If you've ever walked the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, you've heard the voices of the past. Even if you haven't, you can still hear them in podcast form!
A history podcast about Arlington National Cemetery and the individual stories of those buried there
In the years following the Mayaguez Incident, several memorials have popped up. As is was considered the final combat action of the Vietnam War (despite taking place after the officially recognized end of the war and in Cambodia, not Vietnam) those killed in action were engraved in the final panel of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, DC.
In 1996, Arizona Senator and former Vietnam POW John McCain helped dedicate a memorial to those killed on Koh Tang on the grounds of the US embassy in Phenom Penh, Cambodia.
In 2013, a memorial marker for those killed in the Knife-31 crash off Koh Tang's east beach. It is in Section 60, Site 10360.
Two Marines killed in action during the Mayaguez Incident, who were originally listed as missing in action and whose statues was officially changed in 1976 to killed in action (body not recovered) were eventually located, recovered, repatriated, and ultimately interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Second Lieutenant Richard Van de Geer is interred in Section 66, Grave 6027 - he was 27 years old.
Private First Class Walter Boyd, Jr. is buried in Section 66, Grave 5686 - he was 19 years old.
The crew of the SS Mayaguez is released by the Khmer Rouge, but it is too late to stop the US rescue attempt. Now President Ford wants to pull out the troops, but since information flowed a lot slower in 1975 than it does in 2025, the second wave of US Marines was already on site. Will they follow presidential orders or will they disregard their commander-in-chief and extricate their comrades under siege in enemy territory?
While those decisions were being made, the destroyer USS Henry B. Wilson came across the survivors of the Knife-31 crash that happened in the opening minutes of the attempted invasion of Koh Tang and was able to rescue them after they had survived more than two hours treading water in the ocean
As things were falling apart on nearby Koh Tang, 1/4 Marines from the frigate USS Harold E. Holt brings 1/4 Marines from the Philippines along side the stricken SS Mayaguez.
Believing the commercial ship to be held by an unknown number of armed Khmer hijackers, US aircraft engulfed the Mayaguez in tear gas before the Marines boarded.
By the time the Marines returned to the Holt, it was clear that only a few Khmer Rouge fighters had stayed on the ship and they abandoned the vessel when the tear gas was dropped.
The SS Mayaguez, retaken without a shot fired, was hooked up to the Holt and towed away from Koh Tang.
Bad intelligence plus bad timing equals a bad plan. Last week we saw the bad intelligence when no photos of the objective were available so the Marine making the plan flew over the site at 4500 feet with his personal 35mm camera. This week we see the bad timing I've been eluding to. The bad intelligence and bad timing come together for a disastrous first fifteen minutes of the battle for the Mayaguez and her crew.
Aside from losing three of the first four helicopters that tried to insert Marines onto the beaches of Koh Tang island (two of which can be seen in the first photo on east beach) the forth bird was so damaged that the pilot abandoned the mission, taking her 20 Marines back to Thailand. It was likely the right call as it didn't make it back to U-Tapao Royal Air Base in Thailand before it had to be abandoned.
US reconnaissance planes lost track of the Mayaguez crew when the trawler they were on arrived at the port of Kompong Som on mainland Cambodia. Because of that, US planners continued to plan for a rescue under the assumption that the crew was split between the Mayaguez itself and Koh Tang island and their estimate of how many Khmer soldier were on Koh Tang was off by 90%. Both of which led to a rescue plan that would not be well suited for the reality on the ground.
Oh, and the reconnaissance photos the Marines used to plan the operation was taken with one of their officer's personal 35-mm camera from 4500 feet above the island because apparently no other photos of Koh Tang existed in Thailand where the planning was taking place.
The last image of the Knife 13 casualties just before they took off
As the first day of the Mayaguez Incident was coming to a close, US officials were gathering Marines from The Philippines and Okinawa for a potential rescue attempt. Seventh Air Force Commander, on the ground in Thailand, tried to include his airmen but that... well, that did not go well. One of the helicopters moving to the staging area crashed - call sign Knife 13 - killing all 23 people aboard, 5 crew and 18 passengers. Just last month a monument was dedicated to honor those killed at the Air Force Security Forces Museum at Joint Base San Antonio - Lackland in Texas
The Knife 13 Memorial dedicated October 10, 2024 at Joint Base San Antonio - Lackland, Texas
As the second day of the incident dawned in Southeast Asia, the air force did all in its power, the the use of fighters and attack aircraft, the prevent the Cambodians from transferring their prisoners to the mainland were President Ford felt it would be much more difficult to get them back unharmed.
The last US combat units left South Vietnam on March 29, 1973. The last US embassy personnel were dramatically evacuated on April 30, 1975, the same day that the People's Army of Vietnam entered Saigon, signally the defeat of South Vietnam and the reunification of the country by the Northern communists.
But those considered the final American casualties of the Vietnam War died the following month in neighboring Cambodia fighting soldiers loyal to the Khmer Rouge, not the government in Hanoi. This final unlikely battle was fought over a commercial container ship during the early chaotic days of significant political change in Southeast Asia.
After Ernie Pyle was killed by a single shot from a sniper, the Army's 77th Infantry Division, who he was with at the time, built a temporary memorial. After the three month battle of Okinawa, engineers from the 77th replaced the temporary marker with a permanent one. I had the opportunity to visit the marker of the island of Ie Jima in 2008 while assigned to the 505th Quartermaster Battalion on Okinawa.
The Original Pyle Memorial Marker
The Permanent Marker when it was dedicated July 2, 1945
Pyle was buried on Ie Shima (now Ie Jima) two days after his death in April 1945.
After World War II, Pyle's remains were disinterred and reburied in a cemetery on Okinawa. In 1949, when the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific was dedicated in Hawaii, Pyle's remains were buried there its first day of operation. After the burials of two unknown soldiers (one of either side of Pyle), Pyle was honored as the first known person buried at the site.
Pyle was honored in many traditional ways, but also in a few unique ways. Boeing employees build a B-29 and named it the Ernie Pyle...
...and the Ernie Pyle Memorial Theater, one of the largest headquarters/recreation sites in all of occupied Japan (specifically in downtown Tokyo was also named in his honor. The Pyle Theater was depicted on the front of a commemorative medal many service members purchased a souvenirs.
The back of the Pyle Theater medal was engraved with "Memories of Landing in Japan" and the year the medal was minted. A new batch was put out every year.
In June 1944, Ernie Pyle hit the beach in Normandy, France just one day after the D-Day invasion. He followed ally forces through six weeks of hard fighting over difficult terrain before breaking out of hedgerows and driving the Germans east. He was on hand for the liberation of Paris in late-August and then decided that he had seen enough of war. But that didn't last; by late-December he was in the Pacific covering that theater of the war
When he got back from this trip to Europe, his newspaper bosses commissioned a bust by renowned sculptor Jo Davidson which Pyle sat for while on a layover in New York City.
Today, the bust is at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
I was planning on finishing Pyle's story this week until I heard of the passing of golden-age-of-space-exploration astronaut Air Force Lieutenant General Tom Stafford and deviated from my plans a little to eulogize him as well. Final funeral arrangements are still pending so it is unknown if Stafford will be interred alongside other astronauts at Arlington National Cemetery at this time.
After retuning to Italy from his R&R, Pyle gets a tip from a pre-war friend - who also happens to be the senior US Army air forces commander in the Mediterranean - that he should return to London because the long awaited invasion of western Europe is going to happen sooner rather than later. It's nice to have friends in high places!
Pyle returns to England, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize, graces the cover of Time magazine (which more or less does a smear article/hatchet piece) about him, and then he sails with the Allied armada across the English channel toward France and the D-Day invasion. He is one of only 55 war correspondents to accompany the initial invasion.
After spending a year and a half in war zones, Ernie Pyle finally makes it back to Albuquerque, New Mexico for some much needed rest and relaxation with his wife, Jerry. Unfortunately, he finds little of either and has to return to the war far sooner than he would have liked to.
When he does make it back to the front lines in Sicily, he pens what his usually considered his best article, "The Death of Captain Waskow" which I read in its entirety to close out this week's podcast.
With the Allied invasion of Africa on, Ernie Pyle's fame back in the US as "the only reporter to bring the war home to us" begins to grow. In just six month's time his column is pick up by more than one hundred additional newspapers and his daily readership increases by nearly six and a half million people. He continues to write human interest pieces about the soldiers "over there," but he also includes his own first hand accounts of loss and of the feelings that soldiers experience. He isn't writing about bravado and heroics - though there are heroes in his columns to be sure, they are just also the everyday people who have had war thrust upon them and are trying to survive.
Ernie Pyle always felt like he had missed out when he was too young by a year to get involved in World War I so when war broke out in Europe, he jumped at the chance to go to London and cover the Battle of Britain. When the US got involved, he went over to England again, this time to cover the US troops training for war. Not long after Operation Torch - the first US offensive on the Atlantic side of the war - saw US troops land in North Africa, he hopped on a ship to see if he could make it to the front.
There aren't many readily available online photos of Ernie Pyle pre-World War II. Even his Wikipedia page is devoid of such pictures, so I figured I would throw up a few pictures likely taken during the war, during some of the few moments he returned home to reoperate.
This photo of Jerry and Ernie was taken in front of their home in New Mexico, which they bought during their seven years together roaming the country as a roving reporter and spouse. But again, this photo was taken during a moment of leave Ernie allowed himself during the war.
Born to tenant farmers in rural Dana, Indiana, Ernie Pyle looked for any way to get out of the Midwest farm country he feared he might toil away his life in.
When World War II ended a month after he joined the naval reserve, he did the next best thing - enroll at Indiana University. While in school, he studied communications and journalism, and not only managed to travel to Kentucky and Michigan, but to Japan, China, and the Philippines, too. Shortly after leaving school, he was working for a daily tabloid in Washington, DC, but his wanderlust wouldn't let him stay in one place for long.
His birthplace home still stands in Dana, Indiana, but he left home as soon as he could.
Sadly, the Space Shuttle Challenger was not the only orbiter lost during the shuttle era. Twelve years later, on February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas while reentering Earth's atmosphere after a 16-day mission in orbit.
During it launch, a large chunk of foam broke off and struck the orbiter's left wing. The strike damaged tiles on the wing designed to protect the shuttle and her crew from the extreme heat of reentry.
During reentry, some of the tiles damaged during launch failed, sending the shuttle into an unsurvivable spin. It broke up during reentry and all crewmembers were lost.
More than 85,000 pieces of Columbia were recovered on the ground (most in Texas) during a lengthily search period, including one of the shuttle's main engines seen above.
The recovered debris was shipped to Florida, catalogued, and laid out to support the investigation. The recovered pieces constituted about 38% of the shuttle.
In 2004, more than 400 people were on hand for the dedication of the Columbia Memorial in Section 46 at Arlington National Cemetery, right next to the Challenger Memorial.
In 1996, Teacher in Space runner-up Barbara Morgan returned to NASA, this time as a full fledged astronaut and made it to space on the Endeavour as part of STS-118.
In 2018, astronauts Ricky Arnold (above) and Joe Acaba, both educators who followed in Christa McAuliffe's footsteps, first into middle and high school teaching and then into NASA, traveled to the International Space Station and performed the four experiments that Christa has spent so much time on Earth preparing for but never had the chance to give. You can see Christa's Lost Lessons, as they are called, on challenger.org.
Earlier this year, Joe Acaba (who also happens to have been the first Puerto Rican in space, became Chief of the Astronaut Office.
NASA's shuttle era came to an end on July 21, 2011, when Atlantis landed, finishing STS-135.
The Space Shuttle Challenger flew nine successful missions before that fateful January day in 1986.
STS-51L commander, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Francis Richard "Dick" Scobee was 46 years old.
He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 44, Grave 1129-4.
The elementary school Dick attended in Auburn, Washington was renamed in his honor
STS-51L pilot, Navy Captain Michael John Smith was 40 years old.
He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 7A, Grave 208-1.
The regional airfield in his hometown Beaufort, North Carolina was named after him.
STS-51L mission specialist Judith Arlene Resnik was 36 years old. She is buried under Arlington's Challenger memorial which I will have a picture of later.
Judy's flight suit is on permanent display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
STS-51L mission specialist, Air Force Colonel Ellison Shoji Onizuka was 39 years old.
He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Oahu, Hawaii.
Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, California named a street in El's honor.
STS-51L mission specialist, Ronald Erwin McNair was 35 years old.
He is buried at Dr. Ronald E. McNair Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina.
Which also has a larger than life statue of the city's favorite son.
STS-51L payload specialist, Gregory Bruce Jarvis was 41 years old.
His ashes were spread at his favorite surfing spot in Hermosa Beach, California.
A sculpture called Jarvis Memorial was commissioned by his alma mater, the University of Buffalo, and is part of that school's permanent art collection.
STS-51L payload specialist and Teach in Space winner, Sharon Christa McAuliffe was 37 years old.
She is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Concord, New Hampshire.
When New Hampshire built a science and space-themed discovery center, it was named after the state's two world famous astronauts, Christa McAuliffe and Alan Shepard.
Arlington National Cemetery dedicated its largely privately funded Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial in 1987, It is located in Section 46, Grave 1129-8, near the USS Maine Monument, across the street from the cemetery's memorial amphitheater.
In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to each member of the STS-51L crew.
After the disaster Jean Michel Jarre renamed the song Last Rendezvous, that Ron McNair had wanted to record the saxophone part for while in orbit, Ron's Song
And John Denver made good on his promise to record a song about the Teacher in Space winner. It was not the song he thought he would write but the lyrics came to him as he watched the footage of the shuttle disaster over and over again on TV.
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