COMER, HOWARD BRISBANE JR. Remains Returned 1993, ID announced 03/16/2001
Name: Howard Brisbane Comer, Jr. Rank/Branch: W2/US Army Unit: 187th Aviation Company, 269th Aviation Battalion, 12th Aviation Group, 1st Aviation Brigade Date of Birth: 04 August 1945 Home City of Record: Jacksonville FL Date of Loss: 24 November 1969 Country of Loss: South Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 111445N 1060714E (XT223433) Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered Category: 4 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: UH1H Refno: 1531 Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)
Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK in 2001.
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: On November 24, 1969, WO Howard B. Comer was the pilot of a UH1H helicopter (serial #68-15564) on a general support mission when the helicopter crashed in the Van Co Dung River in South Vietnam. The helicopter and its passengers were recovered, but in spite of an extensive search, no trace was found of the pilot.
Further search efforts were thwarted by the chief of the ARVN delegation to the 2-party military commission. The Tay Ninh Province chief was concerned about pressure on his province by hostile forces should he agree to assist in further searches for missing Americans.
Several source reports were received regarding Comer's loss. One source reported that his father had possession of the remains of one U.S. GI and the father had the source memorize the information on the ID tag on Comer. The source provided information on the discovery of alleged remains and Comer's ID tag, which were alleged to be found near Cam Giang.
Source provided information on the alleged discovery of the remains of Comer. A photocopy of the ID tag was provided. All information matched information given earlier by the source.
In March 1985, a source relayed hearsay information regarding the recovery7 of U.S. remains from a helicopter crash in Vam Co Dung river near Tay Ninh city. This report was thought to possibly correlate to Comer. The same hearsay information was provided again in February 1986.
Comer apparently did not survive the crash of his aircraft on November 24, 1969. Because his remains have never been located, he is listed with honor among the missing.
For others missing, clear-cut answers are not as possible as in the case of Howard B. Comer, Jr. Many were alive and well the last time they were seen. Some were in radio contact with would-be rescuers before their voices vanished from the airways. Others were photographed in captivity or known captives who simply disappeared from the prison systems and were not released.
There are nearly 2400 Americans still missing, prisoner or unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Unlike "MIA's" from other wars, most of these men can be accounted for. Since 1975, nearly 10,000 reports relating to these men have been received by the U.S. Government. A shocking 80% of them are accurate, and some of them have been correlated to individuals who have returned. Over 100 of these reports (which may include more than one individual) are as yet unresolved, being put through a process one U.S. Government official terms "the closest scrutiny possible".
Most authorities believe there are Americans still alive in captivity in Southeast Asia. Their opinions differ only in the numbers held. Unfortunately, none of them have formulated the solution for bringing them home.
Last Friday, March 16, 2001, the Department of Defense informed the League that the remains of one American, listed as KIA/BNR in North Vietnam since August 30, 1967, had been identified and returned to his family. The remains were jointly recovered on August 4, 1993 and accepted by the NOK as identified on October 21st of last year. DOD has not yet announced the name of this Navy officer from Wisconsin. The remains of Warrant officer 2nd Class Howard B. Comer, missing since November 24th, 1969, were turned over to US officials on December 14, 1993, during joint field operations in South Vietnam. Remains of the third, also US Army, were jointly recovered and repatriated June 27, 2000, but his name was not publicly announced at the request of his family. The fourth American, Mr. Gustav G. Hertz, was a civilian employee of the US Government. Now identified, his remains were unilaterally repatriated by the government of Vietnam in 1989. The accounting for these four Americans brings the number still missing and unaccounted for in Vietnam to 1493; 418 in Laos, 67 in Cambodia and 8 in the territorial waters of the PRC. Over 90% of the 1,986 Americans still missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War were lost in areas under Vietnam's wartime control.
========================================
The Florida Times-Union Monday, May 28, 2001
Nearly 32 years after a helicopter crash in Vietnam, Jacksonville man can finally be put to rest Peace at last for a family DNA helps solve MIA case Lindsay Tozer, Times-Union staff writer
Howard Comer was young, a gung-ho patriot bent on the idea of making the world a better place by doing his part to fell communism in Vietnam.
For more than 30 years, this was the picture Wanda Babb painted for her son Brian when trying to explain the father he never knew.
Brian Comer was only 4 months old that late fall day in 1969 when his father's helicopter crashed in South Vietnam during a routine mission.
Three men were rescued. Two crew members were killed instantly.
The sixth man, Howard Brisbane Comer Jr. of Jacksonville, was nowhere.
The Robert E. Lee High School graduate would remain unaccounted for until this spring, when military scientists used DNA and other techniques to identify his skeletal remains.
His younger brother, Preston Comer, said it was still difficult to believe.
"It's come up several times," the Jacksonville man said.
"But when they said, 'Where do you want him buried?' not 'We think we have something' or 'We might have something,' " the family accepted the findings.
The chief warrant officer, Babb said, will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery on July 2 as one more of Jacksonville's missing in action can be laid to rest. Still, more than 100 remain, including five from Vietnam. Today, Comer will be remembered along with more than 1,500 Jacksonville men and women and the thousands of others who died in service to the country. A Memorial Day observance is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Duval County Veterans Memorial Wall.
Although Babb doesn't subscribe to the philosophy of closure, the Lake Charles, La., woman said there is a measure of relief found in the finality of identification.
"At least I know he's back here and will be honored like he should be and will rest in peace," she said.
It has been a long 32 years, said Babb, who remarried in 1986 and was widowed again in 1999.
She dealt with the routine calls and letters keeping her abreast of the fact that no new information was known.
She struggled with the promises each new presidential administration would dangle before her.
She coped when a Vietnamese woman claimed to have Comer's remains which she would return for U.S. citizenship. Babb said no.
But mostly, she wrestled with what might have been.
"I think about him daily, every time I look at my oldest son," she said.
"What my life would have been like, where we would have lived, what kind of father he would have been."
On Nov. 27, 1969, four days after the helicopter went down, Babb answered her door to find three men, all Army, one a chaplain.
The 24-year-old pilot was missing, they explained gently.
Babb, 20, was left alone with a baby and a host of unanswerable questions.
"I'd see pictures of the infantry in there and I thought, 'Why can't they find him? Why can't they just go in and find him,' " she said of her husband of two years.
Although the family was stunned into a "quiet shock" at the news Comer was missing, Rita Comer said her brother had a feeling he would be killed during the war.
His farewell still rings in her ears.
"When he and Wanda came to visit me and my husband in Lake City, he said he felt like something was going to happen and that he wouldn't be back," said Comer, who now lives in Jacksonville. "He said, 'I just want to tell you I love you and that I'm not going to worry about it.' He put it in God's hands."
News accounts of released prisoners kept Babb's hope buoyed that her husband would come home.
"I was hoping he would see his son," she said, her voice trailing off. "He never did see his son."
By the early '90s, three different investigation teams had tackled the case of a fatal crash in the Van Co Dung River that happened as fighting in Vietnam reached its most ferocious stage, said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office.
Reports surfaced and villagers came forward about the skeletal remains in relatives' attics.
Scores of interviews were done and Comer's military identification card was produced. Plates from a U.S. chopper were offered up and slivers of bone were handed over.
Around Christmas 1993, remains later identified as Comer's were sent to an identification lab in Hawaii. It would take eight years of testing and retesting, including a dozen DNA samplings using blood drawn from Comer's mother to ensure the set's completeness, Greer said.
Although using DNA since 1994 and scientists becoming more savvy with the procedure with each passing year, "it doesn't make the DNA testing on the lab table go any faster," he said.
On any given day, Greer said, about 500 people worldwide are working to locate and identify missing service members.
As of last month, about 600 missing servicemen from Vietnam had been identified. Another 1,981 remain unaccounted for, he said, adding that hundreds of sets of remains are in some stage of the identification process.
And that makes for 1,981 families who can't let go.
But for the Comers, Rita Comer said, the news of identification wasn't needed to make peace with the fate of the missing pilot.
"My mother is a Christian and after so many years you put closure on it because you know he's in the Lord's hands," she said. "His remains are not important, it is his spirit that makes him who he is."