DEWBERRY, JERRY DON

Name: Jerry Don Dewberry
Rank/Branch: E4/US Marine Corps
Unit: Company D, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division
Date of Birth: 10 July 1948
Home City of Record: Ardmore OK
Date of Loss: 05 July 1968
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 164505N 1071143E (XD802409)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1223
Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 March 1991 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 2020.

REMARKS:

SYNOPSIS: Lance Corporal Jerry D. Dewberry was assigned to Company D, 1st
Battalion, 1st Marines in Vietam. On July 5, 1968, just five days short of
his twentieth birthday, Dewberry was part of a Marine unit sent on patrol in
Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam.

During the patrol, the unit came under enemy fire and Dewberry was hit. He
was apparently believed to be dead and left behind. Dewberry was officially
listed Killed in Action/Body Not Recovered.

Jerry D. Dewberry is listed among the missing because his remains were never
found to send home to the country he served. For his family, the case seems
clear that he died on that day. The fact that they have no body to bury with
honor is not of great significance.

For other who are missing, however, the evidence leads not to death, but to
survival. Since the war ended, over 10,000 reports received relating to
Americans still held captive in Indochina have convinced experts that
hundreds of men are still alive, waiting for their country to rescue them.
The notion that Americans are dying without hope in the hands of a long-ago
enemy belies the idea that we left Vietnam with honor. It also signals that
tens of thousands of lost lives were a frivolous waste of our best men.

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01/2020

https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000000KYAVEA4

LCPL JERRY DON DEWBERRY

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Lance Corporal Jerry Don Dewberry entered the U.S. Marine Corps from Oklahoma and was a member of Company D, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. On July 5, 1968, he was a recovery team operation's rifleman near Hill 689 in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, when the men proceeded past their perimeter wire and were ambushed and hit by extensive mortar and small arms fire. LCpl Dewberry was hit by enemy automatic weapons fire and fell into a bomb crater. The unit was forced to pull back and the enemy presence prevented any immediate recovery efforts for LCpl Dewberry's remains. Later attempts to locate them were also unsuccessful, and he remains unaccounted-for. Today, Lance Corporal Dewberry is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Based on all information available, DPAA assessed the individual's case to be in the analytical category of Active Pursuit.

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