LGT: Sau khi chúng tôi đăng Phần IV loạt bài trong quyển: "FAKE NEWS: Thế giới đang đối mặt với trận tấn công lớn nhất vào sự thật kể từ 1930", sẽ cho xuất bản nay mai, chỉ trích nặng nề chính phủ Obama, Bộ Ngoại Giao từ John Kerry đến Đại sứ Ted Osius… đã quên hoặc cố tình quên đi những người lính VNCH mà Chính Phủ Hoa Kỳ đã tự nguyện "áp đặt" họ trở thành Đồng Minh "bất đắc dĩ" sau khi John F. Kennedy sử dụng trên dưới 40 ngàn Mỹ Kim để bức tử Nền Đệ Nhất Việt Nam Cộng Hoà cùng với Vị Nguyên Thủ Đáng Kính, Tổng Thống Anh Minh Ngô Đình Diệm, thì động thái mới nhất rất đáng khích lệ của Chính Phủ Trump đã phần nào an ủi anh linh của hàng trăm ngàn Quân, Dân, Cán Chính Việt Nam Cộng Hoà. Đó là họ sẽ Cải Táng Tập Thể 81 Chiến Sĩ Nhảy Dù Việt Nam từ Hawaii đem họ trở về Cộng Đồng Người Việt ở California chôn cất. Chúng tôi sẽ theo sát mọi diễn biến trong vụ cải táng này và xem đây như một nghĩa cử rất đáng khích lệ của Chính Phủ Trump và các ban ngành liên quan của Chính Phủ Trump.
How do we as a society remember our dead, including those who lost their lives alongside us in our nation’s wars? William Gladstone, a British prime minister during the 19th century, offered a timeless formula: “Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead, and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the law of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.”
On Friday, a U.S. Air Force aircraft will carry the commingled remains of 81 airborne soldiers of the former South Vietnamese Army from Hawaii, where they have been stored in a military facility for more than 33 years, to California. On Oct. 26, there will be a full military ceremony honoring their service in Westminster, often known as Little Saigon, where tens of thousands of Vietnamese Americans now live.
This will be a unique occurrence because their names might never be known and because they were soldiers of an allied army. Following the ceremony, these forgotten soldiers will be laid to rest under a commemorative marker in the largest Vietnamese-American cemetery in our country.
This final resting place will mark a complicated, 54-year journey that began on a long-forgotten battlefield during a vicious war that tore apart our country and resulted in the deaths of 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese.
The South Vietnamese and American flags fly at a commemoration of the fall of Saigon in Westminster, California, on April 30, 2015.
'Men Without a Country'
In late 1965 an American C-123 was shot down, killing all four American crew members and 81 South Vietnamese Airborne soldiers. The crash site was located in a contested area and was not visited until 1974. Bone fragments and some personal paraphernalia were gathered, but all of the recovered remains were commingled and could fit into one large casket. The remains were shipped to Bangkok. The American crew members were later identified through DNA testing and were given a proper interment. But there was no flight manifest for the South Vietnamese soldiers. In 1986, their remains were sent to the U.S. military’s POW/MIA lab in Hawaii, which is responsible for identifying those lost or missing from our nation’s wars.
And there the remains of the South Vietnamese soldiers have been sitting for the past 33 years. Because there was no flight manifest for such a combat mission, we will probably never know the names of those who were lost. They are identified only as members of an elite airborne battalion of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
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