Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Monroe, MI
Posted by: 
WrightStuff
N 41° 55.517 W 083° 22.055
17T E 303687 N 4644191
The Monroe County Vietnam Memorial is located in Heck Park on South Dixie Hwy just 2 blocks from the I-75 exit.
Waymark Code: WMRK4
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 09/27/2006
Views: 131
The M shaped pink granite "Living Memorial" and the black granite "Killed in Action/Missing in Action" memorial were dedicated on May 17, 1987. The backside of the black granite memorial lists each of the fifty-five Monroe County men killed-in-action during the Vietnam War and the one Monroe county man missing-in-action. Directly behind the memorials is a flagpole flying an American flag and a POW/MIA flag.
The Monroe county MIA solider honored here is Melvin Dye. Dye was the engineer and Robert Griffith the door gunner aboard a UH1H helicopter performing an emergency extraction mission in Laos. They were extracting a reconnaissance patrol team consisting of three U.S. Army Special Forces personnel and 3 indigenous personnel. The aircraft carried a crew of four. Douglas Glover was one of the Special Forces personnel aboard.
As the helicopter picked up the team 4 miles inside Laos west of Dak Sut, it received a heavy volume of small arms fire. It is not known whether the aircraft was hit by hostile fire or hit a tree, but it nosed over, impacted the ground and exploded, bursting into flames.
The pilot, co-pilot and one passenger managed to leave the aircraft. Because of the fire and exploding small arms ammunition, rescue attempts for the others were futile.
There were six U.S. and 3 indigenous personnel aboard the helicopter. When search teams reached the site the same day, they could not account for the other U.S. personnel. Five were accounted for, but could not be recovered because of intense heat.
Dye, Glover and Griffith were classified as Missing In Action. They did not return when the general prisoner release occurred in 1973. Since the war ended, evidence mounts that Americans were left behind in enemy prison camps and that hundreds of them could be alive today.