Fairchild Air Force Base airmen conduct 24-hour vigil march to honor POW, MIA veterans
Sep. 19—Beginning Thursday morning, the military airmen of Fairchild Air Force Base marched all day and through the night in memory of those who have been prison ers of war or missing in action.
Friday is national POW/MIA Day of Recognition, and the 24-hour vigil march is a way to honor those who did not come home.
Senior airman Joseph Lanier is one of the several dozen men and women who made the trek on foot from Riverfront Park's Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the Air Force base and beyond.
"It's just a great opportunity for me, personally, to share the dedication to the POWs in the present, past or future, and any of the missing in action service members that are still out there," Lanier said.
Those carrying the POW/MIA flag across the West Plains are from the base's SERE school — "survival, evasion, resistance and escape." The six-month intensive course teaches air crews how to evade capture or survive imprisonment if their planes go down in enemy territory.
"In the military community, we like to do hard things to show appreciation or recognition," Lanier said.
At the end of the 13 miles to Fairchild, the marchers were not done. They continued walking and carrying the flag for the full 24 hours.
Speaking to those about to take this journey, Chief Master Sergeant Trevor Brinton said marchers should feel the burden of those being honored.
"You are the keepers of our nation's solemn promise: 'You are not forgotten.' This is a day that we reinvigorate our commitment to that cause," he said.
Looking at the Vietnam memorial behind them, Britton said 2,225 U.S. service members were left unaccounted for at the end of the Vietnam war. Sixteen among those thousands were from Spokane, and each of their names are engraved on the memorial.
"For those 16 families, MIA was an outcome in a lot of ways even worse than finding out their loved one died in combat. Because it left a lingering and endless uncertainty — a terrible prospect that maybe there was a possibility no matter how remote that their loved one was still alive in the jungles of southeast Asia suffering continuously," Britton said.
In 2009, the Chief Master Sergeant was on a recovery team in Laos — digging through the jungle for remains of unaccounted soldiers. Britton helped find bone fragments that closed the case of a Vietnam pilot.
"This is the promise. We will do everything within our national power, and we will never quit until we find you and bring you home," he said.
Since the Spokane's Vietnam monument was constructed in 1985, nine of those sixteen MIA cases have been resolved.
Spokane Vietnam veteran Wes Anderson stood at attention as the vigil marchers took their heavy packs sporting a large, wooden-hilted ax and left towards Fairchild Air Force Base.
Anderson served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968 as a hospital corpsman with the U.S. Marines. He also helped raise money to build the Spokane memorial and its bronze statue in 1985.
"It's always been the military's premise that we leave no man behind. They were left behind. This is a day we have to remember them," he said. "Every week, unclaimed remains are identified. Those unclaimed MIA are identified, and their families get closure. We want to show the families that we're still thinking of them. They are still in our thoughts and prayers."
Anderson knows what it feels like for those families. Mike Sutton — a close friend he trained and served with — was MIA for more than 50 years before his remains were discovered several years ago.
"When I got that call, to me it was like OK — Mike, you're home," Anderson said.
