First ‘Nam casualties remembered
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- July
- 9
Fifty years ago this week, U.S. Army Maj. Dale Buis and Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand were in the mess hall watching a movie when “terrorists’’ attacked their compound in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, killing them both and making them the first casualties in what became the Vietnam War.
“It was a minor incident in a faraway place,’’ Stanley Karnow told the Associated Press.
Karnow was Time magazine’s chief Asian correspondent at the time, making is first trip to Saigon. He heard about the attack and wrote a small story.
Buis and Ovnand were remembered in a ceremony yesterday at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. You can read the entire AP report here.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that these two guys would be the first in a memorial to 50,000-some others,” Karnow said.
Few did. May they, and all who followed them, rest in peace.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 2:25 pm by Rich Liebson. 
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