Gavin Lee Neighbor, age 20, from Somerset, Ohio, Perry county.
Service era: Iraq
Military history: Company C 3D Battalion 325Th Infantry Regiment, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Date of death: Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Death details: Hostile; Baghdad, Iraq
Source: Department of Defense, Military Times
John Loy Keister, age 21, from New Lexington, Ohio, Perry county.
Parents: Lester and Betty Dickerson Keister
Service era: Vietnam
Schools: Lexington High (1967)
Date of death: Tuesday, July 14, 1970
Death details: Hostile, South Vietnam
Cemetery: Lexington
Source: National Archives, Zanesville Times Recorder (1970)
Harold Raymond Jr. McCord, age 21, from New Lexington, Ohio, Perry county.
Parents: Harold R. McCord Sr.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Tuesday, May 26, 1970
Death details: Killed on guard duty at a base camp in Vietnam when the area was under mortar attack
Cemetery: New Lexington
Source: National Archives, Zanesville Times Recorder
Kenneth Eugene Whitmer, age 22, from Somerset, Ohio, Perry county.
Parents: Walter W. Whitmer
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Tuesday, March 24, 1970
Death details: Killed in South Vietnam while riding in a vehicle on a medical evacuation for a fellow Marine when the vehicle was hit by hostile small arms fire.
Cemetery: Greenlawn Memory Gardens
Source: National Archives, Newark Advocate (1970)
Gail F. Sells from Ohio, Perry county.
Service era: Korea
Date of death: Friday, December 1, 1950
Death details:
On the evening of November 27, 1950, Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) launched a massive attack against the U.S. and United Nations troops stationed in the Chosin Reservoir area in northeast North Korea, resulting in a seventeen-day conflict that became known as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. At the time of the initial CCF attack, members the U.S. Army’s 31st and 32nd Infantry Regiments were defending the area north of Sinhung-ni, on the east side of the reservoir. The defenders were overwhelmed by the numerically superior CCF, and on December 1, were forced to withdraw to friendly lines at Hagaru-ri. Chinese roadblocks from Sinhung-ni to Hagaru-ri along with the constant enemy fire from the surrounding high ground, made the withdrawal route extremely dangerous. Eventually, the column was broken into separate segments, which the CCF attacked individually. Many men were lost or captured during the moving battle, with survivors reaching friendly lines in Hagaru-ri on December 2 and 3.
Corporal Gail Frederick Sells entered the U.S. Army from Ohio and was a member of Company M, 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. Corporal Sells was reported as killed in action on December 1, during the withdrawal from the P’ungnyuri Inlet to Hagaru-ri, though specific details regarding his loss are unknown. His body could not be recovered and he remains unaccounted-for. Today, Corporal Sells is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency