army Maj. Jack Hellet of Baton Rouge, La., who turned the
lights out again, all six Americans in the room might have
died.
“I was quite astonished, but ... I'd been around wars for
awhile, so the idea of a couple of guys getting killed in a
remote place that nobody's ever heard of in America struck
me as an interesting story,” Karnow told those gathered for
today's ceremony.
His dispatch to Time magazine ended up as a three-paragraph
summary when the magazine was published, and as all Time
stories were then, it was anonymous.
“It was just a minor incident in a faraway place. Here I was
at the beginning of one of America's longest wars,” Karnow
said, noting that witnesses to history often don't recognize
it at the time.
“I have a lot of experience of being at historic occasions,
which at the time they occurred, I did not know they were
historic,” he said.
When Scruggs and his Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund were
authorized by Congress in the late 1970s to build the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the decision was made to list the
casualties in chronological order. The question then became
where to start.
Retired Army Col. Nathaniel P. Ward III, the advisory
group's chief of staff at the time of the Bien Hoa incident,
took an active role in ensuring Buis and Ovnand were
properly recognized as the first U.S. casualties. |
Initially, the Defense Department was
considering an Army captain killed in 1961 as the first name to be inscribed on
The Wall, retired Army Capt. NathanielP. Ward IV said during the ceremony. That
didn't set well with his father, who had worked with Buis and Ovnand in
Bien Hoa.
“[My father] petitioned for about a year, and they finally
agreed to go with Major Buis and Sergeant Ovnand,” the
younger Ward said.
Ovnand's name appears on The Wall twice. The first time is
on the first line of panel 1E, next to Buis's name. It later
was re-inscribed on panel 7E, Row 46 because of a
misspelling in the original inscription.
The ceremony concluded with the playing of
“Taps,” and the placing of a wreath at the apex of The Wall, below the names of
the first two U.S. combat casualties of the Vietnam War. |
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A U.S. Air Force bugler plays taps at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., July 8, 2009, in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the first two U.S. servicemembers killed in the Vietnam War. U.S. Army Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand and Maj. Dale Buis were killed at their base camp in Bien Hoa, just north of Saigon, Vietnam. |
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By Samantha L. Quigley
DOD photos by Army SFC Michael J. Carden
American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2009 |
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