FOUND
Woman learns fate of man on Vietnam POW/MIA bracelet
by Joe Flanagan, 13News
Posted on January 26, 2010 at 5:00 PM
HAMPTON -- Linda Bump's held on to her POW/MIA Vietnam War bracelet these 40 years and held onto hope that one day, the man on the bracelet would be found.
Air Force Sgt. Melvin Rash was a 1966 York High School graduate. He crashed in 1968 along the Vietnam/Laos border.
"Over the years, I wondered who is this person, who is this person that I care about so much? Is his mom and dad still here? Does he have brothers and sisters? Especially at Christmas."
Then answers came on December 6 when she discovered his obituary online. Rash would be buried at Arlington National Cemetery the next day, December 7.
"There was no question that I would be there," she stated.
Bump says she was very nervous about meeting Rash's sister and brother.
"A calm came over me and I walked up to his sister and introduced myself and barely got the words out and showed her my bracelet and she hugged me and thanked me for coming.
And it was I hate to say it it was a wonderful day," Bump recalled.
She says her biggest fear was that Rash's remains would be found that he would come home to no one.
He's at rest at home now and will always be in her heart.
Tim Smith with the Yorktown War Monument says Sgt. Rash is now Chief Master Sergeant Rash and his name is on the monument.
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Melvin Douglas Rash
FOUND / RETURNED
Courtesy of the Daily Press By Jon Cawley 27 December 2009
YORK COUNTY, VIRGINIA - It took 41 years, but a York County airman missing in action since the Vietnam War has finally been laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery after his remains were positively identified earlier this year.
Melvin Douglas Rash, of Grafton, was buried with full military honors December 7, 2009, at the revered Washington-area cemetery. He had been missing since 1968, when his Air Force C-130 airplane was presumably shot down over Vietnam.
After years of dead ends, the plane's wreckage was finally positively identified in 2002 in a jungle area near the Laotian border. It took six years before military investigators — with permission from the Vietnamese government — were able to get to the site and use archaeological techniques to sift through the remaining wreckage and surrounding area where they found human remains later matched to five of the plane's nine crew members. Rash was one of those five, said Rash's older brother Larry Rash.
"I've done more grieving in the last few months than I had since he went missing," Larry Rash said, adding that the family held out that there would be a homecoming. "Eventually, the hope just faded — although we never really gave it up. Finding the remains forced closure."
Rash's parents, Howard and Myrtle Rash, died in 2002 and 2005, respectively. In addition to Larry Rash, Melvin Rash is survived by a sister, Ranae L. Carroll.
Even though the military notified the family in 2002 that Melvin Rash's plane had been discovered, the parents' health was such that they were never able to understand that their son may have been found, Larry Rash said.
Larry Rash said his brother joined the Air Force in 1966 after graduating from York High School. Melvin Rash spent two years in the military and was within a couple months of leaving Vietnam, after two tours of duty, when the plane and crew failed to return from a mission.
At the time, Melvin Rash was a load master on the C-130, the crew member responsible for prepping cargo for parachute drops. On the night of the crash, the crew was dropping flares over hostile territory when they came under fire, Larry Rash said.
"The rest of the squadron lost contact with the plane, and it is believed there were no survivors," he said. "Fire on the ground is all we had until 2002."
The investigation was hampered for years by dense jungle and "false leads" provided by those who lived in the area, Larry Rash said.
Because four of the plane's crew members are still unaccounted for, some unidentified bone fragments found at the scene will be symbolically buried at Arlington sometime in 2010, Larry Rash said.
With the recovery of Rash's remains, his status on York County's 9-year-old War Monument will be updated from its current missing in action designation.
Melvin Rash will be honored at a York County Memorial Day ceremony next year "because we've finally seen him brought home and buried," said Tim Smith, of York's Historical Committee.
SYNOPSIS:
The Lockheed C130 Hercules aircraft was a multi-purpose propeller driven aircraft, and was used as transport, tanker, gunship, drone controller, airborne battlefield command and control center, weather reconnaissance craft, electronic reconnaissance platform; search, rescue and recovery craft.
In the hands of the "trash haulers", as the crews of Tactical Air Command transports styled themselves, the C130 proved the most valuable airlift instrument in the Southeast Asia conflict, so valuable that Gen. William Momyer, 7th Air Force commander, refused for a time to let them land at Khe Sanh where the airstrip was under fire from NVA troops surrounding thatbase.
Just following the Marine Corps operation Pegasus/Lam Son 207 in mid-April 1968, to relieve the siege of Khe Sanh, Operation Scotland II began in the Khe Sanh area, more or less as a continuation of this support effort. The C130 was critical in resupplying this area, and when the C130 couldn't land, dropped its payload by means of parachute drop. One of the bases from which the C130 flew was Ubon, located in northeast Thailand. C130 crews from this base crossed Laos to their objective location. One such crew was comprised of LtCol. William H. Mason and Capt. Thomas B. Mitchell, pilots; Capt. William T. McPhail, Maj. Jerry L.Chambers, SA Gary Pate, SSgt. Calvin C. Glover, AM1 Melvin D. Rash and AM1 John Q. Adam, crew members.
On May 22, 1968, this crew departed Ubon on an operational mission in a C130A carrying one passenger - AM1 Thomas E. Knebel. Radio contact was lost while the aircraft was over Savannakhet Province, Laos near the city of Muong Nong, (suggesting that its target area may have been near the DMZ -Khe Sanh). When the aircraft did not return to friendly control, the crew was declared Missing In Action from the time of estimated fuel exhaustion. There was no further word of the aircraft or its crew. The nine members of the crew are among nearly 600 Americans who disappeared in Laos. Many are known to have been alive on the ground following their shoot downs. Although the Pathet Lao publicly stated on several occasions that they held "tens of tens" of American prisoners, not one American held in Laos has ever been released. Laos did not participate in the Paris Peace accords ending American involvment in the war in 1973, and no treaty has ever been signed that would free the Americans held in Laos, and not one of them has returned home.
Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families,published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK in 1998.Other Personnel in Incident: Jerry L. Chambers; Calvin C. Glover; Thomas E. Knebel; John Q. Adam; William T. McPhail; Thomas B. Mitchell; Gary Pate;William H. Mason (all missing)
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Name: Melvin Douglas Rash |
These men are stil Missing In Action.
They are Fellow citizens of the Peninsula who have not come Home. Please take time to contact our Elected Officials and voice your concern. ...Where are these Men!
These Men are someone Son-Brother-Father and yes even GrandFather. We must find out what Happened to them.Give your Support with a letter/Call or even an e-mail to our Elected Officals in Washington D.C.