MOH Retired Air Force Col. Joe M. Jackson passed away

Air Force legend, Medal of Honor recipient, Joe Jackson dies at 95

Air Force Times
Kyle Rempfer
January 15, 2019

Former Air Force Lt. Col. Joe Jackson, a legendary pilot and Medal of Honor recipient, attends an awards dinner in Arlington, Va., in 2015.(DoD)

Retired Air Force Col. Joe M. Jackson, a Medal of Honor recipient, veteran of three wars and Air Force legend, has died.

The 95-year-old Jackson passed away over the weekend, according to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein, who made the announcement Monday morning.

His death leaves James P. Fleming as the only other living Air Force Medal of Honor recipient, according to Military Times Hall of Valor Curator Doug Sterner.

Jackson, a native of Newnan, Ga., was famous within the aviation and special operations community for his daring rescue of a team of Air Force combat controllers who were stranded at the besieged airfield of an abandoned Army Special Forces camp during the Tet Offensive.

His exploits saved the lives of three men, but risked his own, as the airfield had been the site of multiple U.S. aircraft shootdowns and aircrew fatalities over the past 24 hours.

Although Jackson has passed, his exploits and the significance of the battle he took part in were recorded in the Southeast Asia Monographs, Volume V-7, at the Airpower Research Institute of Maxwell Air Force Base, as well as first-person accounts archived by the Library of Congress.
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Vietnam Veteran's art tribute to every unit and division

Paying tribute through art: Hempfield veteran honors every unit from Vietnam War
WTAE Pittsburgh Action News
Mike Clark
August 24, 2018

IRWIN, Pa.
Jack Otto is making people cry, making them smile -- making them feel.

His incredibly detailed artwork salutes all who served our country in the Vietnam War.

Through art, the 74-year-old veteran from Hempfield Township pays tribute to every unit and every division that served in Vietnam.

"It became a labor of love, and second of all, it became somewhat of a therapy for me," Otto said. "I was involved in many of the units in one way or other."

Otto was a military policeman in the U.S. Army who survived the Tet Offensive in 1968. He hopes that his art will help veterans and their families to heal.

Tracy Alaia, owner of Feathers Artist Market and Gifts in Irwin, invited Otto to display his patriotic artwork. It means so much to everyone who sees it.
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Marine Not Good Enough to Be Buried in Veteran's Cemetery, Now Has Highway With His Name

Fallen Oklahoma Vietnam veteran finally being recognized for his sacrifice
BY KFOR-TV and K. QUERRY
APRIL 14, 2017

On Friday, a portion of I-40 by Henryetta was renamed the Anthony Grundy Memorial Highway.

HENRYETTA, Okla. - An Oklahoma community is righting a wrong that dates back to the Vietnam War.

Anthony Grundy was the only service member from Henryetta that died in the war. He was a brave Marine who signed up in 1967 and died in the Tet Offensive.

When Grundy's parents sought permission to bury their son with other veterans in the Henryetta Cemetery, they were denied.

At the time, they were told it was due to a lack of space.

"We tried in Henryetta but they said they didn't have the space," Alpheus Grundy, Anthony's brother, told NewsChannel 4 in 2016.

"I didn't cry then but I cried later," he continues.

However, everyone now acknowledges that it was because Grundy was African-American.
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Marine in Famous Photo Survived Even After Being in Bodybag

VALLEY VET STUNNED TO HEAR FROM US MARINE HE THOUGHT WAS DEAD
ABC 30 News
Dale Yurong 
March 29, 2016

Grantham told Action News, "When we got back to triage they actually put me in a body bag."

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A retired US Marine from the Valley has been on one final mission - to find a comrade who he thought died by his side.

In an iconic Vietnam War photo taken in February of 1968 Lance Corporal Rick Hill of Coalinga could found at the top right. Laying on his side was a fellow US Marine named Alvin Grantham. Up until a few weeks ago Rick thought Alvin died shortly after the picture was taken but that was not the case.

Hill recalled the most intense firefight of his two tours. He was shot in one leg and took shrapnel in the other. "I was wounded in the battle of Hue during Tet February 68. We were pinned down. We were in trouble."

Rick noticed a tank rolling by.

"They asked me, got room for one more and they always got room for one more and they threw me up on the tank."

The famous picture of wounded US Marines being medevaced on a tank appeared in Life and Time magazine. Rick's mom told him, "That's the only way I knew you were still alive."

Rick tearfully told us, "For 48 years I look at this picture and look at these guys looking back at me and I always figured it's an honor."

Since 1991 Rick and his wife Hayley have lived the quiet life in Coalinga but that all changed a few weeks ago when someone answered a facebook post about the photo.

"He says, hey I'm the guy laying on the tank without a shirt. I look at my wife and go no way. That guy died."

That's what Rick was told but Alvin Grantham of Mobile, Alabama messaged him and wrote, "Lots of people think I didn't make it."
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Tet Offensive Survivors Reunited After Google Search

Nurses, soldier who saved them in Vietnam reunite
The News-Press
Patricia Borns
October 27, 2015

Paliughi still has a photo of the wall in the nurses' room stitched with bullet holes. "They were brave," he says. "They're nurses."

On the night of the Vietnamese lunar New Year, Ron Paliughi woke to the sound of fireworks in the seacoast city of Nha Trang.

Only "it wasn't fireworks," the decorated Army veteran remembers. "It was the rockets and mortars of 850 North Vietnamese soldiers launching the Tet Offensive."

Housed in a decaying French colonial villa were Carol Portner and Maureen Orr, young nurses on a USAID mission. As the streets filled with corpses and chaos, the soldiers' and nurses' paths crossed in a life-saving moment.

No names were exchanged. They barely saw one another's faces through the tear gas and smoke. What were the chances they would reunite 46 years later at Portner's Gulf Harbour home in south Fort Myers? And yet last week, the group met again for the second time in two years. It took a death to bring them together.

A Google search

After working in 75 countries, Steve Orr wrote a book about his travels, "The Perennial Wanderer, an American in the World."

In the end, Paliughi's search came down to Googling the words 'Robert's Compound, Nha Trang, Vietnam.' A chapter from Orr's book popped up describing the Tet Offensive there. The nurses were named. He reached out to Orr to confirm.
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Vietnam Veteran shares thoughts on LZ Lambeau Event

Onalaska Vietnam Veteran shares thoughts on LZ Lambeau Event
Posted: May 20, 2010 12:21 AM EDT

35 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Wisconsin veterans are finally getting a formal welcome home.

A big event this weekend at Lambeau Field in Green Bay will honor the state's Vietnam vets for their service and sacrifice for our country.

The event is called LZ Lambeau, named for the landing zones the veterans were often deployed to. Of the more than 165,000 Wisconsin veterans who served in Vietnam, nearly 1300 never made it home and for those who did, it wasn't always the warmest of welcome backs. Now, all these years later, the public is getting a chance to recognize and thank a group of veterans that sacrificed so much and got so little in return.

Every day, 63 year old Tom Baertsch of Onalaska lives with the horrors of the past. "There isn't a day go by that I don't think about something that went on and there's still the nightmares and there still are the flashbacks and there's still all that kind of stuff," says Baertsch.

Although Tom's learned to live with the emotional scars from more than four decades ago, he considers himself lucky to even be here today. "There was many times when I made peace with the lord, like they say there's no atheists in a fox hole. That's probably one of the scariest things for a 21 year old to be able to do is to be at peace with himself that if he's going to die, he's going to die."
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http://www.wkbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=12512211

Vietnam veterans, others pay respects at travelling replica

Jerry Sousa, of West Nottingham and a veteran from the 82nd Airborne, salutes the American flag during the playing of taps while standing in front of The Moving Wall, a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., during Newmarket's Memorial Day celebrations at Leo A. Landroche Memorial Field in Newmarket on Saturday, May 30, 2009. Sousa's biological brother, Lance Cpl. Robert Sousa, a marine, died during the war and has his name on the wall, "but they are all my brothers," he said, refering to the wall's names and the veterans in attendance.
Scott Yates/syates@seacoastonline.com

Moving tribute: Vietnam veterans, others pay respects at travelling replica
Vietnam veterans, others pay respects at travelling replica
By Gina Carbone
gcarbone@seacoastonline.com
May 31, 2009 6:00 AM
Roy Greenleaf lost 14 friends on May 19, 1968, in Vietnam. He found them again on May 30, 2009, at The Moving Wall in Newmarket.

Greenleaf, now the Newington fire chief, served two tours with the Marine Corps in Vietnam. On that May day, he was with Fox Company, 3rd platoon, 3rd squad, when they were attacked outside Khe Sanh.


The Moving Wall tribute to Vietnam veterans comes to Newmarket He caught shrapnel. His friends died.

Greenleaf had their names highlighted on a piece of paper in his shirt pocket Saturday morning at The Moving Wall, the half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which has been in Newmarket since May 28 and will leave town June 1.

"They're not the victims, they're the survivors," Greenleaf said, pointing to the more than 58,000 names. "Their war is over. It's done. The rest of us are still the victims. We still walk with it."

Greenleaf came to the wall with the Ancient Order of Hibernians Pipes and Drums Band of Manchester. They joined in the Newmarket Memorial Day Parade Saturday morning wending through town to the wall, where hundreds of veterans, families and Seacoast residents paid respects to the fallen.

Rick Donnelly of Dracut, Mass., lost one-third of the Air Force commandos he flew into Vietnam with the day before the Tet Offensive. Seeing them again at the wall was an emotional experience. "Very much," he said, wiping his eyes.

The Red Knights Motorcycle Club of New Hampshire helped bring in the wall on Thursday night. Congregating around the flowers, photographs and other offerings were members of various military branches — including Navy veteran Ed Lyons of Kingston; Army veteran Jim Voss of Kingston; Coast Guard veteran Aaron Epstein of Fremont; and Army veteran Dick Rodier of Epping.
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http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090531-NEWS-905310328

"Ghost Squadron" heroic efforts secret no longer

40 years later, a heroic and fatal mission is top-secret no more
By Martin Finucane
Globe Staff / May 14, 2008
Paul Donato was a city kid from Roslindale who loved to work on cars, a tough young man who wasn't afraid of anyone or anything, his brother said.

"That's just the way he was," said Joseph Donato. "He felt that when God wanted him, when God called, he was going to die. And that's the way he kind of lived."

So it made sense, Joseph Donato said, when he learned that his brother, who was declared missing in action 40 years ago during the Vietnam War, was a member of a top-secret Navy air squadron that flew highly dangerous missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

"I said, . . . 'That's Paulie all the way,' " said Donato, 62, of Canton.

Observation Squadron 67, known as the "Ghost Squadron," was recently awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for "extraordinary heroism and outstanding performance of duty." Today, Joseph Donato and Paul's two other brothers, along with other family members, will attend a ceremony honoring the unit at the United States Navy Memorial's Naval Heritage Center in Washington.

The squadron's planes, flying at extremely low altitudes, dropped sensors that were intended to track the movement of enemy troops and supplies. The intelligence provided by the sensors enabled US forces to prevent the Marine base at Khe Sanh from being overrun during the Tet Offensive in 1968, helping to save "countless lives," the citation said.
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