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My first husband, Capt. Jerry Zimmer, was an F4B Phantom jet pilot, whose aircraft was shot down on August 29, 1969, approximately 20 miles South of Da Nang, Vietnam, after six months in country. Neither Jerry nor his navigator, 1st Lt. Al Graf, was able to eject, before the aircraft crashed into the Que Son Mountains. Initially Jerry and Al were classified as Killed in Action/No Body Recovered (KIA/NBR). Years later, both Marines were listed as MIA, along with other service members whose bodies were never recovered.
Jerry has been gone nearly a half century, and hope for recovering his remains had run out a long time ago. However, in recent years our family became involved with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), now merged with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), and learned that Jerry’s and Al’s remains might, in fact, be recoverable, so we are doing everything possible to support their efforts to make this happen and bring our guys home where they belong.
NOTE: BLOG POSTS ARE NOT UPDATED, SO INFORMATION MAY HAVE CHANGED OVER TIME.
Posts Tagged ‘LT COL William Peters’
REMEMBERING OUR FALLEN HEROES ON MEMORIAL DAY
On August 20, 2009, my first husband, Capt. Jerry Zimmer, USMC, was honored with a full military memorial service, performed by the Marine Corps at Arlington National Cemetery. Jerry’s son, Craig, is shown here accepting the American Flag, as his father’s primary next of kin. Forty years after his death, Jerry received a headstone in a special section of Arlington for missing-in-action service members and others with similar circumstances.
Many Americans will celebrate Memorial Day on Monday, May 26, 2014, in honor of the brave men and women who lost their lives while serving our country with the Armed Forces. This day offers an opportunity to remember them in a special way, as is often the case among families with wartime losses and active duty military and veterans who lost buddies while serving our nation.
A lot of Americans fly the American flag, attend a Memorial Day ceremony or visit a loved one’s gravesite, giving meaning to a phrase that says it all – you are not forgotten. While in Washington, D.C. in late April, I visited Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place for so many of our young battlefield heroes. I am always left with a sense of pride and sorrow, and this visit was no exception.
Death Too Soon
My first visit to Arlington was during the Vietnam War, when Capt. Charlie Pigott, USMC, died in a horrific F-4, midair collision over Da Nang in May 1969. Most of the people who attended his funeral were wives or girlfriends of pilots, still in country and unable to come home for the service. I remember feeling so small and insignificant, surrounded by a seemingly endless mass of white headstones, yet thinking that it wouldn’t happen to Jerry. We all loved Charlie and were heartbroken about his death and the other casualties involved in the collision. Three months later Jerry was gone, too. Unlike Charlie, his remains did not come home, so Jerry did not have a funeral in Arlington, where I thought at the time all war casualties were buried, if not in their hometown.
As a young military wife whose experience with death was very limited, I was unprepared at first for a funeral without a body, but reality kicked in when I learned that Jerry was unable to eject from his F-4 — a supersonic jet. I knew how much Jerry loved the farming community of Maine, NY, where he was raised and adored by the town’s people. I arranged to have a service at the family farm, knowing that it would mean a lot to his parents. That day was surreal for me then and still remains a blur in many ways.
Rewriting History
Fast forward 40 years. Our family learned that Arlington has a special memorial section for service members missing in action; remains not recovered or identified; remains buried at sea; remains donated to science; or remains cremated with ashes scattered but no portion interred, as described on Arlington’s website.
On August 20, 2009, Jerry was honored at Arlington with a full Marine Corps memorial service. A headstone was placed adjacent to one for 1st Lt Al Graf, the navigator who also perished when their aircraft went down. Jerry’s memorial event was extraordinarily touching with family members present, including his son, Craig, who accepted the American Flag, with his wife and children nearby, along with many of his dad’s friends and military buddies who came from great distances to pay their respects.
If Jerry’s remains are found, they will be interred in the burial section of Arlington. For more information about memorial services at Arlington, families should contact the casualty officer for their loved one’s branch of service.
A Beautiful Sight
Marking its 150th anniversary this year, Arlington will be dressed for Monday’s event, as is the case every Memorial Day. The Old Guard recently completed their annual tribute to America’s fallen military heroes with its Flags-in ceremony, setting a small American flag at each of the 220,000 headstones in the cemetery. This tradition dates back to 1948, and belongs to the Army’s 3rd United States Infantry Regiment – a very unique unit that has my deepest respect for their patriotism and continued efforts to remember our nation’s heroes. Thank you for what you do.
A special thanks this Memorial Day to all the men and women of DPMO and JPAC who continue to search for the remains of loved ones still unaccounted for from past wars. Your efforts make it possible for many families to believe that one day their loved ones might be moved from the battlefields of long ago to the sacred grounds of Arlington or another special place of honor.
MIA RECOVERIES: HOW MUCH IS A PROMISE WORTH?
The Vietnam Memorial Wall — most visited memorial in Washington, D.C.
For some people heavily engaged in social media where it seems everything is aired these days, the doomsday prediction of sequestration is like theater – good actors, bad story.
But for those of us with MIAs still unaccounted from past wars, such as the Vietnam War in my family’s case, sequestration could deal another blow to the recovery system which has suffered greatly throughout the decades for a variety of reasons, most notably the existence of different ideologies between the U.S. and other governments where the remains of our MIAs still exist.
But these days, the culprit appears to be the unpredictability of our own government. And while budget dilemmas have often been a problem with MIA operations, this time the cuts are running rampant throughout the entire military, which has ultimate responsibility for MIA recovery efforts. Needless to say, sequestration must go! It was a bad decision by U.S. leadership to even suggest the use of sequestration early-on, but now it is turning into a disaster, hurting our military, core civil service employees and embarrassing our country on a global level.
CHERRY PICKING
This blog is meant to be apolitical, but there are times when it is difficult to sit on the sidelines and see our country going in reverse – as in back to the 1960s when civil rights, women’s rights and the draft were justifiably in need of change, but our military took the brunt of those social battles and some see us headed in that direction again. However, with today’s all-volunteer military, often serving multiple tours in high-threat war zones, it remains to be seen if the bravest among us will allow themselves to be used as pawns! If ever there were a time to set an example that our active-duty military does count, it is now. These are smart people who are watching closely at how we treat their retired and MIA counterparts, as well.
SEQUESTRATION — DANGEROUS POLITICS
While post-war drawdown is nothing new, the current situation [sequestration] seems downright dangerous. Even more concerning is that many Americans nowadays are disengaged from the reality of war, including some of our elected officials. With instability in the Middle East – not just Iraq and Afghanistan – along with areas in Asia Pacific flexing military muscle, it is difficult to talk about bringing home our loved ones from past wars when we’re having trouble spreading the wealth among those who are engaged in today’s military commitments.
Yet, it is important to understand that the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) – the government organization that reports to the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) – plays an important role in our nation’s ongoing efforts to strengthen economic, political and security ties within Asia Pacific. We need only look at recovery operations in Burma, which are underway, thanks in part to the success of humanitarian efforts in Vietnam. But behind the scenes, our two countries are hoping this renewed relationship leads to a lot more.
KEEPING THE PROMISE
JPAC is tasked with the huge responsibility of finding and identifying MIAs from past wars, comprising what may be the largest, ongoing humanitarian effort ever conducted by the U.S. With more than 80,000 MIAs still unaccounted for around the globe, it is believed that one-third of them may be recoverable and identified.
However, sequestration has already begun to impact JPACs manpower and recovery operations, and if the situation does not improve soon, the outcome could be devastating to Vietnam War recoveries. JPAC has taken some serious cuts to its budget but the worst is yet to come if furloughs are next — recovery/excavation operations will cease if they have to furlough civilians.
According to current rules, JPAC would be required to arrange two furlough days every pay period (2 weeks), and since teams deploy for 35-45 days, they would not be able to deploy any anthropologists and operations would cease. The clock is ticking in Vietnam War locations where acidic soil is rapidly degrading the remains of our loved ones; economic progress is moving faster than excavations; and Vietnamese witnesses to our wartime losses are dying off.
What many people do not understand is that JPACs operations are largely military-to-military with support from a group of highly skilled civilian workers, most of whom are former military, as well. Keeping boots on the ground in areas where our loved ones are still unaccounted for is an excellent way to support and solidify relationships that once seemed unthinkable.
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