Dear Editor,
I became a commissioned officer in the USAF in September 1966. I remembered the orders that I received right after I was commissioned stating “pipeline SEA”. Of course SEA meant South East Asia. In December 1966, I was starting flight training in Texas. I returned to the Monterey Bay Area to spend some Christmas leave with my family. Just after I arrived home, in the latter part of December, the central California newspapers were reporting on the combat death of a Sgt. Richard Campos. Of course, he was killed in Vietnam. The reason why his death made the news was because there were no next of kin to claim his body. Richard had spent a number of years with me at the catholic boarding school that I had attended in Watsonville, California, in the 1950s. None of his fellow students were told that he was an orphan. A priest who ran the school stepped forward to claim his body. This time of the year is when I really remember those who I knew who were killed in Vietnam. For me, Veterans’ Day comes in December not in November.
Dr. W. David Herbert
Billings
