Associated Press Newswires

Friday, February 21, 2003



Remains believed to be American servicemen repatriated in ceremony



HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AP) - Remains believed to be those of

American servicemen lost in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War

were returned to U.S. soil during a repatriation ceremony Friday.

The remains, carried off a cargo plane in four flag-draped transport cases

by a joint military honor guard, were from four separate

excavation sites in Southeast Asia, said Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, spokesman

for the Army's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, which

conducted the mission that recovered the remains.

One of the cases contained additional remains from a case that had been

repatriated last week which may have included Lt. Jack Rittichier,

a native of Ohio, and the only member of the Coast Guard missing from the

Vietnam War, O'Hara said.

Rittichier was one of four men aboard an H-53 "Jolly Green Giant"

helicopter than was shot down in June 1968 in Salavan in the southern

portion of Laos, he said. Another set of remains was recovered from the site

where an F4 fighter plane crashed in 1972 with two men aboard, he

said.

A third set of remains, believed to be that of two men, was taken from the

site of a B57 crash in 1965 in Xiangkhoang in the northern

central part of Laos. The last set of remains was taken from Strung Treng in

the northeastern corner of Cambodia, where an H-53 helicopter

carrying five men went down in March 1972 for an unknown reason, O'Hara

said.

The identities of the other men were not disclosed. Some families have

opted to withhold information about their loved ones under a law

written by Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam,

O'Hara said. The law applies only to servicemen who are missing

from the Vietnam War.