DEWBERRY, JERRY DON
Name: Jerry Don Dewberry
Rank/Branch: E4/US Marine Corps
Unit: Company D, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st
Marine Division
Date of Birth: 10 July 1948
Home City of Record: Ardmore OK
Date of Loss: 05 July 1968
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 164505N 1071143E (XD802409)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1223
Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 March
1991 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 1998.
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: Lance Corporal Jerry D. Dewberry was
assigned to Company D, 1st
Battalion, 1st Marines in Vietam. On July 5, 1968,
just five days short of
his twentieth birthday, Dewberry was part of a Marine
unit sent on patrol in
Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam.
During the patrol, the unit came under enemy fire and
Dewberry was hit. He
was apparently believed to be dead and left behind.
Dewberry was officially
listed Killed in Action/Body Not Recovered.
Jerry D. Dewberry is listed among the missing because
his remains were never
found to send home to the country he served. For his
family, the case seems
clear that he died on that day. The fact that they
have no body to bury with
honor is not of great significance.
For other who are missing, however, the evidence
leads not to death, but to
survival. Since the war ended, over 10,000 reports
received relating to
Americans still held captive in Indochina have
convinced experts that
hundreds of men are still alive, waiting for their
country to rescue them.
The notion that Americans are dying without hope in
the hands of a long-ago
enemy belies the idea that we left Vietnam with
honor. It also signals that
tens of thousands of lost lives were a frivolous
waste of our best men.