 John Terence McDonnell
If you are able, save for them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go. Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always. Take what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind. Major Michael O'Donnell |
On 6 March 1969, the 4/77th ARA A battery was called upon to take out enemy mortar installations on the north side of the Bach Ma mountain range in the Thua Tien Province of South Vietnam. Major Robert Graham requested volunteers as the Camp Eagle pilots had already flown their missions that day. CAPT John McDonnell bumped Dennis Mack from the AH-1G and he and LT Ron Greenfield were pair paired as the mission lead. McDonnell piloted the craft for the rocket runs with Greenfield manning the guns from the front seat. Setting down to refuel, the pilots traded positions and Greenfield took the helm. The horseshoe-shaped valley held in the clouds that day forcing the aircraft to maintain a precarious altitude between the tree tops and the low cloud ceiling. While on their final rocket run, the Cobra took enemy fire and the last thing that Greenfield remembers is the stick going limp. He was extracted from the jungle roughly 24 hours after going in.
Thirteen years later McDonnell's name was engraved into the black marble of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial on the 58th line of panel 30W. The cross prefix indicates that he is POW/MIA. This web page is dedicated to ascertaining his fate.
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