LESTER, RODERICK BARNUM

Name: Roderick Barnum Lester
Rank/Branch: O2/US Navy
Unit: Attack Squadron 52, USS KITTY HAWK (CVA 63)
Date of Birth: 19 June 1946
Home City of Record: Morton WA
Date of Loss: 20 August 1972
Country of Loss: North Vietnam/Over Water
Loss Coordinates: 210000N 1054500E
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: A6A
Refno: 1912
Other Personnel In Incident: Harry S. Mossman (missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1990 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 2000.

REMARKS:

SYNOPSIS: The Commander of the 7th Fleet once remarked that the low level
missions over Hanoi and Haiphong that the A6 pilots were sent on were among
the most demanding ever asked of Navy pilots. He added that it was fortunate
that these A6 pilots were among the most talented in the military.

LTJG Roderick B. Lester was a seasoned pilot assigned to Attack Squadron 52
onboard the aircraft carrier USS KITTY HAWK. On August 20, Lester launched
on his 144th mission with his Bombardier/Navigator (BN) Lt. Harry S.
Mossman, in their A6A Intruder attack aircraft on a night, low-level, armed
reconnaissance mission in the general vicinity of Cam Pha, North Vietnam.

During their mission, a brief radio transmision from the aircraft was
received, "Let's get the hell out of here." The transmission was felt to
indicate the planned flight path was being aborted because of heavy enemy
fire. At the same time, another air crew on the mission noted a flash of
light under the 1,000 foot overcast in the same general vicinity of their
aircraft location. The aircraft was last tracked over Hanoi, North Vietnam.

Weather was poor, with numerous thunderstorms which made the source of the
flash of light difficult to determine. Electronic surveillance was begun. A
visual search of the area noted accurate gunfire. Further search was
negative.

Lester and Mossman did not return from the mission, and were placed in a
Missing in Action status. The area of their last known locaton was heavily
populated, and there is every reason to believe that the Vietnamese could
account for the two - alive or dead, yet the Vietnamese have given no added
information on them.

When the war ended, refugees from the communist-overrun countries of
Southeast Asia began to flood the world, bringing with them stories of
missing GI's in their country. Since 1975, nearly 10,000 such stories have
been received. Many authorities believe that hundreds of Americans are still
held in the countries in Southeast Asia.

The U.S. Government operates on the "assumption" that one or more men are
being held, but that it cannot "prove" that this is the case, allowing
action to be taken. Meanwhile, low-level talks between the U.S. and Vietnam
proceed, yielding a few sets of remains when it seems politically expedient
to return them, but as yet, no living American has returned.

During the period he was maintained missing, Roderick B. Lester was promoted
to the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

=====================================

Saturday, November 11, 2000, 12:51 a.m. Pacific

After 28 years, family of missing Vietnam pilot gets word that his plane's
wreckage has been found

Background, Related Info & Multimedia:

by Kim Barker

Seattle Times staff reporter has been a question mark for 28 years,
remembered in fading snapshots and yellowed newspaper clippings, in
scrapbooks of typed high-school speeches and first paychecks and in letters
from presidents who say they are sorry.

U.S. Navy pilot Roderick Lester, who started drawing pictures of jets in
the third grade and started flying them 14 years later, disappeared Aug.
20, 1972, while piloting an A-6A Intruder attack jet over Vietnam.

In Morton, the Lewis County lumber town of almost 1,300 where he grew
up, he is the only man still missing from the Vietnam War. This
Veteran's Day, his name will be mentioned, as always.

But this year, there is news about Lester, known as "Rog" by family and
friends. He is still missing - but the place he and bombardier Harry
Mossman crashed has been found. The wreckage is scattered over a swath
of jungle the size of a football field, on the side of a mountain peak
in the Quang Ninh Province.

Investigators found the wreck of an A-6A jet. They found a part of a
sock, a piece of a parachute, zippers and buckles, snaps and buttons.
Parts of an ejection seat, survival vests and kits. They found fragments
of a leather nametag, too, attached to a survival vest: "ROG," one part
says. "STER," the other part says.

And finally this fall, after more than a year of investigating, the Navy
sent a letter to his mother, Esther Lester, saying that investigators
are certain this is where the plane crashed.

"This is pretty final, this letter, I guess," Lester said. "I don't
know. We've been disillusioned for so many years. This must be the
truth, but we still don't believe it."

Veteran's Day, originally designated to mark the end of World War I, is
a day of tribute to veterans and to the dead of all U.S. wars. But for
people like Esther Lester, it is a reminder of the people who served and
didn't make it back.

Rog Lester was the 62nd of 63 people from Washington to be listed as
missing in the Vietnam War. He is one of more than 1,900 still missing
from that war, and one of about 88,000 still missing from all the U.S.
conflicts since Veteran's Day became a holiday.

Over the years, Lester's parents, older brother and friends learned
mental gymnastics. They built worlds fed by rumors: Maybe he was shot
down over the water. Maybe he was captured by the enemy. Maybe he is
somewhere, still alive.

"As sharp as Rog was, as gutsy as he was, if anyone were to get out, Rog
would," said his best friend from childhood, Mike Emerson.

The friends are older now, graying, in their 50s, remembering a man
frozen in tousled hair at 26, forever the life of the party, the top
student, the man who buzzed Morton in his jet at least once.

As a youth, he was a prankster, who with Emerson once dumped detergent
in the Tunnel of Love at the Puyallup State Fair. He always wanted
speed: He built a go-cart, he drove the family's riding lawn mower
through the hayfields. When he turned 16, he started test-driving the
new Buicks in his father's car lot. If the cars had wings, he would have
flown them, friends say.

Flying seemed inevitable. He was a top student at flight school. He
landed at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. His squadron, based on
the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, wasn't sent to Vietnam until March
1972, the tail end of the war.

In the next six months, Lester flew 144 missions. While on leave in Hong
Kong, he asked his sweetheart visiting from Washington to marry him, and
she said yes. He wrote letters home and said he was disillusioned.

"I guess we all thought he was patriotic at the time he went in," his
mother said. "But then, as time went on, we were against it, as he was.
A waste of time. A waste of human life."

He and Mossman flew out that night for a typical mission, which lasted
two or three hours: Armed night reconnaissance over a relatively major
highway that snaked along the coast of North Vietnam.

Personnel in a nearby aircraft saw a flash in the area of his plane. A
radio transmission was made: "Let's get the hell out of here." The plane
was the only one lost by the squadron, known as the Knight Riders.

Since then, life has been a what if, a broken heart. Every year, the
Lesters have traveled east for the national conference for families of
missing soldiers. When prisoners of war were released, friends scrolled
through the names, searching for Lester, for Mossman.

"Any opportunity I had, I would call and ask," said Greg Wood, a
bombardier in their unit who now lives in Kenmore. "All we ever heard
was what we heard in the squadron. All we knew was, they went in, and
didn't come out."

In 1994, the Department of Defense started reviewing information on each
of the American soldiers unaccounted for in the war. Investigators
reviewed intelligence reports, interviews and archives. A potential
crash site was matched to Lester and Mossman.

In 1997, investigators started checking out that area and a rumored
burial site, near a village, nine miles away. Wood and three men who
trained with Lester decided to go back to Vietnam.

They wanted to see the crash site, but bad weather prevented it. So they
talked to a retired Vietnamese military official who lived in the
village, who said villagers hiked to the plane after it crashed and
collected the remains they found. They carried maybe 10 pounds back to
the village and buried them in a field, he said.

Investigators dug up the field but found nothing.

"The thing it really brought home, was what a waste (the war) was," said
Danny Beauchamp, Lester's roommate at flight school who led the trip
back to

Vietnam.

Investigators excavated the crash site last fall and again this spring.
They're supposed to be there now, looking for remains.

In Morton, 90 miles south of Seattle, people still remember Rog Lester.
Two roads in town are named for his father, Reg Lester, who ran the
major car dealership and gas station in town, who ran a tree farm and
bred thoroughbreds.

Reg Lester died in May, after 63 years of marriage, before he ever
learned his son's crash site had been found.

"Oh, we carried this in our hearts for all these years," Esther Lester
said. "It makes me sort of callous, when anything bad happens. Like
somehow, I didn't go to pieces when Reg died."

She has a shrine for her son on the wall just inside her front door: The
rubbing of his name from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The framed cover
of Parade magazine from 1993, with the headline "Lest We Forget" and 27
faces of missing soldiers, with Lester's picture in the lower right. The
medals and ribbons, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and the
Purple Heart.

She is 82, as big as a minute, with a white cloud of hair around her
head, and she knocks around by herself in the sprawling house where her
two sons grew up.

The Navy has asked her where she would like her son to be sent, if his
remains are found. Officials wanted to know if she wanted him buried out
east, in Arlington National Cemetery. But no, she said. She wants him to
come home.

Kim Barker's phone message number is 206-464-2255. Her e-mail address is
kbarker@seattletimes.com.

The film "Return With Honor" will be airing Monday, November 13th at
9:00 P.M. on PBS.

Parts of this coverage will include Mike McGrath's experience as a
Prisoner of War in Hanoi...the military Code of Conduct that American
POWs followed...

For additional information (excellent), please access:

http://aolsvc.pbs.aol.com/researchandlearn/wgbh/amex/honor/