namvets.com  Welcome home Bothers and Sisters!

Army Sgt. Walters buried in Niles
By DON PORTER
Tribune Staff Writer

NILES--When Tim L. Walters and John B. Lawson were U.S. Army staff sergeants together in Vietnam in the late 1960s, they made a promise to each other.

If one should die in the conflict, the other would make sure his body was brought home for burial in American soil.

It took more than 30 years, but Lawson finally was able to carry out that pledge this week.

He accompanied Walters' remains from Hawaii to Niles so his buddy could receive a formal military burial in Silverbrook Cemetery.

The Saturday service included a 21-gun salute; the playing of "Taps;" the presentation of the flag that draped Walters' casket to his parents, Marvin E. and Marylynn Walters; and even an Irish bagpiper. The honor guard conducting the ceremony was from Fort Knox, Ky.

A South Bend native and 1961 graduate of Clay High School, Walters was just 26 years old when he died in combat in Laos on March 9, 1969. He was a pilot and paratrooper with the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

Walters died in the crash of his Cessna O-2 during a mission to help rescue eight to 10 American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines.

Although the Army knew he died in the crash and the location of the wreckage, it was not able to gain access to the site and recover his remains until recently.

"We knew exactly where he was at. We just couldn't get there," recalled Lawson, now a retired colonel. Laotian officials allow recovery crews only very limited access to their country.

Lawson, a member of the U.S. Special Forces, said he and Walters first met in mid-1966 and became friends.

"We made an agreement to return the other back home if one of us was killed," he said. "Our main concern was to be buried back here."

Walters' remains were positively identified through dental records.

Through the military, Lawson said he was able to contact Walters' parents, who now live in Mesa, Ariz.

"I felt very honored that the family asked me to bring him back home," he said.

Among those paying tribute to Walters was Lt. Fulton Moore of the Niles Police Department. Moore served 24 years with the Special Forces and, like Walters, saw combat in Laos.

"Men like Tim flying reconnaissance and recovery aircraft were our lifeline," he said. "Every day he was up there risking his life so that others could be saved.

"After 30 years, he's coming home," Moore added.

The twin-engine Cessna O-2 was used by the military in Vietnam from 1966 on. It had an unusual twin-propeller setup with props on both the front and back of the fuselage.

With a cruising speed of only 144 miles an hour, it was used largely for reconnaissance work, not for combat.

Walters, a Vietnam volunteer, flew 70 missions during his four tours in Vietnam, said Army chaplain Capt. Gary Williams of the 327th Military Police Battalion in Chicago. Many of those missions involved flying as a forward observer behind enemy lines.

"He was willing to give himself up for his friends," Williams said. "He cared about his country, his countrymen, and his comrades."

Williams noted that Walters was buried alongside his uncle Harry Walters, an Army Air Corps captain who died in World War II.

During Saturday's services, Walters' parents were given several "POW/MIA" bracelets bearing their son's name that area residents had saved over the years. Mrs. Walters placed them on their son's casket so they could be alongside him permanently.

Military records of the Vietnam War will be updated to reflect that Walters' remains were recovered, said Thomas Campbell, who oversees military casualty records for the Defense Department's Directorate of Information Operations and Reports.

The agency maintains the records kept by the National Archives on military casualties.

Walters currently is listed as having been killed during hostilities in Vietnam, but his body not recovered. He will be removed from the list of those still "missing" after his office receives the formal military death certificate, Campbell said.

The "missing" designation in the archives means only that a casualty's body was not recovered, not that there were questions about whether the person actually died.

It is used in cases such as Walters' death, where his Cessna O-2 "Skymaster" military scout plane crashed, but because of hostilities around the site, his body could not be recovered, Campbell said.

The database at the National Archives is only updated once a year, so it may be some time before records there reflect the change, Campbell said.