Bryan James Richardson, age 23, from Summersville, West Virginia, Nicholas county.
Service era: Iraq
Military history: K Co, 3D Bn, 25Th Mar, (Rct-2, 2D Mar Div), 4Th Mar Div, Moundsville, Wv
Date of death: Friday, March 25, 2005
Death details: Hostile; Al Anbar Province, Iraq
Source: Department of Defense, Military Times
Ronnie Lee Hensley, age 21, from Richwood, West Virginia, Nicholas county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Wednesday, April 22, 1970
Death details: On September 1, 1995, Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA, now DPAA) identified the remains of Chief Master Sergeant Ronnie Lee Hensley, missing from the Vietnam War.
Chief Master Sergeant Hensley joined the U.S. Air Force from Kentucky and was a member of the 16th Special Operations Squadron. On April 22, 1970, he was a crew member aboard an AC-130 gunship (serial number 54-1625) on an armed reconnaissance mission over enemy targets in Saravane Province, Laos. The AC-130 was downed by anti-aircraft fire during the mission, and CMSgt Hensley was killed in the crash. Search and rescue efforts were unable to locate his body at the time. In November 1993, a joint U.S. and Laotian investigative team recovered remains from a crash site associated with this AC-130. In 1995, forensic analysis identified some of the recovered remains as those of CMSgt Hensley.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
John M. Legg from West Virginia, Nicholas county.
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Sunday, August 16, 1942
Death details: Following the Allied surrender on the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, the Japanese began the forcible transfer of American and Filipino prisoners of war to various prison camps in central Luzon, at the northern end of the Philippines. The largest of these camps was the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp. At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war that were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan. Camp overcrowding worsened with the arrival of Allied prisoners who had surrendered from Corregidor on May 6, 1942. Conditions at the camp were poor, with food and water extremely limited, leading to widespread malnutrition and outbreaks of malaria and dysentery. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, approximately 2,800 Americans had died at Cabanatuan. Prisoners were forced to bury the dead in makeshift communal graves, often completed without records or markers. As a result, identifying and recovering remains interred at Cabanatuan was difficult in the years after the war. Private John Marion Legg entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from West Virginia and served with the Signal Air Warning Company in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured in Bataan following the American surrender on April 9, 1942, and died of dysentery on August 16, 1942, at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province. He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs; however, his remains could not be associated with any remains recovered from Cabanatuan after the war. Today, Private Legg is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency