When Ann Holland’s husband was killed at a secret base during the Vietnam War, the Woodland woman wasn’t even allowed to tell her kids their dad was dead.
On Tuesday, one of the men who died with Mel Holland in that battle was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama. The family of Richard L. Etchberger received the nation’s highest military honor at the White House.
“Today your nation finally acknowledges and fully honors your father’s bravery,” Obama told Etchberger’s three sons.
But other families feel that the dozen airmen who died on that mountain in Laos have been acknowledged, Ann Holland said.
“Absolutely,” she said.
A friend e-mailed her the news about Etchberger’s medal a few days ago, Holland said. “He said as far as he’s concerned, the Etchberger family is receiving the Medal of Honor for all the men who didn’t come home. That means a lot to me.
“I really appreciate President Obama doing this,” she said. “It’s been a long time in coming. All the families knew he could have gotten the Medal of Honor.”
Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Etchberger and Tech. Sgt. Holland were members of a secret unit at Lima Site 85. The mountaintop radar station guided B-52s on bombing missions into North Vietnam. American military forces weren’t supposed to be operating in Laos, so all the men went on the payroll of a civilian aviation company.
During his remarks, Obama noted that “Dick and his crew believed they could help turn the tide of the war, perhaps even end it. And that’s why North Vietnamese forces were determined to shut it down. They sent their planes to strafe the Americans as they worked.”
A unique air battle was described in an article in Air Force Magazine. Two Russian biplanes that had been built as cropdusters attacked the base on Jan. 12, 1968. A helicopter from CIA-affiliated Air America responded; a crewman firing from the helicopter door hit both enemy aircraft and the biplanes crashed.
Then they moved in their troops, Obama continued. “And eventually, Dick and his team could look through their binoculars and see that their mountain was surrounded by thousands of North Vietnamese troops.
“They believed that no one could possibly scale the mountain’s steep cliffs. And they believed in their work. So they stayed,” rather than requesting evacuation.
Nineteen Americans were on the mountain when the North Vietnamese scaled the cliffs in a night attack and overran the summit on March 11, 1968.
“They were sitting ducks,” Ann Holland said. “They weren’t even issued weapons until a couple of days before the attack.”
Etchberger and several men moved down to a small ledge, where they found themselves trapped.
“The enemy lobbed down grenade after grenade, hour after hour,” Obama said. “Dick and his men would grab those grenades and throw them back, or kick them into the valley below. But the grenades kept coming. Eventually, Dick was the only man standing.
“As a technician, he had no formal combat training. In fact, he had only recently been issued a rifle. When the enemy started moving down the rocks, Dick fought them off. When it looked like the ledge would be overrun, he called for airstrikes, within yards of his own position.”
Finally, a helicopter arrived at dawn. As it hovered above the ledge, Etchberger helped load three wounded men, one by one, into its sling. Then he climbed aboard. As the helicopter peeled away, a burst of fire went through the bottom of the craft, hitting Etchberger. He died during the flight.
“Of those 19 men on the mountain that night, only seven made it out alive. Three of them owed their lives to the actions of Dick Etchberger,” Obama said.
There was no way to recover the bodies of the dead airmen. U.S. planes bombed Lima Site 85 for a week, preventing the enemy from gathering any usable equipment or information.
In an earlier interview with The Columbian, Ann Holland recalled hearing the news about Mel. She was 28 back then, and the mother of five kids.
She was holding a Cub Scout meeting in her Woodland home when she got the telephone call: Her husband was missing. And she couldn’t tell anybody — not even their children.
“The kids would come home from school, and they would want to know if there was a letter from Daddy. I would pull out an old letter and read it,” she said.
“They declared the men dead after three months, and that’s when I could tell the kids.”
