Thirty-five years later: A lost set of Vietnam War dog tags comes home
The U.S. Army, through Cornell ROTC, will present them at a ceremony on Feb. 23
Contact: Blaine Friedlander
Phone: (607) 254-8093
FOR RELEASE: Feb. 20, 2006
ITHACA, N.Y. -- On Feb. 23, 1971, a team of North Vietnamese sappers - combat engineers - infiltrated Fire Support Base Blue, an American artillery base in Tay Ninh province in South Vietnam, near the Cambodian border. Armed with satchel explosives and AK-47s, the attackers took the occupants by surprise. They destroyed bunkers and inflicted numerous casualties before they were repelled. Some were captured. Among the U.S. dead: PFC Douglas J. Crawford, 20, a radio communications operator from Bay Shore, Long Island. He was part of the 7th Battalion, 8th Artillery Regiment. He would have turned 21 a month later.
On Feb. 23, 2006, exactly 35 years to the day of that attack, the Cornell University Army ROTC will return the dog tags of Douglas Crawford to his remaining immediate kin: his brother Franklin Crawford and his sister Roberta Crawford. Franklin is a writer for the Cornell Chronicle and Roberta is a musician and co-founder of the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble.
The ceremony will take place on Thursday, Feb. 23, at 2 p.m. at the Military Museum in Barton Hall (fourth floor) on the Cornell campus. It will close a tragic story about war, family and loss. It also highlights the role of the Cornell ROTC as the main point of contact in the Ithaca area for carrying out casualty assistance duties. These duties include making calls to the homes and families of soldiers who have been killed or wounded in action or training.
This is the first time the Cornell ROTC has undertaken the job of presenting dog tags to a family. The ceremony is being organized by Lt. Col. Glenn Reisweber at Cornell. William Huling, a retired Vietnam War veteran and a senior development officer at Cornell, will give remarks on welcoming Douglas Crawford home in spirit. Huling was in Vietnam at the same time, stationed on Fire Support Base Barbara, as a battery commander of an 8-inch/175mm heavy artillery battery. Crawford was in a comparable base at Fire Support Base Blue.
The dog tags were discovered in an Army file belonging to the deceased in Washington, D.C. We received a letter last summer from a genealogist working for the Army seeking next of kin of my brother and it turned out to be about returning the tags, said Franklin Crawford. Which was an uncanny coincidence, because my father had died just a month earlier in June. He was a veteran of WW II and the lack of my brothers tags really caused him anguish.
It is unclear why the dog tags went missing for so long. Franklin said he received his brothers deceased file last August and found responses to letters from his father requesting all personal items belonging to his son be returned. Crawford then searched for members of his brother's unit and found a web site dedicated to the 7th Battalion, 8th Artillery Regiment. Several vets were quick to respond to his request for background on his brother and they provided a newspaper article written by then-Army journalist Al Gore, who had recounted the mayhem that night at Fire Support Base Blue.
Those guys are great. They sent me pictures, stories and welcomed me in as a member, said Franklin. One of the revelations was an article written about the attack by Al Gore, who was a journalist for an engineering unit attached to the base where my brother was killed. It seems strange that we never knew about this.
After Douglas Crawfords death, the war took its toll on his parents: Albert and Sally were both eventually institutionalized. Subsequent efforts for them to get back on their feet failed and they lost all their possessions, including their deceased sons medals and personal items. Also lost were Albert Crawford's military records and citations. He had served as an anti-tank gunner in campaigns in Belgium and Germany that included fierce action at the Battle of the Bulge. Sally died in Sayville Manor Home in 1986 at 61. Albert was eventually admitted to Central Islip Psychiatric Center and, when that closed, he became a resident at Green Park Care Center in Fort Green, Brooklyn. He died in June 2005 at age 82.
EDITORS: You, your reporters and photographers are welcome to the cover the ceremony. For information, please contact Blaine Friedlander at (607) 351-2610.
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