No-Longer-Unknown Soldier Doesn’T Deserve Medal, Vets Say

The old military maxim, “Hurry up and wait,” was a gruesome reality for Air Force Lt. Michael J. Blassie. The 24-year-old pilot was shot down on May 11, 1972, over Song Be Province in Vietnam, but it was another five months before South Vietnamese troops could get to the aircraft and Blassie’s remains.

Somehow, the military identification card that was recovered with his body never made it to Saigon. Blassie’s family was told he was presumed dead but that his identity couldn’t be confirmed.

In 1984, he was interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, some said because the Reagan administration was under pressure from POW-MIA activists to show concern for missing casualties of the Vietnam War.

Four years ago, one such activist found information that the Vietnam representative in the tomb might be Blassie. DNA testing confirmed it after Blassie’s bones were exhumed on May 14.

Today, Blassie finally rests under his own headstone, at a national cemetery in his native St. Louis. But the story doesn’t end there.

Blassie’s sister, Army Reserve Capt. Patricia Blassie, says the Medal of Honor that hangs symbolically at the Tomb of the Unknowns should go to St. Louis with her brother.

Not in the minds of veterans organizations, it shouldn’t, and a couple of Eastern Washington vets agree.

“I strongly disagree with what she wants,” says Rich Gaston of Spokane. If Patricia Blassie gets her way, says Gaston, a former infantryman who spent two years in Vietnam, then the Medal of Honor ought to go to all of the roughly 58,000 Americans who died in the 18-year conflict.

Some of those dead, Gaston noted, were his buddies.

Fred J. Meyer of Coulee Dam was succinct: “Hell no! That family has more chutzpah than brains,” said Meyer, a retired Army major who served in World War II and the Korean war.

“If they award that medal to her,” said Gaston, “all they’re gonna do is cheapen that award. And if they do, I’ll just take the rest of my medals down - and I think a lot of other Vietnam vets would, too - and throw ‘em in the river.

“I’m sorry that she lost her brother,” he said, “but let’s not cheapen a decoration that’s been around 100-plus years on account of somebody’s mistake.”