Boyer, Alan Lee
Army Sergeant 1st class

Alan Lee Boyer, age 22, from Montana, Missoula county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Thursday, March 28, 1968

Death details: On February 10, 2016, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Sergeant First Class Alan Lee Boyer, missing from the Vietnam War.

Sergeant First Class Boyer joined the U.S. Army from Illinois and served with a reconnaissance team assigned to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG). On March 28, 1968, he was a member of an eleven-man reconnaissance team conducting a classified reconnaissance mission in Savannakhet Province, Laos. The group was discovered and attacked by enemy forces, and requested extraction. A U.S. Air Force CH-3 Jolly Green Giant extraction helicopter was able to rescue seven of the men, but the rope ladder broke before the remaining four men could climb it, including SFC Boyer. Further attempts to rescue him were unsuccessful. Many years later, a U.S. citizen turned over to DPAA human remains that he had received from a Laotian refugee. Modern forensic techniques and DNA analysis were able to identify these remains as those of SFC Boyer.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency