Ronald James Dexter, age 34, from Abilene, Texas.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Saturday, June 3, 1967
Death details: On June 3, 1967, a CH-46A Sea Knight (bureau number 150955) carrying a crew of six and an unknown number of South Vietnamese personnel took off for an extraction mission in Laos. The aircraft took enemy small arms fire when lifting off from the landing zone and crashed in the vicinity of XD 795 050. One member of the aircraft’s crew was rescued three days later. Two crewmembers, the door gunner and another crewmember, were captured by enemy forces; the door gunner was eventually returned to U.S. custody, at which time he reported that the other crewmember had died during their captivity. The remaining occupants of the Sea Knight were killed in the initial incident, and their remains were recovered and identified following the end of hostilities. Sergeant First Class Ronald James Dexter, who joined the U.S. Army from Texas, was a member of the Command and Control Detachment of the 5th Special Forces Group and was a passenger aboard the Sea Knight when it went down. He was captured following the crash, and reportedly died in captivity on July 29, 1967. Attempts to locate or identify his remains have been unsuccessful. Following the incident, the Army promoted SFC Dexter to the rank of Sergeant Major (SGM). Today, Sergeant Major Dexter is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Cemetery: Memorialized at Zion Lutheran Church in Matteson, Illinois
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, findagrave.comÂ