William H. Keeler, 

Killed by A ‘Non-hostile’ Mine

Not all the casualties of war are in combat. Some soldiers and sailors, like Billy Keeler, die in the service of their country because of tragic accidents.

In Keeler’s case, death came to a young man who had already survived one near-fatal accident — when he was only three years old.

Born in 1949, William Howard Keeler grew up on Cooper Hill Road in Ridgefield and attended schools here.  By 1959, when his family was living in South Salem and he was 10, his father, Robert, died. His mother, the former Frances L. Coughlin, was left with nine sons and two daughters, most of whom were still young enough to be at home.

She returned to Ridgefield with her family, living on Roberts Lane.

Keeler worked in construction until February 1968 when he joined the U.S. Army. He was assigned to the 31st Engineer Battalion and by that summer, he was in Vietnam.

On March 24, 1969, he was killed in what the Army coldly termed “non-hostile action, accident.” Little was publicly released about the cause of his death but one Vietnam War archive reports that “he was killed in an accident while clearing mine at Camp Gorvad … north of Bien Hoa/Saigon.”

While he appeared to be involved in one of the most dangerous duties of modern warfare — land mine clearance — it is uncertain how this could be considered a “non-hostile” death, unless he was clearing mines planted by Americans. Of the 58,000 servicemen who died in Vietnam, the deaths of nearly 11,000 — almost 20% — were called “non-hostile” by the military. One in five.

Keeler was only 19 years old, one of six people who had lived in Ridgefield to die in the Vietnam War.

After services at St. Mary’s Church with a military honor guard, he was buried in Mapleshade

Cemetery. His name is on Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. 

The hazards of Vietnam proved fatal to William Keeler, but the dangers in his own backyard almost did nearly 17 years earlier.

In early September 1952, three-year-old Billy Keeler was playing at an old-fashioned open well at his parents’ Cooper Hill Road home. Suddenly, he slipped and plunged 15 feet down the shaft into a 10-foot-deep pool of icy water.

No adults were around, but one of his siblings saw what happened and ran to the nearby home of Mrs. Joseph F. Beck on Branchville Road, crying “My brother has fallen in the well!”

She called state police who also alerted the fire department. Among the first to arrive on the scene was Fire Chief Horace A. Walker who grabbed a ladder from the fire truck, lowered it into the well, climbed down, and brought the boy to the surface.

“In all likelihood the Keeler youngster can attribute his life to his own presence of mind and to the fact that a vertical pipe runs through the center of the well,” The Ridgefield Press reported the next day. “Although stunned by his 15-foot fall, he kept  his head above water by clinging to the pipe until help arrived. A cut on the back of the head and several body bruises were his only injuries.” 

Gen. Wilber E. Wilder: 

Medal of Honor Winner

Gen. Wilber E. Wilder, one of three residents who had earned the Congressional Medal of Honor, is the only winner buried in Ridgefield.

In an 1882 battle with the Apaches in Horseshoe Canyon, N.M., General Wilder, then a lieutenant, carried a wounded comrade down the side of a mountain amid a hail of Apache bullets, an act of heroism that earned him the medal in 1896.  

“He carried off a wounded soldier who had been left between the Indians and the troops during a forced retreat which the troops had made,” his son Throop M. Wilder wrote at the time of his father’s death many years later.

Born in 1857 in Michigan, Wilder entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at the age of 16, graduated in 1877 and was assigned to the Cavalry, soon serving in the American Indian Wars in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and the Indian Territories.

In 1886 he was considered a key figure in negotiating the surrender of the Apache chief Geronimo.

“His greatest single exploit was his ride into Geronimo’s camp at the end of a year’s pursuit by General Nelson A. Miles,” his son said. “No one knew whether the Indians would surrender, or whether anyone venturing into their camp to find out would ever return.”

Wilder did return and a surrender was finally agreed to.

By 1895, Wilder was stationed at West Point as adjutant of the Military Academy, but he was soon off to other assignments near and far.

In 1898, in the Spanish-American war he commanded the 14th New York “Volunteers.”

While a captain, he served as acting superintendent of Yellowstone National Park in 1899.

He was sent to Manilla during the Philippine-American War, serving under General Arthur MacArthur (both Arthur and his son, General Douglas MacArthur, were also awarded the Medal of Honor, the first father-son pair to be so honored). For a while Wilder was superintendent of police in Manila.

As colonel of the 5th Cavalry, he was second in command in General Pershing’s Expeditionary Force into Mexico to fight Pancho Villa in 1916.

He served during World War I as brigadier general in France.

Wilder retired in 1927 and came to live quietly for many years at The Elms Inn on Main Street. “He was a very modest man and did not talk about his exploits,” said former town historian Richard E. Venus. 

Gen. Wilder died in 1952 and is buried in Fairlawn Cemetery, where a special plaque marks him as a Medal of Honor recipient.  

Gen. David Perry: 

A Notable Portrait

Brigadier General David Perry is believed to be the only Ridgefield native who rose to the rank of a general in the U.S Army. Consequently, he is probably also the highest-ranking military officer to have been born here.

He was, according to a 1908 Ridgefield Press profile, “best known for his bravery as an Indian fighter, although he had served with distinction in the Civil War.” 

Today, however, he may be better known for a portrait that was painted of him.

Perry was born in Ridgefield on June 11, 1841, a son of Samuel and Sophia Perry, and attended the private school on Main Street operated by the Rev. David H. Short. He enlisted from New Jersey, receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the 1st Cavalry in March 1862. Three months later he was promoted to first lieutenant, and to captain in November 1864. 

During the Civil War, he fought in many  battles and skirmishes with the Army of the Potomac.

After the war, he spent nearly two decades in the West, fighting American Indians. In 1873, he gained some distinction by capturing Captain Jack and his band of Modoc Indians in California after they had killed Gen. E.R.S. Canby and some peace commissioners. Captain Perry was wounded by the Modocs in one of the engagements. 

Perry fought against the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph in 1877 and in the Bannock campaign in 1878. He was also a commander of Fort Custer in Montana.

He was breveted — promoted — three times due to gallantry in battle, once in the Civil War and twice in the American Indian Wars.

He became a lieutenant colonel of the 10th Cavalry in 1891 and colonel of the all-black 9th Cavalry in 1896. At the time of his retirement in 1904, he was promoted to brigadier general. 

In 1907, Perry had his portrait painted by Robert Henri, a noted American painter and teacher. Henri was a leader of the Ashcan School movement of American realism that portrayed scenes in the daily life, usually of poor people. The portrait of Perry sold at a 1992 auction for $28,600 ($48,000 in today’s dollars) and is now in the collection of the Denver Art Museum.

Perry died in Washington, D.C., in 1908 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His wife, S. Louise Hoyt, who died in 1938, is buried beside him.

John T. Orrico: 

A Distinguished Hero

John Orrico’s Ridgefield High School yearbook said his ambition was “to become a pilot.” Orrico became a pilot, and he used his skills in the most dangerous place in the most dangerous way: He commanded an attack gunship in the Vietnam War.

    Born in Stamford in 1948, John Thomas Orrico grew up in Ridgefield, one of three sons of Fred and Helen Casey Orrico, who ran the popular King Neptune Restaurant on Route 7 for many years (Helen had been a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps while Fred was a Navy seaman aboard the battleship Missouri when the Japanese signed their surrender on its deck).

    At Ridgefield High School, where he graduated in 1966, John Orrico played football and golf, was in the band, and helped in the library. He attended The Citadel before enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1968 where he underwent helicopter pilot training and was commissioned a warrant officer. 

He was sent to Vietnam in August 1969 to pilot Huey UH-1C attack helicopters. The UH-1C,  fitted with machine guns and rocket packs, was used to support ground troops in combat.

Piloting one of these helicopters in Vietnam was incredibly dangerous. Of the 696 UH-1Cs

that the Army used in combat, 415 were destroyed, according to military historian Gary Roush. A total of 167 of their pilots and 158 crew were killed. 

Of all 7,000 different models of UH-1 Huey helicopters flown in Vietnam, 3,300 were destroyed, and 1,074 of their pilots died. 

Within a year of his arrival in Vietnam, Orrico had earned the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Air Medal. But his highest award, the Distinguished Flying Cross, was received Aug. 28, 1970 “for heroism in action while engaged in aerial flight in connection with military operations against a hostile force.”

However, it was not a hostile force but a helicopter that killed CWO Orrico two months later.

According to Army records, on Nov. 2, 1970, at 6:50 a.m,  Orrico took off with a crew of three from a base at Rach Gia near the very southern end of Vietnam, and was heading for the Rach Soi Airfield for refueling. After making a right turn and leveling off at 500 feet, “the main rotor system separated from the aircraft,” which then crashed and exploded, killing all four men.

Orrico was due to come home the next month.

The 22-year-old soldier was buried with full military honors at St. Mary’s Cemetery. 

He was the third and last Ridgefielder to lose his life in the Vietnam War.

Elmer Q. Oliphant: 

An Early All-American

Who was the greatest athlete ever to have lived in Ridgefield? Quite possibly Elmer Q. Oliphant, a name almost forgotten today but known to almost every sports fan of the first third of the 20th Century. 

An Indiana native, Ollie Oliphant was born in 1892 and attended Purdue from 1911 to 1913. Although he was there only two years, he is today one of 17 members of the school’s Football Hall of Fame. Among the records he still holds are most points scored in a game (43) and most touchdowns scored in a game (5)

In 1914, he transferred to West Point. When he arrived, he was greeted by an upper-class cadet named Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“Who are you?” demanded Eisenhower 

“Oliphant,” grinned the newcomer.

“Oliphant WHAT?” roared Eisenhower.

“Oliphant, Elmer Quillen” replied the new cadet.

“You mean — ‘Oliphant, SIR,’ ” Eisenhower responded, adding, “Wipe that smile off your face. Put it in your pocket. Untack those pants. Now, forward march, up to the Guard House.”

Oliphant told the story to a newspaper columnist after he had gotten a letter from Eisenhower while the general was in Africa during World War II.

At the U.S. Military Academy, Oliphant became the first cadet ever to letter in seven sports (football, baseball, basketball, track, boxing, swimming, and hockey). 

In 1916, as an Army back, he was a football All-American; Knute Rockne later included him on his own all-time All-American team. In his college football career, he was credited with  435 points – 135 at Purdue and 300 at Army.

His abilities were legend. The New York Times once reported that “Mr. Oliphant’s most notable field goal was kicked after he had suffered a broken ankle in a game against Illinois. His kick accounted for a 3-0 victory. While playing basketball for Purdue against Wisconsin, he shot the winning basket while seated on the floor.” 

After graduating from West Point, Oliphant became a small-arms instructor at Fort Benning, Ga. In 1920 he returned to the military academy to establish the first college intramurals program in the nation — “you’re talking to the daddy of intramural athletics,” he told a Ridgefield Press reporter in 1950. The idea was copied by the Naval Academy and was soon used in colleges and universities across the country.   

He also became West Point’s first full-time coach.

After his service in the Army, he played in 1921 for the Buffalo All-Americans in the early years of what is now the National Football League. While he led the league with 47 points that year (including throwing seven touchdowns, and kicking five field goals and 26 point after touchdowns), he retired from playing after that season. He joined the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, became an executive there and retired in 1957.

In 1955, Mr. Oliphant was elected to the National Football Hall of Fame. 

He and his wife Barbara moved to Wilton Road West in the 1940s, and both — especially Barbara — were active in the Ridgefield community. They moved to New Canaan in 1952, but after Mr. Oliphant died in 1975 at the age of 82, he was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Ridgefield.

“The greatest value of athletics is found in the realm of character building,” Oliphant once said. “Sound hearts, strong bodies, clear minds, and high ideals in life are the objectives.”

Jeo Casagrande: 

The POW and His Mom

Jeo Casagrande’s life was one of extraordinary adventure, service and accomplishment. Starting out aiming to be an aircraft mechanic, Casagrande wound up piloting huge 10-engine nuclear-armed bombers. He also spent a year and a half as a German prisoner of war.

Jeo Joseph Casagrande was born in 1921 to Adolfo and Ulrica Marcucci Casagrande, longtime residents of Bryon Avenue.  His siblings included Pio, Rudolph, Peter, Yola and Columba Casagrande.

His given name was rather unusual; today only about  two babies in every million born are named Jeo. It led to some identity problems, especially in military reporting. His name often appears in official records as Leo Casagrande, and sometimes as Joe Casagrande. The American Air Museum in Britain uses both Leo and Joe, but never Jeo.

Casagrande attended Ridgefield schools and graduated from Ridgefield High School in 1939. That December he entered the U.S. Army; it was three months after war had begun in Europe but two years before the United States became involved.

His aim was to be an aircraft mechanic, but the Army saw different talents in the 18-year-old recruit. In the years that followed Casagrande worked his way up to become an  officer and a navigator aboard heavy bombers that flew in the European Theatre from bases in England.

On Jan. 11, 1944, he was on a bombing mission to Oschersleben in north-central Germany when his B-17 Flying Fortress was shot down by German fighters. Strangely, two days after his plane was lost, his parents received a cablegram from him, reporting he had been promoted from second to first lieutenant. About 10 days later, however, they learned he was missing in action.

There were reports Casagrande may have parachuted from the plane, giving the family hope. Then in March, a postcard arrived, dated Jan. 17, saying: “I am a prisoner of war in Germany. I am not injured in any way. Apply to your local Red Cross agent for all details. This is only a transit camp. I will write and give my return address from my next camp in a few days. Love to all, Jeo.” 

On Jan. 26, he wrote another card, not received in Ridgefield until May. “Dear Mom,” he

said, “Just finished a good game of cards and am about ready for bed. Sleep and food are both very plentiful. You must give the Red Cross $25 for me. They’re doing wonders over here…”

To cheer up his family, he added, “Believe me, when I get home, there won’t be a sad person around. Everyone must be cheerful and I myself will not have a grouchy day for the rest of my life.”

Casagrande spent the rest of the war as a prisoner at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth-Vogelsang, Prussia, and was liberated by the Russians in June 1945. 

For many people, six years  — a quarter of the time in a German prison camp  — would have been enough military service. But Casagrande loved the Army Air Corps and elected to stay in after the war. After the U.S. Air Force became a separate entity in 1947, he became a captain in the new service. 

In 1950 he was chosen to pilot of one of the first new B-36 bombers assigned to the 2nd Air Force, the reconnaissance arm of the Strategic Air Command. The B-36 was an immense aircraft — the largest piston-engined airplane ever put to use, with the longest wingspan — 230 feet — of any combat aircraft ever built (by comparison, a Boeing 747 has 196-foot wingspan). The plane’s first

versions had six engines, a total soon increased to 10 — six prop and four jet! The B-36 required a crew of from nine to 15 people and because of it size and complexity, it was notoriously difficult to fly.

When he retired in 1962, Casagrande was a lieutenant colonel serving as an SAC squadron leader of B-47 bombers. His commendations included the Air Medal, awarded for meritorious service in aerial flight during World War II.

He became a stockbroker in Riverside, Calif., where he lived for 35 years and was active in community work. He served on the Commission on Aging and on an area social services board, and was active in the California Handicapped Association. He died in Riverside in 1996 at the age of 74. He was buried in Riverside National Cemetery with full military honors and an Air Force fly-over.

One of the first things Jeo Casagrande did when he was freed from Stalag Luft 1 was to write home, praising the Red Cross  — knowing that his mother, Ulrica, was a Red Cross volunteer in Ridgefield.

“The efforts and accomplishments of the Red Cross are a work worthy of the utmost admiration,” he told his mother. “While I was a prisoner, it was the Red Cross who kept me from looking like one of those neglected prisoners of war you no doubt have seen in the movies or magazines. Now, though the Army gives us the best of care, food and medical attention, it is the Red Cross which provides the entertainment and additional comforts which make life quite pleasant.”

Casagrande added, “I am proud to know my Mom has been patiently making bandages and other stuff for this famous organization. Yes, here is one of the Casagrande boys coming home in a few weeks and probably the biggest one factor in helping him survive this struggle has been his own mother’s outfit.”

James Birarelli: 

First to Die in World War II

At least 20 Ridgefielders died in World War II, Ridgefield’s costliest war in terms of deaths of any fought during the town’s three centuries. The first to die in combat was James Birarelli, shot as Allied troops were in the process of defeating the Axis in Tunisia.

His father, 4,300 miles away in Ridgefield, knew something bad had happened. 

James Birarelli was born in Ridgefield in 1915, a son of Nazzareno “Nano” and Palmina Goffi Birarelli, who had immigrated from Ostra, Italy, in 1906. Known to his friends as “Jim Bar,” he attended Ridgefield schools, was a member of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department, and had been working for a local nursery when he decided to enlist. He had just turned 25 when he entered the Army in March 1940, shortly after war had broken out in Europe, but long before the United States joined the conflict.

By August of 1942, he was in North Africa with the 1st Division, battling General Erwin

Rommel’s Afrika Korps. On April 22, 1943, the final battle in the Tunisian Campaign began as Allied forces launched attacks against a long line of German and Italian troops west of Tunis. The next day, Friday, April 23, Birarelli and his comrades were moving eastward. According to the Army, “Although his small patrol was ambushed by a vastly superior enemy force, Private Birarelli refused to surrender. He opened fire on the enemy and assisted in driving them off. As a result of this action, Private Birarelli was mortally wounded.”

The fighting was fierce — it took the 1st, 4th and 78th Infantry Divisions eight days to move six miles into the Axis lines. But by the first week in May, the Axis forces surrendered, and the Allies wound up with 230,000 German and Italian prisoners of war.

On the morning of April 23, the day Jim Birarelli died, his father had a dream, according to “Impact,” Aldo Biagiotti’s history of Ridgefield’s Italian community. 

“You know, I saw Jim in a field surrounded by nuns,” Nano told his family. “Something has happened to him.”

His daughters, Mary (later Mary Morrow) and Nell (Nell Fortin), discounted the dream.

But on May 11, the family received a telegram reporting that Jim had been killed in action —

on April 23, which was Good Friday. 

“Father was right,” Mary Birarelli exclaimed.

When she heard the news, Palmina, Jim’s mother, “bolted hysterically from the house,” Biagiotti reported. 

For his bravery PFC Birarelli was posthumously given the Silver Star, awarded for gallantry in action, as well as the Purple Heart.

He was buried in a temporary military cemetery in Beji, Tunisia. Four years later, in October

of 1947, the Army notified the Birarellis that they needed to move their son’s body from the cemetery in Africa to a national or civilian cemetery in the United States. Nano and Palmina decided to have their son buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery.

The body did not arrive until the spring of 1948. Hundreds of Ridgefielders packed St. Mary’s Church Friday, June 4, for a memorial Mass celebrated by the Rev. Dionisi J. Birarelli, Jim’s brother. More than 80 Ridgefield veterans marched with the hearse on the journey from the church to the cemetery.

Charles Cogswell: 

He Volunteered for More

Staff Sgt. Charles Cogswell had flown 43 combat missions as a waist gunner on the B-17 “Flying Fortress” and was eligible to come home and conclude his hazardous duty. Instead, he volunteered for more bombing runs.

Soon after, on March 11, 1944, his plane was hit by German fire over 

the Adriatic Sea near Padua, Italy. He was never found and was listed at the war’s end as “missing in action.”
Wayne DeForest, a nephew of Cogswell, reports that, “The letters from the War Department that my grandparents kept all these years, and that I now keep, reported that the aircraft he was on took enemy fire and exploded. The Germans reported they patrolled the waters where it went down and the only survivor was the co-pilot who was sent to a POW camp.”

Charles Gardiner Cogswell was born in Ridgefield in 1923, a son of Katherine and Richard Cogswell. His father was a local plumbing contractor and the family lived on Ramapoo Road.

Cogswell graduated from Ridgefield High School in 1941. A year later, at the age of 19, he joined the Army. By 1943 he had been promoted to sergeant.

Sometime after he was declared missing in action, “his family ... received a beautiful

memorial booklet, inscribed with his name, paying tribute to him for his flying duties, which in some cases were carried out from British bases,” recalled Charles Coles, a classmate of Cogswell at RHS.

For his service, Sgt. Cogswell earned the Purple Heart, the Air Medal Air Medal with 6 Oak Leaf Clusters, the American Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal, all awarded posthumously. 

 He is listed on the “Tablets of the Missing” at Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, Nettuno, Italy.

The 1946 Ridgefield High School yearbook was dedicated to Cogswell and nine other former RHS students who had lost their lives in the war.

In 1942, shortly before enlisting, four teenagers happened to be on Main Street in front of the town hall when a Life magazine photographer was doing a photo shoot of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Westbrook Pegler participating in a scrap drive by donating his car’s bumpers. In the background of the full-page picture that appeared in Life, one can clearly see the faces of the four Ridgefield boys, watching the goings on. One of them was Charlie Cogswell.

Armando Frulla: 

A Hero’s Unlucky Number

“It seems that the number 13 was always unlucky for my brother Armando,” said Pauline Frulla Moylan. “He injured himself on barbed wire on the 13th, and he received a serious head injury sleigh-riding on the 13th.”

And on Jan. 13, 1945, on a battlefield in Belgium, Private First Class Armando Frulla lost his life. 

“My mother would cry all day whenever she had a premonition that something bad was going to happen,” said Pauline’s sister, Augusta  Frulla Brusca. “On Jan. 13, 1945, mother started crying early in the morning. That day, on the way to work, I turned over the car and injured my shoulder slightly. When I returned home that night, I said to mother, that was the reason she had cried. Little did we expect the news we would receive in a few days.”

     A Ridgefield native, Armando J. Frulla was born in 1922, attended Ridgefield schools, and graduated from Danbury State Trade School, now Henry Abbott Tech. He was a carpenter and worked for the Town Farm — the old “poorhouse” — on North Salem Road.

He enlisted in the Army in September 1941 and was assigned to duty in the medical corps in Texas.

“He could have had a deferment, but was determined to do his part for his country,” said Ridgefield historian Dick Venus.

According to Aldo Biagiotti in his book, “Impact: The Historical Account of the Italian Immigrants of Ridgefield, Connecticut,” “While he was waiting in California for shipment to the Pacific, he became bored and transferred to the paratroopers.”

“There was a high priority for paratroopers at the time, and Armando was accepted and sent to Fort Bragg for training,” said Augusta Brusca.

Frulla wound up in the same unit with two hometown friends, Dominic Bedini and Lester Hunt. In March 1944, while home on furlough, he became engaged to Gertrude Smith of Brewster, N.Y.  The next month,  Frulla, Bedini and Hunt were shipped to England.

All three landed in France on D-Day. Bedini and Hunt were both wounded and evacuated to England while Frulla escaped injury and was able to fight the Germans. (Hunt later was captured by the Germans and became a prisoner of war; Bedini is also profiled in Who Was Who.)

In December, after spending some time in a rest camp in France, Frulla and his unit were trucked to Belgium where they became involved in fighting around Bastone. “In the fight, the Germans surrounded the Americans and killed many,” said Brusca. “Armando was one of them.”

He was 22 years old.
“He was awarded the Purple Heart, a good conduct medal, but most important, the silver star for bravery,” said Betty Buzzi, a niece of Frulla.   

Two years after the war ended, his parents,  Alessandro “Andrew” and Rosa Frulla, had his remains transferred from the American cemetery at Grand-Failly, France, to St. Mary’s Cemetery.

“Armando’s death crushed my father, and he was never the same again,” said Pauline Moylan. 

“The Army send back some of Armando’s belongings. There were pictures, coins that he had collected from the various countries he had been in, and a paratrooper ring.

“Mother wore that paratrooper ring, whose insignia finally wore away, until the day she died.” —by Jack Sanders

Lt. Thomas Carnegie:

Victim of Vietnam
Lt. Thomas Carnegie died while trying to help a fellow soldier.

He came to Ridgefield in 1965 when his parents moved to Silver Spring Lane. He had worked part-time at the Grand Union on Main Street while on summer vacation from college.

Carnegie was attending Belknap College in New Hampshire when, in June of 1967, he decided to enlist in the Army and was sent to Officers Candidate School at Fort Sill, Okla. There he was commissioned a second lieutenant.

After further training, he was sent to Vietnam, arriving Jan. 6, 1968. Four days later he was assigned as a forward observer in the 40th Field Artillery Regiment, fighting in Long Binh near the Cambodian border.

By April, Carnegie had been promoted to first lieutenant and was a unit commander. On April 18, he was involved in a small-arms fight with the Viet Cong when he was shot and killed.

He was 22 years old.

“The letter from Tom’s commanding officer said he died without pain, for which I was grateful,” said his mother, Barbara, a few weeks later. “Tommy had gone to aid his wounded radioman when he was killed. It makes a little more sense, doesn’t it, to die trying to help a fellow human being.”

Later that year, when the Army awarded Carnegie a posthumous Bronze Star, it gave more details on what happened while the lieutenant was serving as a forward observer on a search and destroy operation in Bin Hoa province.

“As Lt. Carnegie moved forward with his radio telephone operator to adjust artillery fire, an exploding rocket severely wounded the radio operator. Disregarding his own safety, Lt. Carnegie moved to the aid of the injured man and after administering first aid, began moving him to a secure area. After moving the wounded man a few meters, Lt. Carnegie was mortally wounded by enemy rocket fire.”

The Army added, “His unselfish regard for his wounded radio operator enabled the man to be successfully evacuated.”

Lt. Carnegie was also awarded the Purple Heart and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He is also listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

In 2007, 40 years after he graduated from OCS, six of his classmates gathered at Fort Sill and raised a toast to Thomas Carnegie. “Be assured, you are remembered, Tom,” said Capt. Dennis Montgomery.