LAS VEGAS (FOX5) —Local Vietnam veterans came face to face with the loss of friends during an April visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. as part of an Honor Flight trip.
Honor Flight Southern Nevada veteran Michael McGovern searched and found war buddy Robert Shumate on the wall.
“Robert, thank you for serving buddy. I miss you. Rest in peace my friend. I made it back,” McGovern said to his fallen friend.
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Steven Hayes found a fallen high school friend from Pekin Community High School in Illinois. His name was Billy E Myers.
“Nobody messed with him. He was a good street fighter,” Hayes said.
Hayes found the name of a second classmate on the wall, John Clayton. In all, 11 students from Hayes’ high school lost their lives in the war.
“It’s too many names,” Hayes said.
Veterans remember friends lost in combat
Pilot Jack Redmond flew more than 130 missions in Vietnam and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. It is awarded for heroism or extraordinary achievement while flying.
“The airplane I flew was the one that flew the most into North Vietnam, dropping bombs. It was the F-105 Thunder Chief, affectionately known as the Thud,” Redmond said.
Redmond pointed to two names on the wall: Bill Barthelmas and Jack Farr.
“Bill Barthelmas was one of my best friends. And they were in the flight in front of me as we departed the target area. And Bart’s airplane had been damaged and Jack Farr was moving in close to him to check him out. And Bart said, get away, get away. And the two airplanes collided canopy to canopy,” Redmond said. “We lost six airplanes that day. So it was a bad day. It was 1965.”
Some veterans on the trip said the memorial is not about death but about life and how these service members lived life.
When we asked Redmond what people should know about his friends who passed, he said, “They were loyal Americans, and they were doing the same thing I was doing because we love this country.”
So the day before Memorial Day we remember Robert Shumate, Billy E Myers, John Clayton, Bill Barthelmas, Jack Farr and the more than 58,000 other people on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall who gave their lives in service to the country.
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