Missing Vietnam airman laid to rest

38 years of uncertainty end with June 17 ceremonies, By Sharon Siegel ARLINGTON, VA. — Edwin Jack Pearce, a former POW/MIA Vietnam War airman from Milford, was among 14 crewmen buried in an emotional group ceremony held at Arlington National Cemetery last week. Pearce was part of the ill-fated air crew sent out on a night reconnaissance mission from Thailand on March 29, 1972. None would return alive. As the AC-130A Hercules Spectre gunship made its way over the foothills of Laos, the aircraft was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile (SAM). Handheld beepers were manually activated after the crash, giving hope to many that at least some of the crew may have survived. Over the years, various live-sighting reports, along with family members’ refusal to accept limited evidence as casualty, kept the crew’s status as POW/MIA. Excavations of the crash site eventually yielded a tooth, dogtags, and small fragments of bone, some of which were identified by DNA, but some were never attributable to any one member of the crew. Earlier this year, the last remaining member of the crew’s status was changed to “accounted for,” thus allowing last week’s group burial of the unidentified remains in Arlington. A headstone, to be placed at the crew’s grave site in the near future, will bear the names of all 14 airmen. Approximately 200 family members, friends, veterans, and military personnel gathered in America’s national cemetery for the June 17 memorial service. Full military honors included a flag-draped shiny silver casket and full Air Force escort team, a military fly-over, a band, bugler, and a six-team (four with riders) horse-drawn caisson bearing the group casket and leading a procession along the narrow, gravestone-lined cemetery lanes to the airmen’s final resting place in Arlington’s Section 60. Zachary Pearce a 20-year-old nephew of Jack Pearce, whom he never met, said the day was, “the end of a struggle for the truth for my family. But, most importantly, my uncle and his crew received full honors on some of the most sacred ground there is. It is because of people like my Uncle Jack and his crew that America is the greatest nation on earth,” he said.