Remains of crash victims to return to Army lab
From left, Army Lt. Col. Rennie M. Cory Jr., Air Force Tech. Sgt. Robert M. Flynn and Sgt. First Class Tommy J. Murphy were among the seven Americans killed in a helicopter crash Saturday in Vietnam.
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Remains of seven American military men killed in a helicopter crash Saturday in Vietnam while searching for remains of U.S. military personnel lost in action will be returned Friday to Hawai'i, Army officials said yesterday.
After an arrival ceremony at Hickam Air Force Base, the remains will be transferred in hearses to the Army's Central Identification Laboratory, where one of the men worked and where many had friends.
There, the experts who normally pore over decades-old fragments of bone from the Vietnam War will take on the task of positively identifying their own colleagues and comrades.
It is possible, laboratory deputy director Johnnie Webb said, that the people who work on the body of the laboratory's own Sgt. First Class Tommy J. Murphy of Honolulu will be people who knew him.
"We have talked to the entire staff at Central Identification Lab-Hawai'i, and it will be a restricted area, and those who will be assisting will be volunteers," Webb said at a press conference at Camp Smith in 'Aiea.
"Those who it will be very emotional for, they will be given the opportunity to leave away from the organization" during the examination.
Webb said members of the unit were polled on whether to bring the remains back to Hickam or having them taken to Tripler Army Medical Center.
"Every member of our organization said Sgt. Murphy was one of ours, and the individuals from Joint Task Force who we were very close friends with, they were comrades, and we want to take care of our own. And everyone of them said we want them brought back to (the lab) so we can take care of our own personnel. They felt very strongly about that."
In addition to Murphy, Air Force Master Sgt. Steven L. Moser, a Vietnamese linguist with the task force, also lived in Honolulu.
A memorial service for Murphy will be tomorrow at 11 a.m. for friends and family. Murphy lived here with his wife and two daughters, ages 2 and 3.
Four of the other Americans lost in the crash were stationed in Hanoi: Army Lt. Col. Rennie M. Cory Jr., the task force detachment commander; his deputy, Air Force Maj. Charles E. Lewis; Navy Hospital Corpsman Chief Pedro J. Gonzales, the detachment medic on loan from his unit in San Diego; and Air Force Tech. Sgt. Robert M. Flynn, another Vietnamese linguist.
The remaining American who died was Lt. Col. George D. Martin III, who was on an orientation visit to Hanoi where he was going to be transferred in June from Fort Drum, N.Y., to succeed Cory as detachment commander.
Nine Vietnamese, including a high-ranking officer who had fought the French at Dien Bien Phu and lost two brothers while fighting Americans in the Vietnam War, also perished when the Russian-made Vietnamese military helicopter crashed into a mountainside in Quang Binh province, about 280 miles south of Hanoi.
Army Lt. Col. Franklin F. Childress, chief of public affairs for the task force, said the task force had "a wonderful partnership with the Vietnamese government" in the effort to recover remains of U.S. servicemen.
"When you ask the Vietnamese why they are doing it they say, 'It is a humanitarian mission, we want to do it because we understand the loss of our families.' "
The investigation of the crash is being conducted primarily by the Vietnamese, he said.
Childress said the task force was taking the loss of its personnel and Sgt. Murphy "very hard," and that the schedule for a May 3 joint investigation effort of several sites in Vietnam was being reconsidered by Americans and Vietnamese alike in light of the accident.
But the mission, in which 604 of nearly 2,600 missing Americans have been accounted for in Southeast Asia since 1973, will continue, Childress said.
