ZUBKE, DELAND DWIGHT

Name: Deland Dwight Zubke
Rank/Branch: E5/US Army
Unit: B Battery, 7th Battalion, 15th Artillery, 52nd Artillery Group
Date of Birth: 28 October 1951 (Dickinson ND)
Home City of Record: Grassy Butte ND
Date of Loss: 02 March 1971
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 143300N 1073640E (YB805097)
Status (in 1973): Missing in Action
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1713

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 2004.

Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)

REMARKS:

SYNOPSIS: SP5 Deland W. Zubke was serving as a radio operator for a U.S.
Artillery forward observer attached to an ARVN unit in South Vietnam. On
February 28, 1971, at about 1700 hours, his unit came under enemy attack,
and was forced to occupy defensive positions.

At 1410 hours on March 1, the ARVN unit's perimeter was breached and the
unit began to break up, with the survivors attempting to evade capture. The
three other Americans serving with this group evaded capture. Survivors
report last seeing SP5 Zubke inside the defensive perimeter. While the
surviving escaped, they called an air strike on their former position. Zubke
was not seen again.

Zubke was presumed to have been killed in the air strike called in to
protect the surviving members of the team. A cold reality of war is that the
few may sometimes suffer for the greater good of many. The Army believes
this is the case with Zubke, but because, in the confusion there is the
chance that Zubke left the bunker, the Army did not declare him killed, but
listed him Missing in Action. Clearly, the Army accepted the possibility
that Zubke had been captured.

Although Zubke was not among the prisoners returned a the end of the war,
thousands of reports have been received indicating that many Americans are
still alive in Southeast Asia, held against their will. One of them could be
SP5 Deland W. Zubke. If so, what must he be thinking of his country?

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

Associated Press Newswires
Saturday, June 12, 2004

 MIA bracelet unites women after two decades

WATFORD CITY, N.D. (AP) - A bracelet worn for a North Dakota soldier missing
in Vietnam has brought two women together after more than two decades.
"There really are nice people in the world," said Drusilla Zubke, 77, after
meeting Bonnie Barrett, 36, the keeper of her son's missing-in-action
bracelet.
Barrett, of Tottenville, N.Y., has worn a bracelet in memory of Sgt. Deland
Zubke of Grassy Butte since the early 1980s.
She brought his mother, Drusilla, a rancher of 50 years, to New York City
for a Mother's Day week tour. The women had written each other for years but
had never met.
Barrett and others who wear bracelets in memory of missing soldiers pledge
to keep them on until the soldier returns or his remains are found. The
wearer then returns the token to the soldier or to his family.
Barrett said she decided to wear the bracelet when she was 14 years old. A
friend's father, who was in the military, told her about the bracelet
campaign during a leisurely card game, she said.
"He said, 'There are soldiers who fight for freedom. People who let you live
like you do, playing cards ... Some people go away, and they do not come
back,"' she said.
"For a 14-year-old, that got me thinking," she said. "It was something that
stayed with me. "
About six years ago, after the bracelet's red color faded to gray, it
snapped in half. Barrett was heartbroken. Her fiance, Charles Vitallo,
replaced it with a silver band.
Last month, Barrett handed Drusilla Zubke the broken pieces of the old band.
They are now displayed with Deland's picture and other war memorabilia at
the McKenzie County Veteran's Memorial Center in Watford City.
After 10 years of wearing the bracelet, Barrett wanted to find out more
about the soldier from North Dakota. The identification bracelet gave only
his name and home state.
Barrett said her search was as simple as dialing information and asking for
the last name. But the initial phone call was difficult, she said.
"I was nervous" Barrett said. "You don't know how a person is going to react
when so much time has gone by."
A decade of cards, letters and flowers followed for Drusilla Zubke on
birthdays and holidays.
Barrett said that this year, instead of taking her usual vacation, she opted
to pay for Zubke's stay in New York and show her around the city.
"We took a carriage ride through Central Park, took a double-decker bus, saw
the Empire State Building, rode on the ferry and saw the Statue of Liberty,"
Zubke said. "I wouldn't want to live there. I'd probably get lost walking to
my neighbors'."
Deland Zubke enlisted in the Army shortly after graduating from high school
in 1970. On March 2, 1971, Drusilla and her late husband, Gerald, received
the news.
"He (Deland) was only there two months when he came up missing," Zubke
recalled. "When a guy from the Army came driving in, I knew something was
wrong."
Deland was declared dead in 1978. A tombstone was brought to the cemetery,
but the family has held no burial service.
"I don't expect they'll find him," his mother said. "I don't know if he'd
know how to cope with society if he's been imprisoned this long."
Coping has proven a long challenge for her.
"I didn't know what happened to him. I hated staying in the house. I would
go out and help my husband outside as much as possible," she said. "Not
knowing what happened has been real hard."
She tries to make sense of Vietnam, but her son's disappearance makes that
difficult. She now settles in Watford City for less stressful winters, and
rents out her land.
Zubke has three sons, a daughter, 12 grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren.
Barrett said she may come back to North Dakota after her wedding next year.
The bracelet, with its new band, remains firmly on her wrist.
"After you wear it a year, and take it off you start to feel like you are
missing something," she said. "Until the day I die, it will be a part of me.
It will always be a part of me. It will not go off."