Michael W. Lynch Jr.’s marker
The Hartford Currant reports that Michael W. Lynch Jr.’s daughter, Karen Petrella, is doing her best to correct her father’s headstone at Veterans Memorial Field section of Silver Lane Cemetery. She says that D’Esopo East Hartford Memorial Chapel is to blame for the engraving error falsely identifying her father as veteran of the Vietnam War;
Her father would not want “Vietnam” on his tombstone because he was always honest about his service and would not want his grandchildren, great grandchildren or anyone else in the future to think he made false claims, Petrella said.
“I have not slept through the night since I lost my father, and a lot of it is stress because of this,” Petrella said Thursday.
Lynch served honorably in the Connecticut National Guard when most of his generation avoided military service. It looks like a corrected marker will replace the erroneous stone when it gets warmer. It’s nice to see that some family members are willing to go the extra mile to keep the record correct.
Category: Who knows
Seen it before- a Friend who served with me in 2004-05 in Baghdad died by his own hand in 2015 and his gravestone said
His Name followed by
SP/5
Persian Gulf War
We haven’t had a SP/5 since 1985 AFAIK. He was a SGT
It took 8 months to get it corrected
There is a war memorial in my home town with the name of a classmate that served in Vietnam. He died of his own hand two years after leaving active duty.
My FIL’s headstone in Riverside, CA says USMC, with a rank of STM3 and WWII.
Reality – he was in the Coast Guard for 3 months at the end of the WWII era, hence the rank and conflict. However, he went on to serve in the Army (still waiting on the Archives to send service details), then enlisted in the USMC and was wounded twice in Korea. No mention of Korea on the headstone, still trying to verify his final rank – his uniform has a SSgt rocker, but his DD214 has Cpl as his final rank. On the flip side, Riverside has acknowledged the obviousness of their mistake, and will correct once I can get the final service records and the wife decides what to include.
Good for her. Doing the right thing is always worthwhile, but I don’t think she should lose sleep over it.
Exactly.
Agreed. I hope it was just a figure of speech on her part. Losing sleep over someone else’s mistake is not a good thing
Wow! First piece of good news to come out of my hopelessly “blue” state in years! Maybe that portion of the headstone can be saved for when SEN Blumenthal passes!
BZ to the daughter for doing the right thing. Her father would be very proud of her.
It is fairly clear on the form one fills out for the VA provided headstone that the inscription is for the war period during which one served, not whether or not one served in theater. https://www.va.gov/vaforms/va/pdf/VA40-1330.pdf
However, it is either the vet or the vet’s family that fills out the form. If they specifically did NOT request that “Vietnam” be included, then it certainly should not be there.
Yeah, been there, done that. Both the spouse and I served during Vietnam but only included Persian Gulf on our headstone applications since that in the only in theater conflict in which we served. Others making a different choice are not wrong, if they are reporting truthfully.
We may need to lighten up a bit in our vitriol in cases where someone legitimately served during a war period but wasn’t in theater for it.
Oops. Forgot to include the specific language from the form:
“War service includes active duty service during a recognized period of war and the individual does not have to serve in the actual place of war, e.g., Vietnam may be inscribed if the Veteran served during the Vietnam War period, even though the individual never served in the country.”
That may be the official way they do it, but it’s just plain wrong.
The VA will often put the war that was going on at the time the Veteran served.
Then VA is effing wrong.
How can we make the VA abandon this illegitimate practice?
In Conecticut you can call Blumenthals office for starters.
Grow up, Yef. The VA’s long used definitions are not illegitimate simply because you want them to use a different standard today.
Why change it?
My brother spent three years in the Air Force in Thailand from 72-74. Although he did actually set foot in Vietnam, he was not a Vietnam vet. He is, however, a Vietnam Era vet. He served from 71-75. I still tease him about his duty in Thailand though. He lived in the presidential mansion, almost never went to any air bases, had a diplomatic passport, grew his hair, and worked in a detachment out in the jungle.
Awesome duty!
Kudos to her for doing what’s right.
Nice job, your father will be very proud of you!
My Dad did two tours of duty in Vietnam was awarded two Bronze stars
And died in 2000 because of the crap he was responsible for at a
Air base in the north of the country. He retired a full bird Colonel
When he passed away he didn’t want any of his service on his
Marker we did that for him,
BZ to the daughter for doing the right thing
People assume so much on the outside
If the daughter had the VA add ‘Era’ to the grave marker, it would be correct.
But what about people who served during Korea but weren’t deployed there? And WWII – served but stayed stateside the entire time?
They won’t add “Era” because they only designate which war was going on when you served. Same as it has been for a very long time. Customary use may have changed, but the definitions have not.
Back in the day, WWII vets were all called that whether they saw action in Europe, the Pacific, or stateside. At least in the parts of the country where I lived as a kid. Apparently those folks were correct all along and the rest of us want the VA to adapt to what we want instead of us adapting to their long used definitions.
WWII stands for World War Two, right? The operative word there being “World.” You served during that time, you’re a WWII vet.
Viet Nam and Korea were completely different animals. You served at Fort Bragg or Camp Lejeune in 1951 or 1969, that doesn’t make you a Korean War/Viet Nam War vet. Doesn’t matter how long it’s been in common usage, bullshit is still bullshit.
I’d argue that somebody’s gotta be in the rear with the gear. Wearing a uniform during a time of war, whether by volunteering or drafted in, puts you potentially in harms way. Just because the good Uncle Sam blessed you with easier duty doesn’t change a person’s contribution to the war. It takes all of us.
Someone has to recruit, staff MEPS, be a drill sergeant, guard the embassies, and do all that other stuff. When you step off the bus at basic, you’re putting your life in someone else’s hand.
I also see it this way. You don’t get to pick and choose where you serve or what you will be called upon to do.
Your next order could be to kick in hells gate.
Been there, including being raised an Army Brat!!!
Nice story.
Makes me think about what goes on mine.
We do control the marker despite the
wishes of survivors. Same for the flag.
Take care of it beforehand.
I’m going to request that only my Good Conduct Medal be listed on my stone.
I’m going to request just the dates of my service. Let other people figure it out for themselves. It’s simpler that way. And then I won’t have to haunt anyone.
If you serve during a conflict then you were part of that era no matter the role you played you were in support of the troops in country and on the front line that is how it works.
I, like most here, know several Vietnam Vets who actually served in Vietnam. Those that served during that time but did not deploy there are very careful to call themselves “Vietnam Era Vets” as in ” I am a Vietnam Era Vet” or “I served during Vietnam”.
I guess a lot of this had gone over my head. I always assumed that if it said “Vietnam” it meant the person served in Vietnam not during. The bigger point is that the person served when others didn’t and should be thanked for it. Most of them signed up or went when drafted and it was not their fault they didn’t deploy to Vietnam. You go where told.
I am conflicted about this just because of my age, service dates, and who I know, and where they served.
When given the choice, we opted to leave off Vietnam from out headstones even though to be accurate, it should be there because we both served then. By doing so, we may be doing a disservice to those who were also not in country then. Ours do say Persian Gulf, because we were there. Our ranks and ages sort of show that we probably were in back then.
It’s rather like the NDSM – it reflects the time during which we served, not where we served.
But, it can be personal choice. The papers submitted with the application show inclusion time frames, but other forms determine the wording on the headstone. If you have strong feelings about it, get it to the VA or at least make your wishes known to family so that they can fill out the application properly.
My grandfather served during WWII. He built and maintained the bomb bay doors on the B-29’s, including the Enola Gay and Bockscar. He was an E7 (Tech SGT if I’m correct) in the Army Air Corps.
His brothers all served in theater: France/Germany, Pacific Islands, etc.
Oldest brother fought in Bostogne, Battle of the Bulge and Berchtesgaden.
I tell people that Papa was not in theater but like many, without skill, competence and love of country, those bombs would not have dropped.
He’s buried in a private cemetery and like many of the era, did not talk much about their service. A lot of history has been lost.
Just to throw some shit and distraction into this discussion:
The Korean War is not over; technically just paused. So does that mean that everyone who has a tour in Korea is a Korean War Vet.? How about the ones at the DMZ? How about the ones who have been killed by the NoRKs?
How about me? Here comes a war story; sorry that I can’t include a beverage of your choice.
I was in the Air Farce; stationed in Korea twice, visited a few other times. Once, maybe twice a tour the helicopter unit, Rescue when I was there, had to fly to a South Korean Island that is in North Korean waters. To fly there you had to get a bunch of clearances, including from the NoRks. Even then you had a very narrow track you had to fly or you could be shot down. There was even a fighter escort and a Mig Cap when this mission was flown. The crew for this mission was always carefully chosen; OK maybe not once because I was chosen.
When we flew we had to fly fully ready for combat and wearing our full battle rattle in the back. Which I thought was stupid since we would be over water if the shit hit the fan and most likely the helicopter would be shot down. We were even “painted” by Ground to Air missile radar; just the NoRKs way of saying hello. So if we did go down the first thing would be to get out of all the crap we had on so we could float.
Nothing happen, other than the radar, we landed and had time to look at the North Korean mainland thru some binoculars at NoRks looking at us thru some binoculars.
So since I “flew” over North Korea does that make me a Korean War Vet?
No, just gives me a story to tell and a little (very little) bragging rights.