Harry Jerome Edwards, age 19, from Orangeburg County Holly Hill, South Carolina .
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Thursday, January 20, 1972
Death details: On January 20, 1972, a UH-1H Iroquois (tail number 69-16717) carrying four crew and four passengers took off on a recovery mission for downed U.S. pilots. The aircraft was returning from the rescue mission when it was hit by enemy ground fire southeast of Khe Sanh combat base in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. The aircraft caught fire and crash landed on the bank of the Rao Quan River, in the vicinity of (GC) XD 883 408. A rescue crew member observed an individual from the loss aircraft pinned face down in the burning wreckage, but was unable to extricate him. Hostile forces in the area prevented further rescue attempts at the crash site, and two members of the crew remain unaccounted for. Specialist 4 Harry Jerome Edwards, who joined the U.S. Army from South Carolina, was a member of Troop D, 3rd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He was a passenger aboard the UH-1H when it went down, and was lost with the aircraft. His remains were not recovered following the incident. Today, Specialist 4 Edwards is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is also inscribed along with all his fallen comrades on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC.
Source: National Archives, The item (1984), Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
